The only thing they need to address regarding H-1B visas, and L-1A/B visas for that matter, is the absence of employer caps.
There is a big difference between the startup co-founder and the foreign talent recruited by FAANG companies, and the crap IT consultancy companies pull all the time.
Not if the cap is tied to total employee. A shell company with 100 registered employees can't sponsor more than 10 people for example.
They can't get around this as there are tax records of who being paid by whom. This would force company to hire American, reduce fraud, and still being favorable to the big boys paying the lobbying fees. Win win for all who matters (not specifically the regular folks, if they do, it is accidental...)
Why would it force employers to hire Americans if it's tied to total employees? 90 offshore and 10 H1-B employees is still only 10% H1-B.
The entire premise of the H1-B program is when there is a shortage of qualified/available domestic labor. Turning around and tying hiring in the program to having 9x as many domestic employees seems like it's so counter to that notion that not even the government would create such an inanely contradictory policy.
I thought there was something like that already (although much softer), if a company is deemed H1B dependent any additional application for an H1B becomes harder.
There's a lot more than that they need to address. Fake job listings with rock bottom salaries so they can claim they can't find US workers, paying H1B people far below market value, job-shopping in personal networks when someone loses an H1B job (favor trading to get a "job" while they find another real job to keep their H1B status) are all huge issues. Another issue is employers using H2B status against employees to extract unpaid labor, lower wages, and unethical behavior or else they'll be fired and reported instantly.
> H-1B salaries are public [0], so it is easy to debunk this.
> The minimum prevailing wage for the area and location is in place for this very reason.
Unfortunately wage fraud and theft are real things that happen. You don't have to believe me, you can find buckets of H1B holders who will verify this. I've seen it myself, I've been in IT for 30 years and seen personally, many times, everything I listed in my comment.
A business depending on foreign labor while offering subpar salaries so no domestic employee wants to work for them is the perfect example of abusing the skilled visa system. If the change makes them unable to compete then great, that's a bonus.
They should pay market rates and what stack ranking by salary does is set a market rate for H1B labor. H1B shouldn't be used to get cheaper labor based on your chances with a lottery.
That's the point - non tech/silicon valley have a lower demonstrable need (salary) and should be able to find indigenous talent by paying appropriately. A COL adjustment wouldn't be an unreasonable modification though.
Salaries reflect the ability to capture value, not need or value to the society. There are plenty of highly-paid jobs with effectively zero or even negative net contribution to the society.
>Salaries reflect the ability to capture value, not need or value to the society. There are plenty of highly-paid jobs with effectively zero or even negative net contribution to the society.
Politely, society disagrees with your views on what contributes (see: the high salaries).
There are positive-sum, zero-sum, and negative-sum games. Some people (such as scammers) make the society unambigously worse, but they often still get paid for doing their job.
Then there is the question of externalities. People working in fields with positive externalities tend to be underpaid, if there are no sufficient mechanisms that allow their employers to capture the value they create. Similarly, people working in fields with negative externalities tend to be overpaid.
As a holder of work permit in Europe reading about H1B is bizarre. For me to get a work permit it took company founders to write a motivational letter (tldr, we work in tech, we need this dude), put an indication of salary being above certain fixed threshold (something something above median salary, revised yearly) and it was done in a few weeks. No lottery, no quotas, I can change employers whatever amount of times I want, I didn’t have to show academic credentials or answer binary tree interview questions from border agents.
Why is US so complicated for no reason? It’s not like it even makes a difference in the end, it’s just needless friction .
The current US Immigration system wasn't designed. It accidentally came together from a patchwork of individual programs and various bills modifying the rules.
There is political disagreement over what a new system should look like so there has never been enough agreement to completely overhaul the rules.
As per [1]: "29 000 highly qualified non-EU workers received an EU Blue Card in 2021, giving them comprehensive socio-economic rights and a residence in the EU." it's unclear how many applied but if the process is as easy as you described it could not be much more, say 50K is a fair estimate?
As per [2]: "USCIS announced that the agency received a total of 308,613 H-1B cap registrations, of which USCIS issued 87,500 registration selections in March 2021."
If the EU system was as oversubscribed as the US it would have the same problems.
It isn't really a fair comparison. Netherlands alone gave out 30k Knowledge Migrant permits last year, they just don't fall under Blue Card schema (which is mostly Germany). Notice the almost 100% rate of requested/granted in the chart [1]. That's also the same year the service had to grant refugee status to Ukrainians.
Then again, total amount of immigration permits per year is 7 in US vs 2.5 for the whole EU, so maybe you have a point.
Whatever you have is not a Netherlands work permit though because[1]:
"Change of employer or job
The residence permit is valid as long as you meet the requirements. This can also be the case if you
change employers or job. If you no longer work for your employer, or change jobs as a result of which
you no longer meet the rules for which the residence permit was issued, then your employer must notify
the IND of this. If you have found another job as a highly skilled migrant, your new employer must notify
the IND of this within 4 weeks. The IND will then check if the requirements are still met."
Also this has much more requirements on issue than you described and the 30K number likely includes the changes described above, as well as extensions.
This is so self-centered it is borderline ignorance. First, people on H1B already have to prove they are being paid above the average market. They can't hire a senior engineer for 50k a year for example.
Second, not all industry has high profit margins like software. Places like biotech or semiconductor can't afford 250K for a single worker, no matter how senior they are except in special circumstances. And these fields are just as critical and important as coding. In fact, one may argue that healthcare and chipmaking capacity are more critical to the country than someone writing the next iteration of Microsoft Word.
Third, if H1B is given based purely on salary, then company won't bother with H1B anymore. Imagine what happen if suddenly half the company on market no longer care about having a H1B program. Some politician will start trying to abolish it all together. Xenophobia and "they took our high paying jobs" and "those snobs foreigners get paid how much while American get paid how much?" are easy to sell.
Just a terrible hot take. Try to think broader than just your situation.
>people on H1B already have to prove they are being paid above the average market. They can't hire a senior engineer for 50k a year for example.
Companies that hire H1B's often 'downrank' employees to roles they are overqualified for in order to reduce salary requirements.
>Second, not all industry has high profit margins like software. Places like biotech or semiconductor can't afford 250K for a single worker,
If the industry cannot afford it, perhaps they shouldn't hire H1bs? How else, other than compensation, would you decide who provides the most economic value?
>Third, if H1B is given based purely on salary, then company won't bother with H1B anymore. Imagine what happen if suddenly half the company on market no longer care about having a H1B program.
A country's laws exist for the benefit of it's CITIZENS. I personally believe that the US H1B program is exploitative and should be ended, and our legal immigration system should be reformed. You need a worker? They get a green card, and can go to any company they please. That worker should also be automatically eligible for citizenship after ~ 5 years of paying taxes and staying out of trouble.
Nope, I'm saying that we should reform our immigration system so that isn't the case. You really need a foreign employee? Alright, but you have to pay a premium, and that employee is free to go anywhere else they like if they don't feel they're treated well. That would end the semi indentured servitude I've seen from h1b coworkers who were desperate to keep their job least they be deported.
I have read about title inflation but I do not know about title deflation. I afraid you need to provide proof for your claim before I take it seriously. I do hear entry positions requiring a few years of experience, but often that is just a way to promote an internal hire, like a contractor or an intern.
How do you define economic value? By money only is a bad metric. Take pharma for example. The top 5 biggest pharma companies combined can't equal the same market cap or liquidity of 1 Apple (1.9T vs 2.5T). Now think about the societal impact. If you have to live in a place without drugs (those 5 pharma produce almost all the lifesaving drugs in the US) and a place without Apple products, where would you go?
I can go into the reasons why Apple is 2.5T and the pharmas is fraction of that, but that would be too long. It is simply the economy of scale, cost of manufacturing, and legal regulations. The cost of doing business results in lower salary for the end workers but it doesn't mean the industry is "lower value".
If we wish to import immigrants based on 'social impact' their are other avenues to bring in extraordinary individuals. We don't seem to have any problem acquiring the best Olympic athletes or artists, or actors.
More broadly, I disagree with our entire legal immigration system. It would be far better for us to have a points based system like Canada to bring in the very best and brightest and quickly integrate them into our system. Until then, I stand in pretty firm opposition to the H1B as it stands today.
> First, people on H1B already have to prove they are being paid above the average market.
Why should a software dev in SF being paid 150k$ be considered as good a candidate compared to one being paid 400k$? Why do you call it a "high-skilled" visa, and then argue for the bar to be "average"
> Second, not all industry has high profit margins like software
If they cannot pay enough, maybe they should not be hiring international workers citing a shortage.
> Third, if H1B is given based purely on salary, then company won't bother with H1B anymore.
So, is there no shortage of tech workers? Certainly international MIT PhDs will still be in demand?
Because it is not high skilled? That is EB visa? The fact that it is paid at least the average wage for the occupation means you need more proof to claim there is wage repression?
Please read what I wrote. They are required by law to pay above average salary for the occupation they are hiring. Not all industry has the profitability of big tech. Unless you are arguing a software dev job is somehow more skilled than a semiconductor engineer or a biopharma scientist, you have no argument here.
And which visa they are going to be hired for? EB visa? Which take 2-3 years to vet? Which company will wait a year to fill a position instead of just scaling down? If you take down the H1B, there will be shortages and reduced productivity. If you need proof, just check how many of your coworkers are on H1B.
EB are immigraiton visas, that is green card visas. Unless you imagine that people just file EB visas to come work in the USA. Clearly you have zero idea of what work visas people get.
Also, just do a google search, "high-skilled professional visas" without doubt refer to H1B
> Unless you are arguing a software dev job is somehow more skilled than a semiconductor engineer or a biopharma scientist, you have no argument here.
Maybe they should be paid better. Also, I argue that being a nanny or a janitor requires skill too, much more in fact than writing a dumb CRUD app. If software industry having high margins is the problem, maybe that is a separate problem solved with anti trust actions.
> And which visa they are going to be hired for? EB visa? Which take 2-3 years to vet? Which company will wait a year to fill a position instead of just scaling down? If you take down the H1B, there will be shortages and reduced productivity. If you need proof, just check how many of your coworkers are on H1B.
As someone on H1B seeing rampant "fraud" and a mere 14% approval rate, seeing friends with PhDs not getting lotteries while people with fake job offers by "consultancies" get it, I am not asking to end the H1B. I am asking it to be actually for "high skilled" labor.
I argue a bachelor degree isn't high skilled. It is merely "skilled" nowadays, especially in the occupations we are discussing. Here is H1B requirements from USCIS:
For you to qualify to perform services in a specialty occupation you must meet one of the following criteria:
Hold a U.S. bachelor’s or higher degree required by the specialty occupation from an accredited college or university
Hold a foreign degree that is the equivalent to a U.S. bachelor’s or higher degree required by the specialty occupation from an accredited college or university
But I understand if you call a janitor a "skilled" job then a bachelor degree is indeed "high skilled" from your point of view. Regardless, I do not think anywhere is hiring H1B to do janitor work. An engineer or a scientist with just a bachelor degree is never "high skilled" in my field of work.
>Maybe they should be paid better.
The reasons a semiconductor engineer or a biotech scientist don't get paid higher has nothing to do with how big the company they are in. The nature of software means it is inherently more profitable (low manufacturing cost, less legal regulations, more location flexibility, etc). Those result in the workers get paid more of the profit share. A biotech company with 200M funding and 5 years is barely enough to test 1 pharma product just to have the FDA deny it in the 6th year. You can get 5 guys in a garage to churn out a multimillion dollar software product in 6 months. It is not comparable.
My whole argument is this: Granting visa based on salary is a bad take and unfairly prioritize one type of industry over everything else.
Lets look at the top semiconductor and biotech companies.
* NVidia: $10B in net income 2022. Gross margins 70%. CEO comp $22m
* J&J: $18B in net income 2022. Gross margins 68%. CEO comp $13m
* Pfizer: $31B in net income 2022. Gross margins 75% CEO comp $30m
* Qualcom: $13b in net income 2022. Gross margins 55%. CEO comp $5m
* TI: $9b in net income 2022. Gross margins 65%. CEO comp $22m
Also H1Bs are being paid above market rates. That isn't true. The data is searchable. Look at Tata for a software developer in Austin. I see 20+ developers making less the $80k(Average according to glassdoor) with most making in the $60k range which i would argue is below entry level.
Your example is a consultancy. Not really a good example. Most likely they are already skirting the law in the first place.
Gross margin is a bad metrics. It doesn't cover overhead costs or R&D. Take for example J&J whose net profit margin is 13% while Apple is 24%. Or abbvie is also 13% vs Msft 34%.
Also why did you not put in the net income for those big 3 tech companies in the bottom?
There are provisions in place to make sure employers are paying their workers the prevailing wage and not replacing American workers. However, a giant loophole makes companies paying $60,000 and above per employee – or hiring employees with master's degrees – exempt from this rule. An author of the 1990 Act that created the H-1B program, Bruce Morrison, told The Atlantic it was "a dastardly deed," and he blamed lobbyists for the caveat. The caveat is greatly relevant since more than half the approved petitions in 2014 had master's degrees or higher making it perfectly legal for them to be paid less than an American worker they were replacing.
Then they don't get H1-B workers. If they were that critical and in low supply in the US they could pay more. The lottery that favors consulting companies has made the H1-B program ridiculous hard for great folks and it isn't bringing in the quality talent that we should be inviting to the country.
While that can obviously happen, here are a few more thoughts
1. Most grad students are also Indians, and the OPT (->STEM) -> H1B is a common path to employment based visas. And US universities are not unreasonably favoring Indians.
2. A lot of Indians are stuck in H1B status, because of the discriminatory and racist country cap. People stuck in H1B for 10+ years as of now, and potentially multi-decades wait in the future, while other countries get green card right away.
3. India does have many good schools, a focus on engineering, a huge population, and not so many good local opportunities.
And at the end of it all, instead of blaming all Indians (do I represent my country when I attempt to immigrate, or am I an individual trying to not live in that damn country?), maybe USA should actually value high skill labor. Handing off a high skilled labor visa by lottery is a joke, instead it should be called a high-luck visa.
What's funny is nobody said India, and here you go talking about India.
I don't know why you deny Indian racial discrimination. There's a huge problem with Indian's discriminating. Not only discrimination against non-Indians, discrimination based on caste/skin color of other Indians.
It's a huge problem. I've seen it run rampant in every single IT Department or tech firm I've worked at which leverage offshore & H-1B employees.
I am Indian, and Indians often get attacked for 70% H1b going to India. I am tired of it. I do not represent the Indian govt when I try to find job in USA.
Wait if 70% of H1Bs go to Indians, isn’t it even more suspicious that the team i’m talking about in America couldn’t find one Indian or American to hire?
Whats funny is Americans are so adamant that their standards of living have been dropping for 30 years, but then support unfettered immigration. The immigration does boost the economy and leads to technical innovation, but there is a real cost to the standard of living. Also discrimination against Americans in H1B heavy companies is rampant.
Theres no labor shortage, companies have been reaping record profits and not paying it out to employees. Thats why the standard of living is dropping. Its basic economics
1. Rent-seekers are sucking up all the productive surplus out of the economy, raising the cost of a lot of things.
2. People doing work vital for society got raises, which was made possible by bargaining power that they gained from low unemployment. This, naturally, results in higher prices for anything that their labour produces.
3. Shortages.
None of these are the fault of the immigrant boogieman.
they have to create a shortage in order to get H1b labor. So they refuse to negotiate on salary and complain to their lawmakers that they had these openings posted for X months and only filled Y% of them! we just can't find talent!
Immigration is not what is killing standards of living. Do you have any proof of discrimination against Americans in H1B heavy companies? I am pretty skeptical given the lottery nature of HB1 and the number of racist politicians who would love to amplify this narrative if even with dubious evidence of such discrimination
I have worked at multiple FAANGs. Organizations at both Facebook and Amazon end up hiring and promoting the same group of people immigrating from the same country. Teams of 50+ consolidate around ethnic background. Its completely absurd for anyone to argue this isnt going on
And yet you provide no proof of immigration status, just racism. The very idea that an immigrant could be a permanent resident, or gasp as citizen nowhere in your brain.
Goddamn foreigners. Coming over here and taking jobs you ain’t qualify to do.
This is why having amy sort of coherent conversation about immigration is totally fruitless- people like you just want to call people racist. Nice job.
Sorry, but the vast majority of Americans do not work in industries that are impacted by H1B, and changes to these programs have no material impact on their fortunes.
Millions just walk over the border, they either get across without our knowledge or we give them a cell phone and a court date a few years in the future before we then release them into the interior. Seems pretty unfettered.
Unfettered would look like in the 19th century: arrive on a boat, spend a few hours on Ellis Island for a basic medical check and review of your paperwork with answers to 29 questions, start your new life.
we give them a cell phone and a court date a few years in the future before we then release them into the interior.
this is absolutely false.
When migrants who either walk or sneak across the border are apprehended, Border Patrol agents take them to facilities for processing, which includes a health screening and a criminal background check...
A recent inspector general report on an El Paso, Texas, processing center found that up to 900 people were crammed into a space meant for less than 200. Some people were standing on toilets, and many said they had been there for weeks.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is monitoring nearly a quarter of a million migrants in a program using GPS ankle monitors, phones or an app known as SmartLINK, according to the agency’s latest statistics. The Biden administration has rapidly grown the number of people in this program, known as “alternatives to detention,” or ATD.
H1B is a technically a non-immigrant visa. H1B recipients, given many many constraints, have the ability to petition to become immigrants.
The most accessible pathway for arriving in the US as an immigrant (green card) is family based migration. The only pathway for that which isn't backlogged is for those who are the spouse, non-adult child, or parent of a US citizen. Every other category has long wait times. It's hard to call anybody in this category "unfettered" as there are financial support requirements for petitioners.
Getting to the USA on a H1B is far quicker than on an immigrant visa, even for direct family members of US citizens. It takes almost 2 years if there's no flags whatsoever in your case, and flags can things as random as "works with chemicals" or "is a doctor from X state". There is one exception which is international adoption which for some reason every part of the immigrant visa wheel seems to be on full speed for.
(source: personal experience with immigrant visa system)
This is a huge step forward. The issue of "immigration" is much more important than just building a wall or undocumented / illegal workers, yet those are the apparently the only topics routinely covered by the media.
I spent 2 years on an F-1 visa, 1 year on OPT after that, 6 years on an H-1B working 12+ hours a day in a high paying job that few Americans consider doing. I delivered real value to clients, trained, managed and interviewed juniors, busted my ass effectively 24/7...
In the wake of a "challenging market environment", I was one of 3,000+ laid off... only a few months before my green card arrived. I had never received a bad year-end review package. Apparently the firm 'forgot to check' my immigration status before making the decision.
I have easily paid more than $1 million in taxes to Uncle Sam over the past decade. Yet I can't stay in the country unless I get some other visa.
I can't get an H-1B because I've maxed out on the 6 years I'm allowed to stay. Which makes no sense, since the longer I've been here, the more experienced I am and the more I can contributed to the economy.
I can't start my own company because there are no "real" work visas besides the H-1B, and all work visas require an "employer-employee" relationship, as TFA alludes to.
I can't get a green card because that process would only allow me to start working about 24 months after pressing go.
I can't marry an American because that's not a real solution and, most importantly, I'm already married.
My choices are investing $800k in some shady project for a 0% return over 5 years to get an investor visa or going back to school for another F-1 visa that doesn't allow me to work.
For a country founded by pilgrims and built in large part with the sweat and blood of immigrants, this situation feels unreal.
Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
I've heard heard many different versions of your story over the years of working in this industry. I'm firmly convinced that the h1b system is exploitative to the workers who use it. IMHO we should do away with it in favor of simply granting green cards (and later citizenship) to people who wish to come here based on a strict points based system like Canada. Sadly, our government is so captured and dysfunctional I doubt that will happen.
>Nobel economist Milton Friedman scoffs at the idea of the government stocking a farm system for the likes of Microsoft and Intel. "There is no doubt," he says, "that the [H-1B] program is a benefit to their employers, enabling them to get workers at a lower wage, and to that extent, it is a subsidy."
Most H1-B are paid around %10 percent less than citizens.
In such a hard hit tech market to keep it going is kinda ridiculous.
It's understandable if there are no applicants for jobs. But when there are 100+ applicants per position. It's a bit ridiculous to compete with non-nationals.
Also here are some real solutions to the H-1B program so I'm not accused of just sharing a sob story:
1. Offer a credible path to permanent residency: employers can pay less to H-1B visa holders because they know those employees have no real way out of the system. If H-1Bs could self-sponsor merit-based green card applications after, say, 2 years on the job, the market would naturally solve the wage gap. My employers delayed my green card application until the very last minute so that I would never consider quitting for a better, non H-1B job.
2. Minimum salary threshold: avoids blatant misuse of the program by companies that are effectively "offshoring" semi-unskilled labor to immigrants.
3. No lottery, unlimited applications: increasing the cap can be balanced by the minimum salary threshold.
4. Self-sponsorship for entrepreneurs: let me start a company in the US and give me, I don't know, 2 years to show some threshold of revenue, scale or profitability. If I can hit call it $500k in revenue, pay my own salary, and/or hire 10 people in 2 years, surely I should be allowed to stay? And if I can't, just ask me to leave? You can easily find me if I own a company, I'm not "undocumented"... The EB-2 NIW green card path already has some of these features in that you can provide a business plan and sponsor yourself for a green card, but that process takes years and you can't have a regular visa (even a tourist visa!) once you have applied for the green card. Which means the applicant needs to stay in the US without traveling abroad at all and not work for 2 years, which is tantamount to making them an illegal immigrant.
The problem is not the h1b program. The real problem is when teams/orgs/companies start to only hire H1b and never seriously consider a US citizen.
The lack of real oversight shows it’s mostly there for wage suppression. Like others said they downrank employees on hire to get wages down.
There is so much fuckery with the program that is unfair to both domestic and (especially) h1b workers that it needs to be scrapped for a more fair replacement. Tech will fight tooth and nail to prevent this of course.
95 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 185 ms ] threadThere is a big difference between the startup co-founder and the foreign talent recruited by FAANG companies, and the crap IT consultancy companies pull all the time.
They can't get around this as there are tax records of who being paid by whom. This would force company to hire American, reduce fraud, and still being favorable to the big boys paying the lobbying fees. Win win for all who matters (not specifically the regular folks, if they do, it is accidental...)
The entire premise of the H1-B program is when there is a shortage of qualified/available domestic labor. Turning around and tying hiring in the program to having 9x as many domestic employees seems like it's so counter to that notion that not even the government would create such an inanely contradictory policy.
H-1B salaries are public [0], so it is easy to debunk this.
The minimum prevailing wage for the area and location is in place for this very reason.
> ... job-shopping in personal networks when someone loses an H1B job ...
If anything, this demonstrates that the current system is inhumane, and it should be more lenient towards H-1B holders.
[0] https://h1bdata.info
Unfortunately wage fraud and theft are real things that happen. You don't have to believe me, you can find buckets of H1B holders who will verify this. I've seen it myself, I've been in IT for 30 years and seen personally, many times, everything I listed in my comment.
I myself was a visa holder not long ago. Outside of Internet forums, I haven’t been able to find anyone who would claim that visa wage fraud exist.
[0] - https://twitter.com/David_J_Bier/status/1715416997704462398
Because non-tech companies pay lobbyists, too.
Politely, society disagrees with your views on what contributes (see: the high salaries).
Then there is the question of externalities. People working in fields with positive externalities tend to be underpaid, if there are no sufficient mechanisms that allow their employers to capture the value they create. Similarly, people working in fields with negative externalities tend to be overpaid.
Mexicans just don't do software.
Why is US so complicated for no reason? It’s not like it even makes a difference in the end, it’s just needless friction .
There is political disagreement over what a new system should look like so there has never been enough agreement to completely overhaul the rules.
As per [2]: "USCIS announced that the agency received a total of 308,613 H-1B cap registrations, of which USCIS issued 87,500 registration selections in March 2021."
If the EU system was as oversubscribed as the US it would have the same problems.
1. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
2. https://ogletree.com/insights-resources/blog-posts/uscis-rel...
Then again, total amount of immigration permits per year is 7 in US vs 2.5 for the whole EU, so maybe you have a point.
1. https://ind.nl/en/about-us/statistics-and-publications/the-i...
"Change of employer or job The residence permit is valid as long as you meet the requirements. This can also be the case if you change employers or job. If you no longer work for your employer, or change jobs as a result of which you no longer meet the rules for which the residence permit was issued, then your employer must notify the IND of this. If you have found another job as a highly skilled migrant, your new employer must notify the IND of this within 4 weeks. The IND will then check if the requirements are still met."
Also this has much more requirements on issue than you described and the 30K number likely includes the changes described above, as well as extensions.
1. https://ind.nl/en/forms/3072.pdf
Which one did I miss?
Second, not all industry has high profit margins like software. Places like biotech or semiconductor can't afford 250K for a single worker, no matter how senior they are except in special circumstances. And these fields are just as critical and important as coding. In fact, one may argue that healthcare and chipmaking capacity are more critical to the country than someone writing the next iteration of Microsoft Word.
Third, if H1B is given based purely on salary, then company won't bother with H1B anymore. Imagine what happen if suddenly half the company on market no longer care about having a H1B program. Some politician will start trying to abolish it all together. Xenophobia and "they took our high paying jobs" and "those snobs foreigners get paid how much while American get paid how much?" are easy to sell.
Just a terrible hot take. Try to think broader than just your situation.
Companies that hire H1B's often 'downrank' employees to roles they are overqualified for in order to reduce salary requirements.
>Second, not all industry has high profit margins like software. Places like biotech or semiconductor can't afford 250K for a single worker,
If the industry cannot afford it, perhaps they shouldn't hire H1bs? How else, other than compensation, would you decide who provides the most economic value?
>Third, if H1B is given based purely on salary, then company won't bother with H1B anymore. Imagine what happen if suddenly half the company on market no longer care about having a H1B program.
A country's laws exist for the benefit of it's CITIZENS. I personally believe that the US H1B program is exploitative and should be ended, and our legal immigration system should be reformed. You need a worker? They get a green card, and can go to any company they please. That worker should also be automatically eligible for citizenship after ~ 5 years of paying taxes and staying out of trouble.
As it is - because most employees in SFBA are H1B - we all have to suffer shit working conditions with toxic management.
How do you define economic value? By money only is a bad metric. Take pharma for example. The top 5 biggest pharma companies combined can't equal the same market cap or liquidity of 1 Apple (1.9T vs 2.5T). Now think about the societal impact. If you have to live in a place without drugs (those 5 pharma produce almost all the lifesaving drugs in the US) and a place without Apple products, where would you go?
I can go into the reasons why Apple is 2.5T and the pharmas is fraction of that, but that would be too long. It is simply the economy of scale, cost of manufacturing, and legal regulations. The cost of doing business results in lower salary for the end workers but it doesn't mean the industry is "lower value".
More broadly, I disagree with our entire legal immigration system. It would be far better for us to have a points based system like Canada to bring in the very best and brightest and quickly integrate them into our system. Until then, I stand in pretty firm opposition to the H1B as it stands today.
Why should a software dev in SF being paid 150k$ be considered as good a candidate compared to one being paid 400k$? Why do you call it a "high-skilled" visa, and then argue for the bar to be "average"
> Second, not all industry has high profit margins like software
If they cannot pay enough, maybe they should not be hiring international workers citing a shortage.
> Third, if H1B is given based purely on salary, then company won't bother with H1B anymore.
So, is there no shortage of tech workers? Certainly international MIT PhDs will still be in demand?
Please read what I wrote. They are required by law to pay above average salary for the occupation they are hiring. Not all industry has the profitability of big tech. Unless you are arguing a software dev job is somehow more skilled than a semiconductor engineer or a biopharma scientist, you have no argument here.
And which visa they are going to be hired for? EB visa? Which take 2-3 years to vet? Which company will wait a year to fill a position instead of just scaling down? If you take down the H1B, there will be shortages and reduced productivity. If you need proof, just check how many of your coworkers are on H1B.
Also, just do a google search, "high-skilled professional visas" without doubt refer to H1B
> Unless you are arguing a software dev job is somehow more skilled than a semiconductor engineer or a biopharma scientist, you have no argument here.
Maybe they should be paid better. Also, I argue that being a nanny or a janitor requires skill too, much more in fact than writing a dumb CRUD app. If software industry having high margins is the problem, maybe that is a separate problem solved with anti trust actions.
> And which visa they are going to be hired for? EB visa? Which take 2-3 years to vet? Which company will wait a year to fill a position instead of just scaling down? If you take down the H1B, there will be shortages and reduced productivity. If you need proof, just check how many of your coworkers are on H1B.
As someone on H1B seeing rampant "fraud" and a mere 14% approval rate, seeing friends with PhDs not getting lotteries while people with fake job offers by "consultancies" get it, I am not asking to end the H1B. I am asking it to be actually for "high skilled" labor.
For you to qualify to perform services in a specialty occupation you must meet one of the following criteria:
Hold a U.S. bachelor’s or higher degree required by the specialty occupation from an accredited college or university Hold a foreign degree that is the equivalent to a U.S. bachelor’s or higher degree required by the specialty occupation from an accredited college or university
But I understand if you call a janitor a "skilled" job then a bachelor degree is indeed "high skilled" from your point of view. Regardless, I do not think anywhere is hiring H1B to do janitor work. An engineer or a scientist with just a bachelor degree is never "high skilled" in my field of work.
>Maybe they should be paid better.
The reasons a semiconductor engineer or a biotech scientist don't get paid higher has nothing to do with how big the company they are in. The nature of software means it is inherently more profitable (low manufacturing cost, less legal regulations, more location flexibility, etc). Those result in the workers get paid more of the profit share. A biotech company with 200M funding and 5 years is barely enough to test 1 pharma product just to have the FDA deny it in the 6th year. You can get 5 guys in a garage to churn out a multimillion dollar software product in 6 months. It is not comparable.
My whole argument is this: Granting visa based on salary is a bad take and unfairly prioritize one type of industry over everything else.
* NVidia: $10B in net income 2022. Gross margins 70%. CEO comp $22m
* J&J: $18B in net income 2022. Gross margins 68%. CEO comp $13m
* Pfizer: $31B in net income 2022. Gross margins 75% CEO comp $30m
* Qualcom: $13b in net income 2022. Gross margins 55%. CEO comp $5m
* TI: $9b in net income 2022. Gross margins 65%. CEO comp $22m
Also H1Bs are being paid above market rates. That isn't true. The data is searchable. Look at Tata for a software developer in Austin. I see 20+ developers making less the $80k(Average according to glassdoor) with most making in the $60k range which i would argue is below entry level.
https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=tata+consultancy+services+...
Edit(for comparison):
* Apple: Gross Margins 44%
* MSFT: Gross Margins: 70%
* Googl: Gross Margins 57%
Gross margin is a bad metrics. It doesn't cover overhead costs or R&D. Take for example J&J whose net profit margin is 13% while Apple is 24%. Or abbvie is also 13% vs Msft 34%.
Also why did you not put in the net income for those big 3 tech companies in the bottom?
https://www.investopedia.com/news/h1b-visa-issue-explained-m...
1. Most grad students are also Indians, and the OPT (->STEM) -> H1B is a common path to employment based visas. And US universities are not unreasonably favoring Indians.
2. A lot of Indians are stuck in H1B status, because of the discriminatory and racist country cap. People stuck in H1B for 10+ years as of now, and potentially multi-decades wait in the future, while other countries get green card right away.
3. India does have many good schools, a focus on engineering, a huge population, and not so many good local opportunities.
And at the end of it all, instead of blaming all Indians (do I represent my country when I attempt to immigrate, or am I an individual trying to not live in that damn country?), maybe USA should actually value high skill labor. Handing off a high skilled labor visa by lottery is a joke, instead it should be called a high-luck visa.
I don't know why you deny Indian racial discrimination. There's a huge problem with Indian's discriminating. Not only discrimination against non-Indians, discrimination based on caste/skin color of other Indians.
It's a huge problem. I've seen it run rampant in every single IT Department or tech firm I've worked at which leverage offshore & H-1B employees.
I am Indian, and Indians often get attacked for 70% H1b going to India. I am tired of it. I do not represent the Indian govt when I try to find job in USA.
2. People doing work vital for society got raises, which was made possible by bargaining power that they gained from low unemployment. This, naturally, results in higher prices for anything that their labour produces.
3. Shortages.
None of these are the fault of the immigrant boogieman.
Goddamn foreigners. Coming over here and taking jobs you ain’t qualify to do.
The blame lies elsewhere.
I sure hope this nonsense gets downvoted like the trolling it is.
Immigration into America is extremely fettered. Ask anyone who's actually done it.
(Source: https://www.statueofliberty.org/ellis-island/overview-histor...)
this is absolutely false.
When migrants who either walk or sneak across the border are apprehended, Border Patrol agents take them to facilities for processing, which includes a health screening and a criminal background check...
A recent inspector general report on an El Paso, Texas, processing center found that up to 900 people were crammed into a space meant for less than 200. Some people were standing on toilets, and many said they had been there for weeks.
https://apnews.com/article/immigration-donald-trump-us-news-...
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is monitoring nearly a quarter of a million migrants in a program using GPS ankle monitors, phones or an app known as SmartLINK, according to the agency’s latest statistics. The Biden administration has rapidly grown the number of people in this program, known as “alternatives to detention,” or ATD.
The most accessible pathway for arriving in the US as an immigrant (green card) is family based migration. The only pathway for that which isn't backlogged is for those who are the spouse, non-adult child, or parent of a US citizen. Every other category has long wait times. It's hard to call anybody in this category "unfettered" as there are financial support requirements for petitioners.
Getting to the USA on a H1B is far quicker than on an immigrant visa, even for direct family members of US citizens. It takes almost 2 years if there's no flags whatsoever in your case, and flags can things as random as "works with chemicals" or "is a doctor from X state". There is one exception which is international adoption which for some reason every part of the immigrant visa wheel seems to be on full speed for.
(source: personal experience with immigrant visa system)
I spent 2 years on an F-1 visa, 1 year on OPT after that, 6 years on an H-1B working 12+ hours a day in a high paying job that few Americans consider doing. I delivered real value to clients, trained, managed and interviewed juniors, busted my ass effectively 24/7...
In the wake of a "challenging market environment", I was one of 3,000+ laid off... only a few months before my green card arrived. I had never received a bad year-end review package. Apparently the firm 'forgot to check' my immigration status before making the decision.
I have easily paid more than $1 million in taxes to Uncle Sam over the past decade. Yet I can't stay in the country unless I get some other visa.
I can't get an H-1B because I've maxed out on the 6 years I'm allowed to stay. Which makes no sense, since the longer I've been here, the more experienced I am and the more I can contributed to the economy.
I can't start my own company because there are no "real" work visas besides the H-1B, and all work visas require an "employer-employee" relationship, as TFA alludes to.
I can't get a green card because that process would only allow me to start working about 24 months after pressing go.
I can't marry an American because that's not a real solution and, most importantly, I'm already married.
My choices are investing $800k in some shady project for a 0% return over 5 years to get an investor visa or going back to school for another F-1 visa that doesn't allow me to work.
For a country founded by pilgrims and built in large part with the sweat and blood of immigrants, this situation feels unreal.
Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
I wish you the best of luck with your issues.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2576945/h-1b-is-just-a...
In such a hard hit tech market to keep it going is kinda ridiculous.
It's understandable if there are no applicants for jobs. But when there are 100+ applicants per position. It's a bit ridiculous to compete with non-nationals.
1. Offer a credible path to permanent residency: employers can pay less to H-1B visa holders because they know those employees have no real way out of the system. If H-1Bs could self-sponsor merit-based green card applications after, say, 2 years on the job, the market would naturally solve the wage gap. My employers delayed my green card application until the very last minute so that I would never consider quitting for a better, non H-1B job.
2. Minimum salary threshold: avoids blatant misuse of the program by companies that are effectively "offshoring" semi-unskilled labor to immigrants.
3. No lottery, unlimited applications: increasing the cap can be balanced by the minimum salary threshold.
4. Self-sponsorship for entrepreneurs: let me start a company in the US and give me, I don't know, 2 years to show some threshold of revenue, scale or profitability. If I can hit call it $500k in revenue, pay my own salary, and/or hire 10 people in 2 years, surely I should be allowed to stay? And if I can't, just ask me to leave? You can easily find me if I own a company, I'm not "undocumented"... The EB-2 NIW green card path already has some of these features in that you can provide a business plan and sponsor yourself for a green card, but that process takes years and you can't have a regular visa (even a tourist visa!) once you have applied for the green card. Which means the applicant needs to stay in the US without traveling abroad at all and not work for 2 years, which is tantamount to making them an illegal immigrant.
The lack of real oversight shows it’s mostly there for wage suppression. Like others said they downrank employees on hire to get wages down.
There is so much fuckery with the program that is unfair to both domestic and (especially) h1b workers that it needs to be scrapped for a more fair replacement. Tech will fight tooth and nail to prevent this of course.