The Trump administration even tried to make it so that if you're working legally while waiting on your extension visa(can take more than 8 months) and it happens to get rejected, they will report you to ICE for deportation proceedings calling the period you worked legally as being illegal, creating a Catch-22 where you're accruing illegal stay after you have to stop working, but cannot leave the country because you're waiting for a court date, since not showing up in a court is another new crime in itself. You have to live without a salary and being able to work at all, and the immigration courts are overloaded and once you accrue 6 months of illegal stay, you can be banned from entering the US for 10 years on any visa.
If you think that sounds too ridiculous to be true, read this:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2018/07/11/new-u...
This is the reason that many talented folks prefer to work for companies on a contract through a staffing company that holds the visa that allows for easier job hopping without losing your chance of getting a green card, or getting fired on Friday and accruing illegal stay starting from Saturday. Otherwise, why would you give away 40% to >50% of your hourly rate to a middleman?
In this new environment, if you somehow get caught in an ICE raid while selling your car for pennies and puting all your belongings that dont fit in luggage in the dumpster or whilepacking your bags, you might get shipped to jail inspite of not violating a single law before you got fired.
The companies oppose these fixes because they will less leverage over their employees on visas and they might job hop more if underpaid or overworked.
Fix these problems instead of creating weird custom rules against staffing companies and the problem will fix itself for the most part.
Citizenship questions are illegal but still get asked. Are you going to outlaw asking about an employee's immigration status? Good luck enforcing that.
The biggest leverage the companies have on immigrant labor is the threat of being fired and deported, if you make that less costly and not turn their life upside down in a day, the problem will be lessened and make the job market more fair and competitive for everyone looking for jobs, and also greatly hurt staffing companies. It also lets the employee say "No." more easily when asked to work 80 hours for the fourth week in a row with no extra pay. This is the reason companies lobby against making this happen.
If they want to retain people, Infosys will have to increase their salaries to close to market rate by charging the client more, which means the client is less likely to hire from Infosys. Either way it's a win.
Infosys made almost $11B in 2018. They are not going to sweat the salary of few H-1B engineers. If American engineers, or Indian ones having Green Card, will do the job - liaison the communication between onshore and offshore teams - they will hire those if H-1Bs are not available. Or, your employer might move the whole operation to India, laying off the onshore team.
TL;DR: You are probably barking up the wrong tree. The "cheap" H-1Bs you hear about are hired by American staffing companies, not outsourcers.
Sure. I think that's fair, but getting a work visa should be harder in the first place.
One of my previous companies got IT workers heavily through a big contracting company.
We received folks who: 1) Didn't understand their domain 2) Couldn't communicate in English, neither verbal or written
This person clearly never visited a US Consulate, or if they did, they never were asked to speak English. This is not a complaint about an individual's accent or elementary grammar. This person does not know the grammar period. And no, they were not disabled.
How will USCIS and consulate officers be able to do a better job determining if someone is suitable to work in a company than the company themselves? Why should tax dollars be spent because companies are too lazy or incompetent to filter and vet people they are hiring?
We hire an external company to send us people because they have supposed to have vetted them. We pay for that service.
This isn't just a company problem. Feel free to call the company lazy all you want, but why is someone who has no expertise in an area and cannot speak English allowed to enter the country under a program that lets exceptiobap people in because apparently we don't have talented people here?
So if I understand you correctly, we should let people enter the country without vetting them because its a waste of taxpayer money? Let's say my employer perfectly filtered out this person as soon as they came in the door. Let's say the contracting company employing him lets him go too. So what if he now falls on the social system? It's cool? You're okay to pay for that?
With respect, your logic makes no sense to me. We shouldn't allow unqualified people to goldmine through these programs. There needs to be a much higher bar. Right now there isn't one at all.
What social system burden? H1Bs are ineligible for unemployment benefits even though they are forced to pay for state unemployment insurance. Ineligible for food stamps because they don't have a green card and getting one will take atleast a decade of working. They pay social security taxes but are ineligible for SS unless they keep paying into it for about 10 years and are older than 65. Ineligible till they're 65 for Medicaid even though they pay Medicaid taxes. If they leave the country before that age they get no benefits.
The only burden they may cause if they get very sick or in an accident and get taken to the emergency hospital where they have to legally treat them. You want a society where a fellow human is dying on the roads because you don't want to save a few cents per year for it in taxes because they were born in the wrong place? You want the ambulance to check their papers and finances before administering first aid?
Are there reports of people coming in on work visas and then becoming a public charge? I've seen several people just leave the country if they get laid off and can't find a job. There are much better opportunities and families back home for them than being essentially homeless in the US. Perhaps some start working at gas stations temporarily and the like.
Even if they had hired something directly, the government program is only responsible for checking the educational degrees, the level of security risk they may pose and not much else. Ever go to the DMV and not feel like everything can be a hundred times better if they tried a bit more? That's how efficiently and effectively government bureaucracy typically runs. There are really bad examples out there happening in overseas consulates. There was a guy whose passport was returned unstamped four times over a time period of 6 months although he was granted the visa.
You want the government to conduct knowledge tests(what kind of knowledge test?) and language tests for everyone that companies want to hire? Why should competent companies that can make proper hires be punished by even more bureaucracy and delays because a few companies cannot be bothered to be competent in choosing employees to hire or good staffing companies?
If you think it works well, why not extend the same govt run knowledge tests to citizens before companies hire them locally? If the government is good at scouting for talent overseas and then spoonfeed them to companies, why can't it do the same locally so companies can save HR costs?
The government via the H1B program does not promise vetted and amazing talent to companies. All it does is say "If you're having difficulty hiring citizens locally but find someone talented who is not a citizen, we will provide a way for you to legally hire them as long as they have a four year bachelors degree".
Anyway my point was that the free market solution is being held back because of the power that staffing companies and regular companies hold over their immigrant employees. Reduce or remove that power and natural market forces will kick in and automatically hurt staffing companies and normal companies that are trying to game the system by paying less or making people work more or stick with their jobs for years on end. You cannot imagine the levels of stress and anxiety immigrants go through in fear of being legally out of status within an hour and subject to deportation. I think everyone how bad it feels to get fired or laid off. Now multiple that by ten because you have no legal status anymore. It is so bad that some were seeking psychological help, therapy and counseling when Trump got elected because of panic attacks.
Even if companies find only talented people, what's stopping companies from overworking and underpaying them, and not giving them pay hikes as their experience goes up? The same abuse that reduces labor power in the market will still happen.
Companies will be forced to pay more and treat them well by not overworking them, or else immigrants will switch jobs sooner than later. If any of the above happens, they'd hire from overseas less or stop doing it because it's not as profitable anymore compared to hiring local citizens, unless they need really someone talented that they cannot find locally, in which case competent people that were selected via interviews will come in, instead of incompetent people.
This would be a huge blow to the third party placemtn body shop business model which is where a lot of abuse happens. It'd go belly up overnight unless pay rates goes up. Why would someone stick with them instead of joining the clients directly.
If a company brings in someone incompetent, they pay the price for having a bad employee compared to their competitors. Even if they fire them, that company just wasted a lot of time and money in fees and salary etc. onboarding someone they had to fire.
If people are fired, let them stay legally stay for a few months trying to find a new job and then start accruing illegal status after that time. What purpose is served by kicking people out immediately causing them to violate rent leases and sell their possessions in a big rush? If anything, it helps the local economy a bit.
Remember how Google, Apple, etc. etc. got into deep trouble for no-poaching agreements and were dealt a heavy fine for hurting the labor market? There is a similar effect going on now with tying visas to companies and making it hard for immigrants to switch jobs. Having vetted and talented people stuck in jobs for years at low pay rates and high work hours isn't going to help the situation.
The government is offering a program to bring in the best and brightest to fulfill jobs that we can't otherwise fill. It needs to do a better job regulating that program, because it's clearly being abused. If it can't afford to regulate it or doesn't believe that regulation is affordable or a good use of tax payer money, than the government should rescind that program.
It's really that simple.
Show me where the H1B program or mandate says anything about the best and brightest. Perhaps you confused H1B with the O-1 visa program or the EB-1 priority green card employment category?
>or doesn't believe that regulation is affordable or a good use of tax payer money, than the government should rescind that program.
The program isn't run from tax payer money, it pays for itself and then some.
>How is the Uscis funded?
>Funding. Unlike most other federal agencies, USCIS is funded almost entirely by user fees. Under President George W. Bush's FY2008 budget request, direct congressional appropriations made about 1% of the USCIS budget and about 99% of the budget was funded through fees.
On top of the application fee that funds USCIS, there is a visa fee to fund the consulate visa process. And top of that there is a $500 anti-fraud fee per application. On top of that there is another large fee that is used to fund job training for citizens which has raised billions of dollars so far that has been used to help train citizens. On top of that some types of employers are charged another large fee to fund.... border security with Mexico! shrug. Just the fees can cost $4000 to $5000. There is also yet another $1400 on top of all this to process the application faster, otherwise it can take 8 months to more than a year. Google it if you want to find out the details.
Sorry, but it is clear from our conversation that you don't have the first clue about anything related to this topic. I won't be replying anymore until you try and bring yourself up to speed on what you're ranting and raving about based on one off anecdotal bad experience.
I thought the whole intent was to bring in people to work jobs because we don't have talented people to fill those positions? Or has that definition shifted according to your perspective?
>The program isn't run from tax payer money, it pays for itself and then some.
It allows companies to flood the market with extra talent to keep wages suppressed while also holding leverage over folks who can either shut up or go back to Hyderabad. Someone is making money off of it, for sure. I don't think it's in the best interest of the job market and specifically earners, and you haven't convinced anyone that it is.
>Just the fees can cost $4000 to $5000.
Is $5,000 that much money to you? I would argue the cost of H1B's are much higher, especially when you consider the number of folks coming in who are unqualified and simply holding a job so a bunch of middle men can take a cut of their pay, not to mention the extra paperwork and headache it causes someone like me because I can gamble on an H1B contractor through Infosys or Larsen and Toubro or find an alternative means to fill head count.
>Sorry, but it is clear from our conversation that you don't have the first clue about anything related to this topic. I won't be replying anymore until you try and bring yourself up to speed on what you're ranting and raving about based on one off anecdotal bad experience.
My experience is with all the people previously in multiple non-tech companies and then two of FANGs, including my current one.
>I won't be replying anymore until you try and bring yourself up to speed on what you're ranting and raving about based on one off anecdotal bad experience.
Your responses get more and more emotional, which (I could be wrong) makes me think you're an H1B yourself or have an inherent bias towards H1B's because of family or other connections.
FYI - Showcasing your frustration that we don't believe you at your word and throwing a hissy fit doesn't convince anyone you're correct. If that's your method of convincing people of your ideas, you won't get very far and if you do, the people you work with will jump ship because of you.
When that happens, the company takes a hit and is less likely next time to bring in more people because of the associated costs of HR, interviews , visa fees, immigration lawyers, onboarding, time wasted on getting them up to speed on the project etc.
It would be a huge blow to body shops.
This results in fewer people coming in unless they are really needed.
Right now H1B employees are stuck in jobs without normal pay hikes for years and can be forced to work longer hours. That's how the companies make their costs back and much more.
It shouldn’t be surprising but it kinda shocks me how many American tech companies keep making these mistakes. The ones that avoid them seem to be ones whose execs have prior engineering background.
Can you clarify this? Of the dozens of jobs I've had in the United States, every one required me to prove that I'm a citizen or eligible to work in the country.
The most idiotic thing here is giving a visa to a company based on lottery. As the original comment pointed out, there should be a point system where you are graded based on education and experience.
Undergrad is very expensive in the US, even at some public universities. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this put American graduates at a disadvantage?
If I attend a US public university and pay via loans, I'm now competing for a job with Indian and Chinese students who completed a graduate program (anecdotally, these candidates are preferred by HR and sometimes hiring managers). Alternatively, the US student can stay in school for a grad degree and take on more debt.
That's the general pattern I've seen at the big tech companies anyway. Person A is from some tiny school in the Midwest and wanted to work here but never even got an interview after graduating. Person B is from Hyderabad who just graduated with a masters CS degree and is a new hire on the team.
To be clear - I'm not arguing against immigration or blaming foreign students at all.
I have observed that people in the category B rank are willing to take less pay and deal with a ton more bullshit (politics, grind, etc.) because it's not as easy to switch employers on their visa status. Some of these kids are brilliant, others are extremely ordinary, but they got the interview and the kid from the Arkansas school didn't.
It's possible that there's a large body of citizens with technical degrees that theoretically could fulfill those jobs, but that doesn't mean that they have the skills or the applied knowledge to perform at the standards required for those jobs. People like to poke at this argument, but any technical person knows that claiming that you know a technology (e.g: a programming language) doesn't equal to being great at working with that technology.
Every company has the right to enforce a hiring standard and most top companies will have a very high one. I don't think this has to do at all with formal education but rather with experience and skill. This applies to anyone regardless of nationality or origin.
Anecdotically, some of the best American born programmers I have met in my life, don't have an undergrad degree or dropped before graduating. They are all employed at top companies and have always managed to stay employed and keep growing their incomes steadily.
Either way, H1-B is a mess and should change for the benefit of everyone affected directly and indirectly by it. This means American workers, internation students, foreign talent and companies.
I fundamentally disagree with this statement. At top tech companies, I have come across enough mediocre hires who prepared enough for a technical interview to get "in" the company, but are otherwise doing very mundane work or require a ton of direction.
In industry, I've come across with even worse hires who couldn't even program.
I don't believe there's a shortage of talent in this country.
Do you have any experience in hiring people? East coast here and its impossible to find citizens who can code FizzBuzz. Those that can already have a job and don't come to interviews.
There are multiple thousands of very high paying security related job openings that need citizens only, because of clearances.
Zero percent unemployment: https://cybersecurityventures.com/cybersecurity-unemployment...
https://www.monster.com/career-advice/article/tech-cybersecu...
The few citizens who apply to our non prestigious company are competing against a pool of talented H1Bs (not all H1Bs are body shop employees; many are graduates of fine American schools... we’re talking MIT and CMU), yet because of the pool they are in, they often come up short. The most competitive citizens tend not to want to work for non prestigious companies, so we get the less competitive citizen candidates and more competitive non citizens.
I don’t want to say this is the norm out there, because it is not, but to those who have misgivings about H1Bs (the non body shop variety), I’d be interested to hear your stories about your experiences hiring and where/how you found your quality citizen/LPR talent pools (I’d be inclined to hear from employers and hiring managers rather than anecdotal hearsay about a friend of a friend).
Just so you know, that's illegal discrimination.
By requiring a clearance they are fighting for people from a very limited pool. If they really want to fill those jobs they'd allow clearable candidates, which would allow them to pull from a much larger pool.
However I do think that is not a binary issue that can be blamed on a single cause.
There's a range of things that could affect the outcome of a hiring decision and if H1-B is one of those reasons (let's say out of bad faith someone hires under H1-B because they want to pay them less), then is obvious that there are many other factors and biases that are affecting the outcome of how technical talent is hired in the US. Croyinsm, sexism, racism, ageism, broken hiring practices, corporate politics; just to mention a few.
That's easily viewable as evidence that offer is lower than demand: even the top (presumably, picky) top tech companies have had to resort to sub-par hires.
Sorry, I realized that I missed a word there when I wrote that line. I meant:
> But this biases the playing field in favor of those immigrants graduating from American degree mills.
[1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2011/01/20/tri-valley-university...
Consider two statements:
A) Most immigrant graduates are of low caliber.
B) Most immigrants of high caliber have graduate degrees.
In my experience, both statements are true.
Disclosure: Immigrant, hiring manager at reputed SV company, with UG degree from my home country.
Citation needed.
In any case, here you go: https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/Unautho...
You then come back with an article titled "Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: January 2014", when the discussion here is about students gaming legal immigration. What relevance does that have to the topic, again?
Its pretty clear that you've made up your mind about what the state of the world is (from various anecdata) and don't really care what the statistics really say. I will leave this as my last comment about this issue.
Most countries with sensible work visas have a point system. Make candidates self-asses and file the application, bucket them into tiers and if you still really want to roll the dice then assign spots to particular tiers.
Japan is a great example. They have a wide range of visas. From unskilled worker visas without possibility of obtaining residency (I think there will be a new one with the possibility, but can be wrong), to a couple of different skilled worker visas to the "high-end" highly skilled foreign professional (HSFP).
For HSFP you get points for years of experience in the field, age, salary, etc so you can bring a whole range of people.
And they keep innovating in the space. They asses what they need and tweak the program accordingly.
As far as India is concerned, if you compare any random US university with any institute from India, barring for IIT's, I am ready to wager any US university will win hands down!
> ... with a master’s or doctoral degree from an American college or university
This is a welcome change. But this biases the playing field in favor of those graduating from American degree mills. As a counter-measure against abuse from those, I hope DHS also intensifies scrutiny on the many American staffing companies who bend the H-1B rules to hire these foreign graduates. There is indication that they have started on it, for example [1].
Also,
> The lottery change could be aimed at hindering those outsourcing firms’ applications, Rand said. Three Indian firms, Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro, have dominated H-1B applications since 2012, government data shows.
> “Most of the visas are snapped up by these body shops,” said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR.
Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are outsourcing companies, not "body shops". Body shops are staffing companies - they are mostly American and run out of places like Edison.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18425341