The H1 visa prohibits all paid work except for the sponsoring employer. This lock-in is precisely what makes these visas lucrative to TCS etc. Removing the lack of mobility will remove a big perverse incentive.

While it is a big incentive for sure, I wouldn't be so quick to dismissive it as the main incentive. A lot of the people who are "indentured servants" (as the people here like to say) are not really the kind of people who would "jump ship". In fact, the selection process is already such that only the really pliant ones are sent to the US.

Which makes me doubt whether this step would make any difference to the problem of H1B abuse. However, it would make a HUGE difference for those who are not abusing the system.

Disclosure: I'm on an H1B visa. Of course I want it to be easier to change employer. Who doesn't? Its like a fundamental right.

> In fact, the selection process is already such that only the really pliant ones are sent to the US. Indian working in India. Can second that. I used to work for the Big Blue in India, it's the yes-guys that got the visa processing approval from managers.

The purpose of the H1B is to allow companies to fill a need the labor market cannot supply. It does not exist for the benefit of the worker. It makes no sense to make these portable.

As a person on H1B I can say that the lock-in is the most frustrating part. I can easily change jobs but I cannot create apps for mobile devices or monetize my website.

Economist is correct that's why it "Triggers" so many people like you, just take a look at electronics industry, if you think that the jobs wont be shipped out to india/China/Canada or reduced due to automation you are living in fantasy land.

By improving portability of H-1B the government can make market fairer and less prone to misuse. Simply banning the visa will just lead to a rush of outsourcing/offshoring draining the economy of secondary benifits.

Sorry guys, but voting his comments down do not change the laws of economics. If someone in Romania can do your job - with the same quality - at 1/10th the price, the market will find a way to move the work there.

In most cases, it really isn't equivalent and the price difference isn't that much for really qualified people, but shutting out lots of talented people might tilt things in that direction.

Except the market already tried that, with pretty poor results.

What exactly do you mean? All the major US tech companies (and plenty of minor ones as well) have huge India offices. If they were delivering "pretty poor results", they wouldn't still be operating.

I can't speak for all major US tech companies, but I can speak for my experience at a major US financial firm, household name, etc. A couple years ago they did the old dump the American devs and move everything to India. I'm the American team lead. The difference, as far as I can tell, is that the time to market for new features has doubled or tripled. This isn't because the Indian devs/QA are lower quality, they're about the same. The cause for all our problems is communication barriers and the time zone problems. All of our customers are in the US. Every single question that goes in either direction takes at least a 24 hour turnaround. God forbid there's some confusion, then there's 2-3 back and forths with a 24-hour turnaround each time until someone decides they're willing to stay up until midnight to have a phone conversation. Not having seen the books I assume this looks a lot better on paper. Where it will hurt is is ten years down the road when our lack of velocity/innovation catches up to us and a more agile competitor eats us alive. If we were in a faster moving market (consumer finance is pretty slow) that ten year timeline would be much faster.

I'm genuinely sorry about your situation. It seems like this is one of those cases in which management couldn't resist the short-term cost savings. I would wager this is a pretty common occurrence and I can see where you're coming from...and I completely agree. In this case its most likely not going to work out in the long term.

It actually doesn't bother me at all. In my younger days I cared a lot more about working on exciting/interesting projects. Now I care most about the fact that I'm 100% telecommute and have 6 weeks of vacation. Others may have had a different experience, but years of consulting have taught me to divorce myself from being emotionally attached to clients. I go in, give them my best advice and work, then go home. If they shoot themselves in the foot, then that's on them.

Working in a (top-50) Fortune 500 company, not tech but in the IT dept: we did outsourcing, CIO and top guys got huge bonuses, now we do in-sourcing to be able to operate. Last CIO recently fired. Entire teams of people based in India, Costa Rica or Manila closed, the skills and productivity are simply not good enough.

If there's enough disparity in pay for equivalent quality (something that is not quite as easy to get right), it'll keep trying.

What irks me is a lot of companies are already doing this and think it's the same quality--only finding out years down the road with their big ball of mud...

Part of capitalism is the freedom to do stupid stuff that ultimately hurts the company. It's part of how smarter companies are supposed to get ahead.

I wouldn't be surprised if a good developer in Romania makes $40k a year (net salary) which is equivalent of $70k ($130k gross) in SF? The market is working.

In a completely friction-free market, if their work is completely equivalent (including the PITA of having them remote) then they're salary would be bid up to the US level.

No, it does not; in socialist Romania the tax is more than 60%, so the net is lower. The net salary for a good developer is ~ $25k.

You set up a company with 16% corporate tax.

>For within their ranks may lurk the next Elon Musk or Sergey Brin

It's poor rhetoric. In fact people do that all the time, "we might be letting in the next terrorist" and are derided for it.

You are correct. But there are market solutions: If visas were auctioned like spectrum, only high value positions would be filled by H1-Bs, which would actually implement the stated purpose of enabling only those who cannot be found domestically to get H1-Bs. And it would largely prevent H1-Bs from lowering wages. AND that "lurking Sergey Brin" would be more likely to be found among those high-value candidates.

Jeez. High skilled jobs outside software engineering pay approximately 10-20% less than software. How do you account for that in an 'auction'-based system? It is just a hard truth that unlike a software company, individual talent is proportionally less valuable in a manufacturing company, leading to lower wages (compared to software developers) for: materials scientists, chemical engineers, mechanical engineers, some electrical engineers (power systems, power electronics, etc.).

The reason for this is that a larger portion of a manufacturing company's competitive strength comes from having great manufacturing equipment, ins into markets, etc. vs. just great engineers or scientists. H1B is necessary because many of these special-skills engineers and scientists are foreigners.

This is also the same reason that hedge fund managers or doctors are paid much more than software engineers- the individual's contribution is more important than in other professions. Does this mean that hedge fund managers are more valuable to society and should be preferred over software engineers in a H1B lottery?

The problem is startups would find it hard to hire since it's hard to value equity in a visa application.

Oh well? If payment in scrip lottery tickets isn't considered good enough for minimum wage laws, I don't see why this would be any different.

You actually bring up an interesting point. A startup lures employees with promise of huge payouts in its shares. But it cannot use those offered shares in an all cash competitive war to get H1B's based solely on cash.

There's a lot of things startups can't afford. And most startups are just fine with local talent.

You do auctions for 64k and 500 for startup founders. Then you set up an extra pool of 10k for startup employees. The company has to be younger than 6 years, raise at least 1 mln from venture capital and only 30% of the workforce could be on visas. It will make pseudo startups expensive to run by outsourcing companies.

Why should there be a requirement to raise venture capital? Some founders fund their own companies and are profitable from the start.

Because the outsourcing companies would set up a pseudo startup to abuse it. The solution is to make it expensive for them.

Ignoring the TCS jibe, there have been several succesful startup founders that have initially held an H1.

http://tech.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/startups/india...

I don't care enough to validate if everyone on that list held a H1 at some point, but they're all born in India and went on to start large companies in the US and were likely on a H1 at some point. And this list ignores people of all other nationalities and only limits itself to companies valuing > 1bn.

I don't think anyone would argue against the fact that people born in India sometimes start valuable companies. My problem with the Economist article is, it expects us to take on faith that the current H-1B visa laws have much to do with it, that raising the cap and allowing mobility would make it even better, and that the benefits to American society actually outweigh the costs.

An aside - I wonder if any founders in that list came in on investor visas?

Is the TCS jibe not appropriate? And I think it was part of the GP's point...I suspect there is a big difference between the people who come in on H1B's to the top tech firms and those who come in on H1B's to TCS et al to outsource helpdesk services at a random F500.

I don't have a lot of experience with Tata and their ilk, but from what little I've seen, and everything I've heard, it sounds like they are just as bad as the typical low-level enterprise corporate IT drone you'd expect when that's what you're asking for -- and that's typically how they get involved. I'm sure they have other skill sets, and I'm sure there are some very talented people mixed in that pool, but I'm not convinced that the best of the foreign talent that we want to target is coming through those routes in significant numbers.

Right. Additionally, I personally wonder what effect lowering wages and worsening working conditions in entry level tech jobs has on the domestic talent pipeline.

That is, how many American students meditate on the ineffable mysteries of the efficient market hypothesis and then decide, hey, marketing is an easy major and the job prospects aren't that much worse than tech. Better -- how many did that in 2002?

> How many Musk-like or Brin-like individuals have come through TCS or Wipro or Infosys on a H-1B so far?

You don't know, these people are forced to be in underpaid H1B slavery for decades and are not be able to use business opportunities.

I understand what you're getting at and don't intend to be cruel. Unfortunately, huge employers don't flinch at leveraging natural human sympathies as a convenient way to beat down support of policies that might increase domestic labor's bargaining power. I intend to make a little fun, but not at H-1B workers. Only at journalistic shilling.

[edit - fixed grammar mistake which mangled intended meaning]

this journalistic shilling is a fun game! I'm no journo but here's a stab at it:

These laws against sewing in sweatshops will only lead to them moving abroad and taking the jobs with them. A better change would be to allow them to stay, but ensure they feed their workers properly. For within these sweatshops may lie the next JFK or Rockefeller of fashion design!

Basking in future billionaires could mean taxing them to fix US education systems (or a lifetime supply of mojitos, I don't care) so it's not all bad.

But there's a knock on effect -- if you go to the effort of sponsoring an H1-B with the intention of underpaying them, then changing the rules to allow visa holders to leave you for a job that pays job (or better work-life balance or has a mojito bar) would leave you holding all the processing expense and none of the profit from underpaying people.

I think this is a rather pessimistic view of the benefits of hiring intelligent and hard working people to work for your country's companies. Its most certainly not in the disparity of pay; more because they provide more value, due to said intelligence and proclivity to work hard.

I don't see it as a pessimistic view. Any employer committed to rewarding people for their value shouldn't need to rely on an omnipresent threat of deportation. I see myself as optimistic that such employers do exist, and should be happy to both recruit such foreign workers to US shores, and happy to poach them from other US firms.

Free movement between employers would likely free up only places like Wipro, Tata and the like, whose business models appear to rely on disparity of pay.

Boy do you like mojitos!

No Musk or Brin like individual would emerge unless they are from South Asia. These companies are blatantly racist, and wouldn't hire a German or Russian.

We should just have 3 year visas that allow you to apply for a green card if you are gainfully employed.

My grandparents immigrated here without any strings. No pimp-like employer, no restrictions.

I really miss the past 600 years of free travel.

| ... isn't this a somewhat empirically testable proposition? That is, how many Musk-like or Brin-like individuals have come through TCS or Wipro or Infosys on a H-1B so far?

You're asking to see results for something that is prohibited and presenting its absence as evidence.

That's kind of a paradox right? OP's link wanted H1B rules to allow employees to change companies or start new ones while on that visa unlike the present rules which don't allow for that.

That's what the article wanted to implement. The Indians at the helms of most companies in SV are here because of the H1B(& gradually progressed to green-cards) for higher education from US.

Do you think Sundar Pichai of Google and Satya Nadella got to where they are without a H1-B visa?

It is an extremely nutty addition to the article, and it is editorializing at its most blatant.

I mean, it's the Economist. Editorializing in favor of the global Capitalist order is kind of their premise.

only when they can get some finger-wagging in and finish with a poor pun or end with a non-sequitur smart-aleck sentence