H-1B needs to be ended. No more wage-suppression handouts to multi-billion dollar companies. Google and the rest of these companies can pay either pay more, or train more CITIZENS.
Normally we'd ban a new account for posting this way. Fortunately your previous comment was a fine one for HN, so we won't do that this time. But if you'd please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules when commenting here, we'd appreciate it.
<< I guess I should just not work for a living, then. I'm hoping that people making such an observation have native American ancestry.
In addition to being cheap and uncivil, it's absolutely unbelievable (but not surprising) that a foreign national here in this country as a guest of the American people thinks that it is in any way acceptable to say things like this.
You would do very well to advise yourself on the laws of the United States, which do not require ancestry from any particular place in order to qualify for citizenship. That includes people like you who also don't have any native American ancestry.
America is a sovereign country, and we the people have every right to make whatever laws we like about what qualifies someone for citizenship or entry into our country. You're not an American citizen, and you have no such rights. For example: that's why you can't vote.
One more thing: in America we have a word for people who believe someone's race disqualifies them speaking.
That's the whole point. Unless you are a direct descendant of native Americans, you too are a guest of theirs, regardless of whether you are a first generation immigrant, or the grandchild of one. But strangely, nobody is in much of a hurry to ask for native opinions on immigration policy.
I am here under the same set of rules as any native born settler - which accurately describes most Americans - is. Maybe even more legally, given that immigration control is historically, a relatively recent phenomena. (At least, with respect to 'white' people. Let's not talk about the incredibly racist history of that institution.)
There's a certain oddity to having a country founded on immigration, without the consent of the native inhabitants, setting up rules for who can immigrate to it (which many Americans' ancestors would probably not have been able to meet), and then pooh-poohing someone who has met said rules for legally being here. It's a tad hypocritical.
<< That's the whole point. Unless you are a direct descendant of native Americans, you too are a guest of theirs, regardless of whether you are a first generation immigrant, or the grandchild of one. But strangely, nobody is in much of a hurry to ask for native opinions on immigration policy.
That's an utterly fallacious argument and you know it. We're talking about current US immigration policy, not the history of the US, which no one is in a position to change. Your attempt to reframe this debate by painting all US citizens who are not the descendants of indigenous peoples as 'guests' only weakens your arguments because it is crystal clear that you're using US history as a straw man. Whether you like it or not, US citizens cannot be guests in the US, not legally nor otherwise.
Furthermore, this discussion isn't even framed around 'native' vs 'descended from people from elsewhere'. This discussion is about US citizens (people with US passports who can vote in US elections) and foreign nationals here in the US as guest workers. Start a different discussion if you want to debate the history of immigration to the US.
<< I am here under the same set of rules as any native born settler - which accurately describes most Americans - is. Maybe even more legally, given that immigration control is historically, a relatively recent phenomena. (At least, with respect to 'white' people. Let's not talk about the incredibly racist history of that institution.)
Your attempt to shift the discussion to various aspects of US history shows that you're apparently not willing to debate H1-B on its merits. As noted above, we define US citizens as people who hold US passports and who can vote in US elections. Immigration control is also not a recent phenomenon. People have been engaging in various forms of immigration control for thousands and thousands of years.
<< There's a certain oddity to having a country founded on immigration, without the consent of the native inhabitants, setting up rules for who can immigrate to it (which many Americans' ancestors would probably not have been able to meet), and then pooh-poohing someone who has met said rules for legally being here. It's a tad hypocritical.
This is talking out of both sides of your mouth. If you really believe the US was founded without the consent of the natives, then why are you here participating in a system that you describe as racist with its origins in colonization?
You either truly believe these things about the US and participate anyway (thereby nominating yourself for the hypocrisy prize) or you don't believe it, which means you're presenting baseless arguments that you don't believe.
It would be hypocrisy if after taking advantage of the system, I sought to change it, and lock other people out. Just because you live somewhere does not mean you are in 100% moral agreement with how every aspect of that place is ran.
I think you're missing the lede. To summarize:
1. Most Americans are settlers. They, or their ancestors, were immigrants.
2. Most of them, or their ancestors, immigrated when the rules for doing so were far more lax.
3. Some of them now seek to change the rules.
There's an argument that can be made that wage suppression is bad. Great. When I provide examples when wage suppression isn't happening, I'm told that's not the problem - apparently immigration in itself is bad (Because more people living here will suppress wages). See - points 1 and 2.
"You being here ruins it for everyone else, context be damned" is not quite discussing H1B on its merits - especially when that's an argument made by a fellow settler.
Your recent comments have been abusing HN by crossing into incivility and doing political flamewar. We ban accounts that do these things, and have had to ask you not to do them in the past. Please (re-)read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and fix this.
There are tons of studies that show that high-skilled immigrants create more jobs than they occupy and overall boost a region's economy, but all of those are conveniently ignored whenever someone wants to make a point. Silicon Valley wouldn't exist without the H-1B visa.
Yes, there are companies that abuse visas and pay low wages etc. Why not focus on improving enforcement rather than rant about immigrants?
This is true. High skilled are desired and add to the economy; unfortunately, in an attempt to ride on the coattails of legal immigrants, supporters of illegal immigration purposefully conflate the two and dilute the former's repute, unfortunately.
Also last quarter, 65% of Apple's revenue was from outside America. And, yet, looking at their total H1B numbers, only about 9% of their employees are H1B holders.
If American companies earn money from the rest of the world, is it really that unfair that they hire a small percent of international people to work at their company?
The 9% only includes H-1B folks who are directly employed by Apple.
Apple also has hundreds of contractors employed by Tata, Infosys etc on H-1B's, in Apple's internal IT department ("IS&T"). These people are paid less than the 9% of people above, and would not count towards Apple's own H-1B numbers.
One major issue you're going to have with studies like this is the same as with studies on any social or economic issue - there's room for 'massaging' the data to fit any narrative. It's the same thing with things like minimum wage. In Seattle after the city increased the minimum wage they commissioned an independent study from the University of Washington study to try to assess the overall results. The study indicated that they'd lost ~5,000 jobs and the changes were hurting lower income workers resulting in fewer hours and an overall loss of $125 per month per worker. So they canned that study which was supposed to run for 5 years, and commissioned an individual well known for evangelizing wage increases to carry out a new study. There's a writeup on WaPo here [1] about that. The Michael Reich individual they quote, in that article is the person who was commissioned to carry out his study. And he managed to report that wages are up and there was no increase in unemployment.
H1-B (and immigration in general) is not only a fairly hot political topic, but also one where there an immense number of massive corporations that benefit substantially from the system. There have been an large number of reports, including government reports during the former administration, indicating a substantial depression of wages due to H1-B visas. [2] I hate to cite Wiki, but really - there are a ton of reports there and me giving dozens of links in this post is less reasonable than just linking Wiki there.
So on this issue, your phrasing is already hinting at some angling and I'm not sure you even realize it! In the US there are a huge number of STEM educated individuals who are not working in STEM. Certainly many of them are doing so voluntarily, but it's equally certain many of them are doing so involuntary. Filling these jobs domestically would of course create at least as many jobs, but on top of those created jobs it would also allow citizens to also occupy the 'creating' jobs, all without the wage depression of H1-Bs.
As an American citizen formerly at Google - no, not really.
The supply of engineers that can pass Google's slightly ridiculous hiring bar is still fairly small, and Google tends to take whoever meets it regardless of how many people it has already hired. It's not like they're short on cash, after all, and there was plenty of work to go around while I was there.
Anti-poaching agreements, proprietary tech stacks that are useless outside of Google, a broad prohibition on moonlighting, standardized salary bands (which actually blunt the impact of immigration on wages), and a tendency to offer non-monetary perks like free food and private Cirque du Soleil shows over more cash - those depress wages. Immigrant coworkers are not a significant concern.
Short term may be. Long term companies like Google will be forced to expand where high skill talent is, so you loose jobs and slightly long term, you run the risk of loosing the entire silicon valley. Have you seen Detroit ? Imagine San Francisco like that.
Why are people unlucky enough to be born in the wrong part of the world less entitled to "suppress wages" compared to the hordes of Americans entering the field?
everyone apart from the aboriginals should be sent back to their respect homes. The whites should be held accountable for the genocide and punished at the international criminal court.
These exploitation are far too common they are just very unreported due to fear of losing job and having to leave country in 24 hours notice.
Desi consulting shops are most to blame for. They learned tricks from big guys, it's easy to make big guys change their ways but not all these moms and pops shops.
> Cloudwick Technologies of Newark has been ordered to pay about $175,000 to 12 employees for back wages after violating H-1B rules, the U.S. Department of Labor said.
Is it $175000 in back wages per person, or total for all 12 people? The wording is a little sloppy here.
"A Northern California company that federal officials say violated salary requirements of the country’s foreign-worker visa program will pay a total of $173,044 to 12 workers, the U.S. Department of Labor said Tuesday." https://apnews.com/d4a22bf65d5f49f3b65bc4806e86e0bd
Given that's what one might have paid for only two of those workers for a year at their expected salaries, this seems woefully inadequate as a deterrent.
I doubt they would have received $80k+, maybe half, even in that area. And that's in addition to what they had already been paid. So that sounds about right for back wages.
Still, there's no deterrent here, you're correct. If they do again there may be real fines however.
I know that it is a common belief that India is 3rd world country and people would jump at any chance to get out. Not all of India is like that and not all of us are wage slaves doing menial jobs in IT. Some of us have a better quality of life, friends, family, culture and social life. Not to mention the amazing home food.
It should be pretty obvious that engineers stuck in offshore IT contracting mills are in the bottom tier. All the best Indian engineers are getting paid top dollar at companies like Google and Facebook or are doing well enough on their own in India.
Some people suggest the same when they hear I moved to Mexico.
"Wait, everyone wants to get out of Mexico though. Why would you go there? My gardener cut off his testicle to come."
These are the sort of people who most desperately need to leave the tit to meet other people in other cultures but in my experience they are the least likely to.
On the other hand, the people leaving Mexico to be taken advantage of in the States are the most desperate. Just like these Indians. So if those are the only people you hear about from Mexico or India, you don't get an accurate picture.
But most people anywhere would jump at a chance to live in another place for a couple of years even if it's ten to a room. I did that kind of shit when I was in my early 20s and don't regret it.
I know another variation involving a different company and engineers from another country. They incentivize young engineers to go and work for companies like Google on-site. Since it is an amazing experience to travel and work abroad they don't care about additional work benefits.
Okay let's run that train of thought through, because ... you are VERY wrong.
What would happen if we opened the floodgates entirely ? Let's be 100% idealistic and just assume everyone reciprocates, China and the like magically become non-dictatorships, and so forth. Rule of law in rural Madagascar magically becomes as reliable as in the central cities of Switzerland. We just equalize the labor market worldwide.
What happens ? Well wages everywhere strongly trend to the worldwide average wage, and benefits. Okay ... so what is the worldwide average ?
1480 PPP$ or 600 actual $ per month. (source: ILO) (note: I would argue there are several reasons why this is too high, for instance this isn't a real average. This is pre-tax income of employed persons, and it's the mean: 80% or so of the population actually earns less than that. Pensioners, kids, disabled ... all earn $0 in these statistics)
And, by the way, you might think, this would make it cheaper to live in those places with high-paying job, but even a cursory analysis of what happens in Delhi will quickly correct you: no it won't. Places like Melbourne would likely actually become more expensive if you open the floodgates.
WHO would this be a desirable outcome for ? Well, there's 3 groups:
1) Obviously for the people currently in high-paying places this would be an extreme negative. They would face 60-70-80% pay cut without a real reduction in living expenses.
2) For people that would immigrate to those places it would be a slight improvement, or a wash. They would, after all, not improve that much in wages, would be far away from where they want to be and have to pay much higher living expenses. (and initially it would probably be a strong negative, as an outsourced wage pays for a lot of luxury in India and doesn't even approach the poverty level in Melbourne, but that's what they'd get. And with wages like that, they wouldn't be able to leave)
3) For the people staying behind this would be a strong negative. A pretty decent portion of the market would disappear (because people drive GDP, more than any other factor), which would mean that most industries would downsize. And that's to say nothing of China's and India's outsourcing sectors. Those would be utterly devastated.
A lot of people in Silicon Valley fall in the category that would benefit from moving (after all, that's why they're there), so they think that if it were to repeat, they would once again benefit. Even if that is a correct assessment (I don't think so, many Silicon Valley positions would be fine with dont-care-about-IT seat-fillers), that is still a tiny, tiny group. The vast, vast majority of people would fall into groups 1 and 3.
I'm not sure in the US, but in the EU, frankly employer racism keeps wages up. You cannot get many jobs in the Netherlands unless you're culturally dutch. Certainly lawyer or Doctor (normal, GP) is off the table.
Now don't be confused, you can be Indonesian or South American and be strongly culturally Dutch (though there aren't many). But you can't be Polish or Algerian, for example.
This is one thing I don't entirely understand in terms of political alignment. The one side that is supposed to be about the little guy seems to support this system of immigration which leads quite directly to depressed wages and exploitation of this sort. Even in cases where the 'guest workers' are not so ridiculously underpaid, companies still exploit the fact that these workers generally have to have this job or they may be forced to leave the nation losing any hopes of gaining permanent residency or citizenship. In other words when the company tells them to jump, their only question is going to be how high - compared to an increasingly 'mobile' domestic workforce.
This is why socialist in the vast majority of the 20th century were vehemently anti-immigration, and the right was pro-immigration. Immigration destroys labor, and rewards capital. You'd think "leftists" would have a problem with that.
Or maybe it's just the pendulum swining back I guess. When democrats and republicans were young, new, parties, republicans were definitely left-wing and democrats were right-wing. Maybe it's just switching around again.
This leftist is is vehemently and resolutely against H1-B. I've posted about it many times here on HN. I feel like access to good jobs and housing are bedrock social justice issues for American workers. I've been called a racist, even though I certainly don't care where the H1-B workers come from. If it were up to me, I would literally line up the planes and send them all home.
American tech companies are basically the richest companies on the planet, and they can well afford to hire and train American workers. In light of growing income inequality, it makes me sick to think that so many of the best paying jobs in the economy go to foreign nationals.
Oh, and, as I've said many times before, non-profits, which include basically all hospitals and universities in the entire country are exempt from the annual cap.
H1-B produces terribly unjust outcome for American workers.
I don't get why anti-H1B attitudes get so consistently downvoted on HN. I mean, supposedly HN is leftist. Ostensibly people here are smart and care about the poor. How come smart people aren't able to see how this system works, when it keeps and keeps getting explained how it's exploitative ?
And yet, the words "anti" and "h1b" in the same post ? -5 karma, at least !
Free migration empowers labor in the same way that free movement of capital empowers capital; real immigration systems in capitalist regimes tend not to favor free and reciprocal movement but instead are regulated to favor domestic capital, but it's a foolish leftist that is opposed to free migration rather than migration regulated to favor capital.
OTOH, H-1B is one of the most blatantly capital-serving elements of the current US immigration[0] system.
[0] well, it's really a guest worker, not immigration, program, though it's possible for people to move into the immigration system directly from it.
That's an illusion small business owners keep putting forth. It is a well established fact in economics that free movement of capital will concentrate the capital in fewer hands.
So in reality, free movement of capital is bad for 99.99% good for 0.01%.
However, I get it, it is a very popular illusion among business owners that this is not in fact true. That they could do better if they could just put their business in more places, deploy their money and capital more flexibly.
99% of them are wrong. Of course, you wouldn't be running a business if you didn't think you could do this, I get it. But time and time again it is shown: 99% of them can't.
> That's an illusion small business owners keep putting forth.
No, it's a fact, which is why...
> It is a well established fact in economics that free movement of capital will concentrate the capital in fewer hands.
Yes, the nature of capital is such that policies which empower capital also accelerate it's concentration, whereas policies which empower labor decelerate (or even reverse) the concentration of capital.
Let's think about the power of labor for a minute. I think we can both agree that it's heavily contingent on its replaceability. When workers are difficult to replace they are naturally valued more highly. Doctors don't earn huge paychecks because there's some enormous value placed on their work, but rather because there are few doctors relative to demand and so each doctor has a very low level of replaceability. It's the same thing for jobs like athlete or actor. These workers become irreplaceable which gives them a tremendous amount of negotiating leverage.
Even unions can easily be seen in the same framework. Unions work to treat a large number of employees as a single force whose entire source of power and leverage comes from the fact that that 'single' force is less replaceable. This is also why unions in fields where workers are easily replaceable generally don't work (without some sort of third party protection or more underhanded tactics) as they are unable to sufficiently reduce their level of replaceability.
And I think we can also both agree that free migration would massively increase the replaceability of nearly all workers. I'm completely open to your idea, but I'm not seeing the logic!
The grouping of "leftists" as a singular group doesn't make sense. The economically left person might say that work visa programs are just ways for capital to cheapen labour by exploiting foreign workers who have less opportunity to not be exploited. The socially left person might say that work visa programs provide diversity and opportunity to people from less developed countries.
Similarly, an economically right person might say that work visas are necessary to make certain kinds of labour affordable for business owners. A socially right person might say that work visa programs are abhorrent because they bring foreigners into the country.
"Left" and "right" are broad tents - they're sure to contain conflicting or mutually exclusive viewpoints on some issues.
Do you have a source for your claims about political alignment and skilled foreign-worker policy? My impression was that many Democrats want green cards for those who earn advanced STEM degrees in the US, while Republican policy has recently been more protectionist/nativist.
Why not just adjust the H-1B program so that the highest paid positions get priority? That way companies could still hire abroad for in-demand skills, but it would eliminate bringing people into the country to avoid paying the prevailing wages for IT workers. You could even make exceptions for academic or medical work as needed. It seems like a common sense adjustment to the program, but I don't see many people offering this up as a solution to this problem.
That would be great, but companies would figure out ways around it. Company would pay 2X and ask employee to pay X to some random/affiliated company for training etc. They would even do this handoff in India to stay out of radar and tell you what many indians would take the deal.
The solution is "EXTREMELY" strict penalties including prison time for board of companies who indulge in it willingly.
It's easy to exploit immigrants though. Cultural differences (less likely to speak out), as well as lack of knowledge and experience of local laws, make the likelihood of legal action very low indeed.
The point of the program is to fill positions that are difficult or impossible to fill locally. To this end employers are supposed to pay a fair market wage. Underpaying foreign workers is an abuse of the program and what is making it ineffective. If they started being "overpaid" it would be an indication that the program is fulfilling its objective (proof that the employer is desperate for the candidate).
Exactly this was proposed last year in a bill with a democrat sponsor. But right now H1b is basically the only way to get hired as an immigrant. If you made it wage-prioritized there would be basically no way to get an h1b for entry level jobs, which would really suck for new graduates.
If they don't have a skill that employers are willing to pay top dollar for, then no. H-1B is designed for bringing highly skilled workers into the country. It's not a program for job security for new grads.
Experience is usually worth more than skill. It's pretty stupid to turn away smart young people who you have paid to educate in the best universities in the world.
Oh I see. I work on OPT, but am not Mexican or Canadian citizen. I think all STEM majors who studied in an American university have the right to work in US for 3 years in a job very close to what they studied.
This is not true. If you make it wage-prioritized, it will help real employers (VC funded startups as well as big companies), and make life difficult for body-shop employers like the one mentioned in this article. The body-shops are consistently the lowest-paying employers.
If you studied in a US university you don't need H1B visa for 3 years. You can work on OPT with F1 visa. However, OPT is very restricted, you job should be very close to what you studied in university and if you didn't study STEM you get only 1 year. That's how I worked in US as Software Engineer after studying Computer Science.
> But right now H1b is basically the only way to get hired as an immigrant.
No, it's not. (It's technically not even a way to be hired as an immigrant, and there are work-based immigrant visas as well.as other work-eligible non-immigrant visas.)
> If you made it wage-prioritized there would be basically no way to get an h1b for entry level jobs
That's not even theoretically the purpose of the H-1B, and I'm not really convinced we need to import entry level workers.
> which would really suck for new graduates.
I'm not sure “it would reduce the incentive for US colleges to train foreigners rather than Americans for entry-level jobs in high-demand, high-paying professions in America” is an argument against a policy change.
Also, let's not forget about TN for Canadians and Mexicans. Does not allow to immigrate but you can work w/o problems (lost too many friends to it! they moved to SF)
"The nonimmigrant NAFTA Professional (TN) visa allows citizens of Canada and Mexico, as NAFTA professionals, to work in the United States" [0]
That would result in tech workers continuing to be underpaid, just slightly less so, and other professions being complete non-starters for immigrants. Working in tech, it's easy to get myopic about H1-B issues and only see how the program affects our workplaces. But it's important to realize there are professions other than tech that get paid a lot less than even the underpaid tech H1-B visa holders. And adjusting the program to fix problems in tech can easily break it for everyone else.
But I think there is a better way to fix the program and not have the kind of collateral damage that your plan would create. It's a method that's in use in many parts of the world and it works well...ratios. Let companies hire as many DHS-cleared immigrants as they want provided they also employ the requisite number of US citizens in similar roles.
But those low paid professions should be nonstarters for immigrants. Can't hire enough nurses? If the pay floats up to React Native developer salaries, I'm sure you'll be able to.
Not to mention it would drive down wages for American jobs.
This national auction for visas would be an economic disaster, resulting in immigrants being paid much less in areas that have higher a cost-of-living.
Companies could pay immigrants less than the prevailing wage of American citizens, and lay off the citizens. Immigrants would take the jobs too because it has the added value of the visa.
Or another solution is to do away with the quota that originally caused the lottery problem to begin with, since it's now required that consultancies like Infosys prove the immigrant is working for the customer.
No, it just means that you have a set supply and the auction settles at a specific wage.
Say you limit the supply so that only immigrants being paid more than $90/k yr gets approved. Now companies start laying off American citizens getting paid more than that in high-cost-of-living areas because they can hire replacement immigrants for $98/k yr.
If you look at the purpose of the H1B program, it's not to play a numbers game with wages - it's to allow skilled labor to come to the U.S. and contribute to the economy.
40% of Fortune 500 companies are founded by immigrant families, and if you keep lowering H1B quotas to make sure Americans survive the wage auction, you're going to stagnate the economy.
You claim it's not a numbers game, but obviously a discussion if immigration quotas and wages is a pure numbers game. Let's not pretend.
We control the supply completely, which means we control the price. We can set any floor, or regional floor we want, and we can keep the existing rules in place if we want as well.
No, I claim that the purpose of the H1b program isn't to play a numbers games with wages.
The purpose is to allow new skilled labor into the U.S. so that the economy can flourish. The prevailing wage already sets the wage floor to prevent stagnation - scrapping it for a wage auction only creates more problems for American citizens working in skilled labor positions.
For the most part, your complaints are fixable by just splitting jobs into categories, and then only taking the highest paid in each category.
But honestly, I don't think that's needed except for a few areas like translators. If a company truly needs someone, they're going to be willing to pay.
> Why not just adjust the H-1B program so that the highest paid positions get priority?
Why not just eliminate the employer-sponsored H-1B and allow individuals who aren't personally barred from entry to pay for temporary residency and work permit on an annual basis, with prices that escalate with higher demand?
Salaries vary not just on individual skill and talent but also on the city of the job.
This will make all the H1 jobs go to Bay Area, may be some to NYC, LA & Boston too. But primarily Bay Area.
I've been told some of the H1Bs at the goog SJC offices mostly do make work work. Which, if true, raises the question, why do they even have them if they putt around most of the day trying to figure out what else they can do on projects in limbo.
may be unrelated but this reinforces my observation that moat successful immigrant business owners get rich by abusing their fellow countrymen who arrived to the states later, dont have paperwork in order, lack language skills, etc.
It's always companies that specialize in offshoring caught doing this. Why do these companies get H1B visas when there are companies willing to pay better that don't?
Turn H1B into an auction. Lotteries are a terrible way to allocate a scare resource.
They're also a way to reward exploitation. Why ? Because exploiters can just rapid-fire requests and therefore increase their odds massively, but companies that want specific high-performers cannot, because there aren't that many.
H1B auctions would drive wages down for American citizens.
Companies could hire immigrants for less than what the prevailing wage is of citizens working the same job in the same area - then lay off the citizens.
Then you'd drastically lower the inflow number of skilled laborers contributing to the U.S. economy - which is the opposite purpose of the H1B program.
USCIS has already cracked down on body shops - they're now required to prove that the consultant is already working for a customer, meaning they can't spam applicants and then work the one's that make it through the lottery.
This would happen if supply of workforce would be higher than the demand. Why would a company fire someone when even with immigration demand is not met?
Insufficient supply is exactly the case with skilled workforce and the reason visa programs like H1B and European BlueCard exist at all. The wage auction that will close the bodyshop loopholes will shift the supply from importing the cheap workforce to importing more skilled people and there, in the higher salary ranges, it may depress wages a bit.
But, frankly speaking, I would not care about a dev who earns $150k in some tech company in the Valley if his salary will be closer to $80-$100k because of the free market. Those money could be better invested or spent on taxes.
Insufficient local supply is why the programs exist, not international supply. If international supply was insufficient then the programs wouldn't exist.
No, limiting them to the highest bidders means they'll actually be used to bring in only the most talented and skilled. That will grow the size of the pie and the entire country wins.
What are you talking about? East Bay is part of the SF Bay Area, which is consisted of cities such as Newark (the city in this article), Union City, Fremont, etc.
Here in the Bay Area we have East Bay, South Bay, Peninsula, etc
This is fairly typical of companies that use this employer-client or employer-vendor-client (EVC) business model. In this case, the employer is Cloudwick, and the clients are "Apple, Cisco, Comcast, American Express, Bank of America, Safeway, Verizon and Visa".
It is very common for employers in the EVC model to pay well below market wages, and often withhold, or ask employees to pay back some of the money under the table, making the actual wage much lower. The employees are pretty much powerless - if they refuse, they would get fired and be forced to leave the country.
These employers often add fake projects or fake experience to their employees' resumes when offering them to a vendor or client.
There is only one solution - a massive clampdown on third-party placements on H-1B employers, as is already done on L-1 and STEM OPT employers.
“Cloudwick has never brought resources from India,” Chhabra said. “All the resources are Master’s students that have educated in U.S. and then we hired and trained them.”
This is rather slippery way to paint the picture. And from the looks of it this is more of an abuse of the F-1/OPT visas program. These visas haven't got the coverage as much as H1B program:
Unlike H-1 the F-1/OPT visas don't have any wage requirements. It rather asks employers to attest that people on F-1 are paid according to someone with similar duties.
Workers were paid $800 a month during training, he said.
The whole training thing is another sword of damocles hanging on people getting H1/F1 visas. I have heard stories about Infosys suing people for money if they leave before serving 2 years on H1 with Infosys. The route Infosys take is that company has paid for training and needs to claw back that amount from these employees.
There's an entire industry built around F-1/OPT abuse, since it's the only way to have a decent shot at getting an H-1B. Cf. the Silicon Valley University and the like.
Other visas are also abused (J-1, L-1, even O-1). It wouldn't be that hard to have a saner immigration path for skilled workers, like Canada, Australia and many European countries.
I've seen consultants in Houston enticing Masters students or spouses of H1-B holders (holding some technology degree) with H1-B promises [Masters students on F1 visa are good targets, because they can work for 12 months if their Optional Practical Training (OPT) gets approved]. A company outsources projects to these consultants, and the consultants pay these people following any schedule they like. Someone I know was hired by one of these consultants, and then she managed to get a job offer with H1-B sponsoring. The consultancy created lot of problems when she tried to quit, and threatened all sorts of repercussions.
TLDR: Overhaul H1b L1 visas. Replace work restrictions with 6yr temp Green Cards equivalent EAD (work authorization).
Here's how I think the offshoring model works with many of these companies:
1) US company wants to get rid of its aging workforce (benefits costs will be too high, due to rising insurnace costs)
2) US (IBM, Accenture, HP etc) and Indian (Infosys, TCS etc) outsourcing companies bid on a project, get trained as replacements, jobs get offshored.
3) Quality complaints and rising costs of offshoring/outsourcing makes the company end the contract, and start hiring younger employees.
4) Profit! Firing / Laying off older employees in the US companies is not easy. But taking this route, the employer gets to wash hands off from the rising costs issue.
This problem with tech workers paid low is because:
- Healthcare and Insurance is broken in the US (it works for those who are healthy and are in a company with younger workforce)
- H1b is basically a high tech indentured labor visa: If an employer is willing, the employee on H1b can be treated as such (no job mobility, no hikes, no option to even raise a voice against something going wrong). Fortunately, those on H1b visa as employees of actual companies (not outsourcing firms), they are treated much better, and it doesn't feel like indentured labor.
Solution?
Turn H1b, L1 and F1 OPT into time limited Green Card equivalents EADs:
- An international student graduating with a degree gets a 3 yr green card equivalent work authorization
- Once the student green card expires, give them a 6 yr green card (instead of an h1b). At the end of 6 yrs, if the employee has not been sponsored for an employment based permanent green card, he/she has to leave.
- No limits on the number of these green cards available.
- No H1b or L1 visa work restrictions. H1 and L1 dependents can work with a similar EAD.
How will this work?
- Giving true job mobility and freedom to switch jobs at any time, without giving the employer any hold in the immigration process, helps bump up the wages for the employees (US citizens or those on 3yr temp green card).
- Employee has no fear of job loss / retribution from employer.
- Employer has to pay at market or above market salaries. Or else employee will jump ship.
- This will automatically regulate the number of jobs that get outsourced to teams/companies that genuinely address the problem if inefficiencies, and immediately create a penalty for those companies that are body shops running on indentured labor.
- Having H1 and L1 dependents be able to work (with the new green card equivalent EAD), enables the primary visa holder to risk it and start a new venture.
About me: I came to the US on F1, worked on OPT, got H1. now sick of the US immigration system, I'm moving to Canada soon! :D
148 comments
[ 7.5 ms ] story [ 260 ms ] threadIn addition to being cheap and uncivil, it's absolutely unbelievable (but not surprising) that a foreign national here in this country as a guest of the American people thinks that it is in any way acceptable to say things like this.
You would do very well to advise yourself on the laws of the United States, which do not require ancestry from any particular place in order to qualify for citizenship. That includes people like you who also don't have any native American ancestry.
America is a sovereign country, and we the people have every right to make whatever laws we like about what qualifies someone for citizenship or entry into our country. You're not an American citizen, and you have no such rights. For example: that's why you can't vote.
One more thing: in America we have a word for people who believe someone's race disqualifies them speaking.
It starts with R.
And ends with N? /s
I am here under the same set of rules as any native born settler - which accurately describes most Americans - is. Maybe even more legally, given that immigration control is historically, a relatively recent phenomena. (At least, with respect to 'white' people. Let's not talk about the incredibly racist history of that institution.)
There's a certain oddity to having a country founded on immigration, without the consent of the native inhabitants, setting up rules for who can immigrate to it (which many Americans' ancestors would probably not have been able to meet), and then pooh-poohing someone who has met said rules for legally being here. It's a tad hypocritical.
That's an utterly fallacious argument and you know it. We're talking about current US immigration policy, not the history of the US, which no one is in a position to change. Your attempt to reframe this debate by painting all US citizens who are not the descendants of indigenous peoples as 'guests' only weakens your arguments because it is crystal clear that you're using US history as a straw man. Whether you like it or not, US citizens cannot be guests in the US, not legally nor otherwise.
Furthermore, this discussion isn't even framed around 'native' vs 'descended from people from elsewhere'. This discussion is about US citizens (people with US passports who can vote in US elections) and foreign nationals here in the US as guest workers. Start a different discussion if you want to debate the history of immigration to the US.
<< I am here under the same set of rules as any native born settler - which accurately describes most Americans - is. Maybe even more legally, given that immigration control is historically, a relatively recent phenomena. (At least, with respect to 'white' people. Let's not talk about the incredibly racist history of that institution.)
Your attempt to shift the discussion to various aspects of US history shows that you're apparently not willing to debate H1-B on its merits. As noted above, we define US citizens as people who hold US passports and who can vote in US elections. Immigration control is also not a recent phenomenon. People have been engaging in various forms of immigration control for thousands and thousands of years.
<< There's a certain oddity to having a country founded on immigration, without the consent of the native inhabitants, setting up rules for who can immigrate to it (which many Americans' ancestors would probably not have been able to meet), and then pooh-poohing someone who has met said rules for legally being here. It's a tad hypocritical.
This is talking out of both sides of your mouth. If you really believe the US was founded without the consent of the natives, then why are you here participating in a system that you describe as racist with its origins in colonization?
You either truly believe these things about the US and participate anyway (thereby nominating yourself for the hypocrisy prize) or you don't believe it, which means you're presenting baseless arguments that you don't believe.
You can't have it both ways.
I think you're missing the lede. To summarize:
1. Most Americans are settlers. They, or their ancestors, were immigrants.
2. Most of them, or their ancestors, immigrated when the rules for doing so were far more lax.
3. Some of them now seek to change the rules.
There's an argument that can be made that wage suppression is bad. Great. When I provide examples when wage suppression isn't happening, I'm told that's not the problem - apparently immigration in itself is bad (Because more people living here will suppress wages). See - points 1 and 2.
"You being here ruins it for everyone else, context be damned" is not quite discussing H1B on its merits - especially when that's an argument made by a fellow settler.
Yes, there are companies that abuse visas and pay low wages etc. Why not focus on improving enforcement rather than rant about immigrants?
If American companies earn money from the rest of the world, is it really that unfair that they hire a small percent of international people to work at their company?
1) https://www.immihelp.com/employer/APPLE+INC/205136/applicati...
2) https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/02/apple-reports-first-q...
Apple also has hundreds of contractors employed by Tata, Infosys etc on H-1B's, in Apple's internal IT department ("IS&T"). These people are paid less than the 9% of people above, and would not count towards Apple's own H-1B numbers.
H1-B (and immigration in general) is not only a fairly hot political topic, but also one where there an immense number of massive corporations that benefit substantially from the system. There have been an large number of reports, including government reports during the former administration, indicating a substantial depression of wages due to H1-B visas. [2] I hate to cite Wiki, but really - there are a ton of reports there and me giving dozens of links in this post is less reasonable than just linking Wiki there.
So on this issue, your phrasing is already hinting at some angling and I'm not sure you even realize it! In the US there are a huge number of STEM educated individuals who are not working in STEM. Certainly many of them are doing so voluntarily, but it's equally certain many of them are doing so involuntary. Filling these jobs domestically would of course create at least as many jobs, but on top of those created jobs it would also allow citizens to also occupy the 'creating' jobs, all without the wage depression of H1-Bs.
[1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/26/new-s...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Wage_depression
The supply of engineers that can pass Google's slightly ridiculous hiring bar is still fairly small, and Google tends to take whoever meets it regardless of how many people it has already hired. It's not like they're short on cash, after all, and there was plenty of work to go around while I was there.
Anti-poaching agreements, proprietary tech stacks that are useless outside of Google, a broad prohibition on moonlighting, standardized salary bands (which actually blunt the impact of immigration on wages), and a tendency to offer non-monetary perks like free food and private Cirque du Soleil shows over more cash - those depress wages. Immigrant coworkers are not a significant concern.
The real fix, which is incredibly unpopular in certain circles, is a labor union
If you actually want to talk about wage suppression, lets focus on the low wage jobs first, shall we?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Desi consulting shops are most to blame for. They learned tricks from big guys, it's easy to make big guys change their ways but not all these moms and pops shops.
Is it $175000 in back wages per person, or total for all 12 people? The wording is a little sloppy here.
Given that's what one might have paid for only two of those workers for a year at their expected salaries, this seems woefully inadequate as a deterrent.
Still, there's no deterrent here, you're correct. If they do again there may be real fines however.
1. Bank outsources to vendor. Typically IBM. “It’ll be cheaper!”
2. IBM is, initially, cheaper - because all of their staff are in India of course.
3. But they can’t do the job from India because they need to be here talking to their colleagues at the bank.
4. So they get flown to Melbourne, but still on Indian wages, where the poor souls live ten to an apartment because they can’t afford anything else.
5. The bank has now saved money by “offshoring” despite the workers actually being here in Australia.
It’s a disgrace and I have no idea why it isn’t in the news.
"Wait, everyone wants to get out of Mexico though. Why would you go there? My gardener cut off his testicle to come."
These are the sort of people who most desperately need to leave the tit to meet other people in other cultures but in my experience they are the least likely to.
On the other hand, the people leaving Mexico to be taken advantage of in the States are the most desperate. Just like these Indians. So if those are the only people you hear about from Mexico or India, you don't get an accurate picture.
Workers have a better shot at demanding a fair wage if they didn't have to face deportation if they spoke up.
What would happen if we opened the floodgates entirely ? Let's be 100% idealistic and just assume everyone reciprocates, China and the like magically become non-dictatorships, and so forth. Rule of law in rural Madagascar magically becomes as reliable as in the central cities of Switzerland. We just equalize the labor market worldwide.
What happens ? Well wages everywhere strongly trend to the worldwide average wage, and benefits. Okay ... so what is the worldwide average ?
1480 PPP$ or 600 actual $ per month. (source: ILO) (note: I would argue there are several reasons why this is too high, for instance this isn't a real average. This is pre-tax income of employed persons, and it's the mean: 80% or so of the population actually earns less than that. Pensioners, kids, disabled ... all earn $0 in these statistics)
And, by the way, you might think, this would make it cheaper to live in those places with high-paying job, but even a cursory analysis of what happens in Delhi will quickly correct you: no it won't. Places like Melbourne would likely actually become more expensive if you open the floodgates.
WHO would this be a desirable outcome for ? Well, there's 3 groups:
1) Obviously for the people currently in high-paying places this would be an extreme negative. They would face 60-70-80% pay cut without a real reduction in living expenses.
2) For people that would immigrate to those places it would be a slight improvement, or a wash. They would, after all, not improve that much in wages, would be far away from where they want to be and have to pay much higher living expenses. (and initially it would probably be a strong negative, as an outsourced wage pays for a lot of luxury in India and doesn't even approach the poverty level in Melbourne, but that's what they'd get. And with wages like that, they wouldn't be able to leave)
3) For the people staying behind this would be a strong negative. A pretty decent portion of the market would disappear (because people drive GDP, more than any other factor), which would mean that most industries would downsize. And that's to say nothing of China's and India's outsourcing sectors. Those would be utterly devastated.
A lot of people in Silicon Valley fall in the category that would benefit from moving (after all, that's why they're there), so they think that if it were to repeat, they would once again benefit. Even if that is a correct assessment (I don't think so, many Silicon Valley positions would be fine with dont-care-about-IT seat-fillers), that is still a tiny, tiny group. The vast, vast majority of people would fall into groups 1 and 3.
Like wages in the US are all equal to the national average? Like wages in the EU are all equal to the EU average?
Now don't be confused, you can be Indonesian or South American and be strongly culturally Dutch (though there aren't many). But you can't be Polish or Algerian, for example.
Or maybe it's just the pendulum swining back I guess. When democrats and republicans were young, new, parties, republicans were definitely left-wing and democrats were right-wing. Maybe it's just switching around again.
American tech companies are basically the richest companies on the planet, and they can well afford to hire and train American workers. In light of growing income inequality, it makes me sick to think that so many of the best paying jobs in the economy go to foreign nationals.
Oh, and, as I've said many times before, non-profits, which include basically all hospitals and universities in the entire country are exempt from the annual cap.
H1-B produces terribly unjust outcome for American workers.
And yet, the words "anti" and "h1b" in the same post ? -5 karma, at least !
Free migration empowers labor in the same way that free movement of capital empowers capital; real immigration systems in capitalist regimes tend not to favor free and reciprocal movement but instead are regulated to favor domestic capital, but it's a foolish leftist that is opposed to free migration rather than migration regulated to favor capital.
OTOH, H-1B is one of the most blatantly capital-serving elements of the current US immigration[0] system.
[0] well, it's really a guest worker, not immigration, program, though it's possible for people to move into the immigration system directly from it.
So in reality, free movement of capital is bad for 99.99% good for 0.01%.
However, I get it, it is a very popular illusion among business owners that this is not in fact true. That they could do better if they could just put their business in more places, deploy their money and capital more flexibly.
99% of them are wrong. Of course, you wouldn't be running a business if you didn't think you could do this, I get it. But time and time again it is shown: 99% of them can't.
No, it's a fact, which is why...
> It is a well established fact in economics that free movement of capital will concentrate the capital in fewer hands.
Yes, the nature of capital is such that policies which empower capital also accelerate it's concentration, whereas policies which empower labor decelerate (or even reverse) the concentration of capital.
Let's think about the power of labor for a minute. I think we can both agree that it's heavily contingent on its replaceability. When workers are difficult to replace they are naturally valued more highly. Doctors don't earn huge paychecks because there's some enormous value placed on their work, but rather because there are few doctors relative to demand and so each doctor has a very low level of replaceability. It's the same thing for jobs like athlete or actor. These workers become irreplaceable which gives them a tremendous amount of negotiating leverage.
Even unions can easily be seen in the same framework. Unions work to treat a large number of employees as a single force whose entire source of power and leverage comes from the fact that that 'single' force is less replaceable. This is also why unions in fields where workers are easily replaceable generally don't work (without some sort of third party protection or more underhanded tactics) as they are unable to sufficiently reduce their level of replaceability.
And I think we can also both agree that free migration would massively increase the replaceability of nearly all workers. I'm completely open to your idea, but I'm not seeing the logic!
Similarly, an economically right person might say that work visas are necessary to make certain kinds of labour affordable for business owners. A socially right person might say that work visa programs are abhorrent because they bring foreigners into the country.
"Left" and "right" are broad tents - they're sure to contain conflicting or mutually exclusive viewpoints on some issues.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3096103/it-careers/the...
The solution is "EXTREMELY" strict penalties including prison time for board of companies who indulge in it willingly.
http://alexyar.tumblr.com/post/156649015342/anyway-heres-the...
(Canadian here btw).
"The nonimmigrant NAFTA Professional (TN) visa allows citizens of Canada and Mexico, as NAFTA professionals, to work in the United States"[0]
[0] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/employme...
No, it's not. (It's technically not even a way to be hired as an immigrant, and there are work-based immigrant visas as well.as other work-eligible non-immigrant visas.)
> If you made it wage-prioritized there would be basically no way to get an h1b for entry level jobs
That's not even theoretically the purpose of the H-1B, and I'm not really convinced we need to import entry level workers.
> which would really suck for new graduates.
I'm not sure “it would reduce the incentive for US colleges to train foreigners rather than Americans for entry-level jobs in high-demand, high-paying professions in America” is an argument against a policy change.
"The nonimmigrant NAFTA Professional (TN) visa allows citizens of Canada and Mexico, as NAFTA professionals, to work in the United States" [0]
[0] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/employme...
But I think there is a better way to fix the program and not have the kind of collateral damage that your plan would create. It's a method that's in use in many parts of the world and it works well...ratios. Let companies hire as many DHS-cleared immigrants as they want provided they also employ the requisite number of US citizens in similar roles.
This national auction for visas would be an economic disaster, resulting in immigrants being paid much less in areas that have higher a cost-of-living.
Companies could pay immigrants less than the prevailing wage of American citizens, and lay off the citizens. Immigrants would take the jobs too because it has the added value of the visa.
There are a fixed number of slots in the program. Requiring the highest paid employees take those slots would mean immigrant labor would be costlier.
Say you limit the supply so that only immigrants being paid more than $90/k yr gets approved. Now companies start laying off American citizens getting paid more than that in high-cost-of-living areas because they can hire replacement immigrants for $98/k yr.
If you look at the purpose of the H1B program, it's not to play a numbers game with wages - it's to allow skilled labor to come to the U.S. and contribute to the economy.
40% of Fortune 500 companies are founded by immigrant families, and if you keep lowering H1B quotas to make sure Americans survive the wage auction, you're going to stagnate the economy.
We control the supply completely, which means we control the price. We can set any floor, or regional floor we want, and we can keep the existing rules in place if we want as well.
The purpose is to allow new skilled labor into the U.S. so that the economy can flourish. The prevailing wage already sets the wage floor to prevent stagnation - scrapping it for a wage auction only creates more problems for American citizens working in skilled labor positions.
But honestly, I don't think that's needed except for a few areas like translators. If a company truly needs someone, they're going to be willing to pay.
Why not just eliminate the employer-sponsored H-1B and allow individuals who aren't personally barred from entry to pay for temporary residency and work permit on an annual basis, with prices that escalate with higher demand?
How could a company in Ohio compete?
Would have to adjust to living expenses of the location. But, as far a I know, H1B visas aren't tied to a location.
Turn H1B into an auction. Lotteries are a terrible way to allocate a scare resource.
Companies could hire immigrants for less than what the prevailing wage is of citizens working the same job in the same area - then lay off the citizens.
And you're kind of overlooking that the program is already heavily used for what you're afraid of.
But, frankly speaking, I would not care about a dev who earns $150k in some tech company in the Valley if his salary will be closer to $80-$100k because of the free market. Those money could be better invested or spent on taxes.
Resume the brain drain.
Here's the content:
A dozen Indian workers at an East Bay technology firm were promised salaries of up to $8,300
Cloudwick Technologies of Newark has been ordered to pay about
Seriously, what is this East Bay area? Google turns up nothing.
Edit: Thank for pointing out my mistake. Looks like my understanding of US geography isn't that great.
Here in the Bay Area we have East Bay, South Bay, Peninsula, etc
It is very common for employers in the EVC model to pay well below market wages, and often withhold, or ask employees to pay back some of the money under the table, making the actual wage much lower. The employees are pretty much powerless - if they refuse, they would get fired and be forced to leave the country.
These employers often add fake projects or fake experience to their employees' resumes when offering them to a vendor or client.
There is only one solution - a massive clampdown on third-party placements on H-1B employers, as is already done on L-1 and STEM OPT employers.
This is rather slippery way to paint the picture. And from the looks of it this is more of an abuse of the F-1/OPT visas program. These visas haven't got the coverage as much as H1B program:
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2495580/it-careers/for...
Unlike H-1 the F-1/OPT visas don't have any wage requirements. It rather asks employers to attest that people on F-1 are paid according to someone with similar duties.
Workers were paid $800 a month during training, he said.
The whole training thing is another sword of damocles hanging on people getting H1/F1 visas. I have heard stories about Infosys suing people for money if they leave before serving 2 years on H1 with Infosys. The route Infosys take is that company has paid for training and needs to claw back that amount from these employees.
Other visas are also abused (J-1, L-1, even O-1). It wouldn't be that hard to have a saner immigration path for skilled workers, like Canada, Australia and many European countries.
Here's how I think the offshoring model works with many of these companies:
1) US company wants to get rid of its aging workforce (benefits costs will be too high, due to rising insurnace costs) 2) US (IBM, Accenture, HP etc) and Indian (Infosys, TCS etc) outsourcing companies bid on a project, get trained as replacements, jobs get offshored. 3) Quality complaints and rising costs of offshoring/outsourcing makes the company end the contract, and start hiring younger employees. 4) Profit! Firing / Laying off older employees in the US companies is not easy. But taking this route, the employer gets to wash hands off from the rising costs issue.
This problem with tech workers paid low is because: - Healthcare and Insurance is broken in the US (it works for those who are healthy and are in a company with younger workforce) - H1b is basically a high tech indentured labor visa: If an employer is willing, the employee on H1b can be treated as such (no job mobility, no hikes, no option to even raise a voice against something going wrong). Fortunately, those on H1b visa as employees of actual companies (not outsourcing firms), they are treated much better, and it doesn't feel like indentured labor.
Solution? Turn H1b, L1 and F1 OPT into time limited Green Card equivalents EADs: - An international student graduating with a degree gets a 3 yr green card equivalent work authorization - Once the student green card expires, give them a 6 yr green card (instead of an h1b). At the end of 6 yrs, if the employee has not been sponsored for an employment based permanent green card, he/she has to leave. - No limits on the number of these green cards available. - No H1b or L1 visa work restrictions. H1 and L1 dependents can work with a similar EAD.
How will this work? - Giving true job mobility and freedom to switch jobs at any time, without giving the employer any hold in the immigration process, helps bump up the wages for the employees (US citizens or those on 3yr temp green card). - Employee has no fear of job loss / retribution from employer. - Employer has to pay at market or above market salaries. Or else employee will jump ship. - This will automatically regulate the number of jobs that get outsourced to teams/companies that genuinely address the problem if inefficiencies, and immediately create a penalty for those companies that are body shops running on indentured labor. - Having H1 and L1 dependents be able to work (with the new green card equivalent EAD), enables the primary visa holder to risk it and start a new venture.
About me: I came to the US on F1, worked on OPT, got H1. now sick of the US immigration system, I'm moving to Canada soon! :D