It's always struck me as absurd that the H1B visa exists at all.

I mean, if an individual is such a valuable contributor to the economy, why would you want to bring them in as indentured laborers, let them accumulate even more value, and then send them away to create startups and value in their home country?

Just bring em in, say welcome, stay as long as you can, settle down if possible, have children here.

Better to bring in talent permanently rather than temporarily.

Of course, I'm not American so I might be missing something mething here...

Because the original purpose of the H-1B was to facilitate highly specialized temporary workers doing highly specialized jobs that literally nobody in the US would be capable of. For example, suppose an American oil company wants to use an exotic drilling technique that has only ever been used in Norwegian oil fields, and thus only a few Norwegian petroleum engineers have any expertise in. As originally conceived, the H-1B would have allowed them to come to the US for a few years, set up the oil field, and then head back home.

Unfortunately, it has since been perverted into a mechanism for skilled (but nonspecialized) workers to be indentured, often with substandard wages.

This is literally false? Ever since the H-1B has been in law the requirement is that the person has a degree and is working in a speciality occupation related to that degree. The INA imposes no conditions like “occupations for which there are no US workers”.

Straight from the Department of Labor's site [0]:

> The intent of the H-1B provisions is to help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce by authorizing the temporary employment of qualified individuals who are not otherwise authorized to work in the United States.

The ostensible intent of the H-1B program and its actual legal stipulations are two totally separate things.

[0] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b

To me this seems to be an upside down view of US immigration law (and US law in general). The INA is the supreme immigration law of the land. DOL regulations and documents are downstream and subordinate to the INA. The true “intent” of the H1B program is whatever is in the INA.

The employer has to prove that they have tried and failed to hire a US worker qualified and willing to do the job for the prevailing wage. The complication is that some people think the existence of the H1B affects the prevailing wage, and the system is therefore skewed.

> The employer has to prove that they have tried and failed to hire a US worker qualified and willing to do the job for the prevailing wage.

No they don’t. You’re probably thinking about the requirements for employment based green cards, which do require a labor market test. The H1B does not.

Yes they do, H1B employer has to advertise the H1B job

Companies list the H1B eligible position and salary internally and externally specifically for compliance

No, they don’t have to advertise the position. They have to disclose that they are hiring H1B workers. It’s a huge difference. In particular, there is no mechanism by which the disclosure can lead to a US worker applying for the job and blocking the H1B hire.

For H1B there’s simply no labor market test.

Right, there’s a whole host of American workers that can do the H1B jobs that are lying around doing nothing, that’s why 90% of them got re-employed and software development salaries are among the highest in the country…

Inertia.

Reforming H1B requires congressional intervention, and as such it's extremely difficult because of partisan bickering.

Also, a number of pressure groups on the Dems (eg. The EPI, AFL-CIO, and sometimes the SEIU) and the Republican (eg. NumbersUSA, ProjectUSA) sides are opposed to immigration.

Agreed, It's also worth remembering the recipients of work visas can't vote either, nor can green card holders, so not a constituency that rewards a political party at the ballot box for policy change, which also likely contributes to the inertia.

The earliest (generally speaking) an H1B holder could likely become a voter is often 10 years in the best cases, and decades in the worst. GC quota queue for countries like India is measured in decades, and you need a GC for something like 5 years before you can apply for citizenship and finally get a vote.

> recipients of work visas can't vote either, nor can green card holders

Exactly this - I worked on the Hill during the time period when immigration was the hot buzzword and this was a persistent undercurrent in all the convos going on back then. The RoI was questionable for a number of Congressional members, so we ended up in this weird equilibrium.

> The earliest an H1B holder could likely become a voter is 10 years in the best cases.

Not really, the earliest you can become a citizen is (1) get your H-1B and arrive in the US (2) get a green card, roughly 1.5-2 years if you're going employment route (3) wait 5 years for citizenship - 3 if you marry someone.

The fastest by the employment route is 6.5 years-ish, the fastest by marriage is probably 4.

Its generally approximately a decade in my experience, and your advice is not applicable to Indian citizens (of which there are many, many waiting in the quota line). Your fast example is possible but not the norm outside of marriage.

His example is true for Singaporean nationals and some other countries as well, but big picture Indian+Chinese+Mexican+Filipino born (H1B bucket is based on place of birth not citizenship, so I've had Indian citizen friends born in Singapore who got green cards in 2 years after their F1) people are screwed.

The point I was responding to is "the earliest an H1B holder could likely become a voter" - which I agree, the average is probably 10 years, but the earliest is much shorter if you and your employer are motivated. And of course, the shortest time it takes definitely doesn't apply to Indians. Even during COVID and having two RFEs (and not being super diligent at a few points) the GC process took me 3 years. That puts me on the 8 year clock should I pursue citizenship.

Hence my use of the word "likely" - it was never stated as fact. Your own personal example is 80 percent of the way there!

And besides voting and being able to leave the country for more than six months, there are no advantages to citizenship. A lot of people just stop at their green cards, especially if their origin country doesn’t support dual citizenship.

> I mean, if an individual is such a valuable contributor to the economy, why would you want to bring them in as indentured laborers, let them accumulate even more value, and then send them away to create startups and value in their home country?

Generally H-1B's can begin the green card process the moment they set foot in the US and it takes about 1.5-2 years (which is about 1y6m too long). The issue is not with the H-1B per se (quotas aside). The issue is that the green card process is too onerous and is subdivided by country of origin so some have to wait much longer than others.

Timeline:

1. Prepare PERM: 6 months.

2. File for DOL certification and get an approved ETA-9089: 120 days.

3. File for I-140 and I-485 concurrently assuming a current priority date with premium processing: 14 days for an approved I-140 and 6-12 months for an approved I-485 assuming no request for evidence. During this time you'll need to go in for biometrics appointment.

I think taking an average 1.5-2 years here is just bad statistics to under-estimate the real-world scenario. It is a heavly skewed where India and China have way extended wait time vs other countries (practically no wait time). The greencard process is provision by country and hence average = bad statistics

> The issue is that the green card process is too onerous and is subdivided by country of origin so some have to wait much longer than others.

I wasn't giving an average, I was giving current processing times for the various steps assuming a current priority date and I called out the specific criticism you levied.

I hear some nationals have to wait for 20 years or more. which countries are those? any info around that?

Yeah, it's in the Adjustment of Status Visa Bulletin. [1]

Go down to Employment Based and look at the priority dates (the priority date for employment based petitions is generally when you file for PERM with the Department of Labor, but there's some complexity here - although that should give you a good idea).

1st Preference (EB1) - extraordinary abilities, etc - is current for everyone except India and China, who are backed up to February 2022 filings.

2nd Preference (EB2) - masters degree or bachelors + 5 years work experience + a job that requires 5 years work experience - is backed up to January 2011 filings for India.

3rd Preference (EB3) - bachelors degree - is backed up to June 2012 filings for India, November 2018 filings for China but is current for anyone else who wants one.

[1] https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-processes-and-pr...

How can EB2 be more backed up than EB3 for India? Isn't EB2 more qualified?

There is indeed a mechanism by which you can “downgrade” from EB2 to EB3, but I think there’s lots of complexity and inefficiencies in the system which keep the dates apart.

Technically the process can be started before a candidate is even in the US or finished entirely before they arrive.

As someone going through the process right now, PERM is taking on average 12 months and the PWD has taken 6 months.

A request for evidence on PERM will extend that to 18 months on average and I-1485 is closer to 12 months but can be 18-24 months even if you are not from India/China.

Abolishing the country cap for Green Cards is something that should be done in tandem with either increasing the number of Employment Based Greencards or recapturing those that have been abandoned. Otherwise you just make the backlog everyone country's problem.

There are some steps they could take to make things easier like automatically sending EAP and AP when a I-140 is approved. It's ridiculous that these documents take so long to be issued.

Really though the United States should move to a points based system for Employment Immigration. If you look at EB3 it's a low bar compared to Canada/Australia. A points based system that is fast tracked like Canada's would be preferred to convoluted mess we have today.

The only entity in the US that wanted and continues to lobby for H1B to continue is industry and their sole reason for doing so is keeping their salary expenses as low as possible. In the software industry it began with the fake premise that there was a shortage of qualified labor. Without a loophole like H1B, when a labor shortage occurs, you have to raise wages to attract people to the profession. With H1B, average wages (not FAANG) have been allowed to stagnate because the visa workers come from countries with a lower cost of living.

I'm all for immigration, but not sure it's humane to tie it to a profession - if someone is allowed to become a citizen because of their profession, are they not allowed to give it up and do something else in the future?

>>> The only entity in the US that wanted and continues to lobby for H1B to continue is industry and their sole reason for doing so is keeping their salary expenses as low as possible. In the software industry it began with the fake premise that there was a shortage of qualified labor. Without a loophole like H1B, when a labor shortage occurs, you have to raise wages to attract people to the profession. With H1B, average wages (not FAANG) have been allowed to stagnate because the visa workers come from countries with a lower cost of living. I'm all for immigration, but not sure it's humane to tie it to a profession - if someone is allowed to become a citizen because of their profession, are they not allowed to give it up and do something else in the future?

Some quick googling indicates there are around 65K H1Bs issued every year, and around 4.4 million software developers. So even assuming that most of those H1Bs go to software developers (they certainly don't all go there) it's still hard to imagine this having a serious detrimental effect on salaries, although I agree it's probably an incentive for the few companies that actually get H1B workers.

BTW, to answer your second question, yes if you become a US citizen you can generally abandon the career that led to your getting whatever visa you had before. In fact you can do that long before you become a citizen. You can do it once you have a green card, which in most of these cases is a minimum of 5 years before they become a citizen.

For most H1Bs it's going to be something like 3-6 years on the H1B during which time you're basically "indentured", followed by 5-6 years on a greencard, during which time you can do whatever you like for a living as long as you don't do anything that suggests your H1B sponsor was lying, followed citizenship.

> Some quick googling indicates there are around 65K H1Bs issued every year, and around 4.4 million software developers.

Well both of those numbers are wrong.

What are the correct numbers?

h1b is 85k + 20k usa stem degree = 105k . 4.4 mil number is from 2016.

Thanks!

One is a per year number and another is a total? Although you can only be on an h1B for six years, so theoretically there are only a max of 390k or so H1Bs at anytime.

> Although you can only be on an h1B for six years,

you can be on h1b for infinite amount of time. most h1b apply for adjustment of status for residency which lets them renew it indefinitely.

> Individuals who deplete this 6-year limit are not eligible for another 6 years until they have resided and been physically present outside the United States for one year, at which time their eligibility for a new 6-year period of H-1B status "restarts." Click here for more information.

https://isss.temple.edu/faculty-staff-and-researchers/intern....

> most h1b apply for adjustment of status for residency

maybe you missed this part?

https://www.uscis.gov/i-140

That's to become a permanent resident, not renew a H1B. You cannot renew a H1B indefinitely.

> You cannot renew a H1B indefinitely.

You can once uscis approves you i140, you can file h1b under cap exception. You can continue doing this as long as your 140 is pending with uscis, there is no upper limit.

At that point, you are just waiting for your green card.

So you are saying your i140 can be pending indefinitely?

yes because it depends of quota availability.

Thanks. On the contrary, we need to blame the companies not the people

Would you say the same for migrant workers? If so how long should they work cheap before citizenship?

H1Bs are pretty much guaranteed green cards after 6 years. Unfortunately, there are green card quotas for a few countries that could delay that, but it’s not a question of if but when if you make it to 6.