H-1B Visa Cap: The Imminent Threat to US Tech Innovation

Re:H-1B Visa Cap: The Imminent Threat to US Tech Innovation by pliftkl on Thursday May 14, 2015 @08:58AM (#9544834)

Or, as proposed elsewhere, keep the cap and remove the lottery system. Grant visas to the top paid applicants. This removes allows companies with a need to great engineers to pay for them, and reduces the influx of lower quality H1-B's.

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Re:H-1B Visa Cap: The Imminent Threat to US Tech Innovation by dudul on Thursday May 14, 2015 @02:31PM (#9546722)

That's an idea. But the problem is once the petition is accepted the employer could reduce the non-immigrant's salary. I'm not a lawyer but I don't think it's illegal.

The main issue is that H1B workers have very little rights. If they get let go, they technically have to leave the country in the next 24 hours - the 30 day grace period is a myth. They are very easy to bully and put up with a lot of shit from their employer simply to be able to stay in the country.

One solution would be to grant an H1B that would be valid even after termination/resignation - maybe for a certain amount of time like a month or two. This would allow a worker to leave an unreasonable employer and give him a chance to find a new gig.

However, I also believe that there is no talent shortage in tech and the H1B program is used to try to drag wages down.

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Re:H-1B Visa Cap: The Imminent Threat to US Tech Innovation by pliftkl on Thursday May 14, 2015 @03:23PM (#9547046)

Obviously there would need to be some level of enforcement to prevent "wage adjustment" once the applicant arrives.

The primary reasoning behind the suggestion is to prevent the H1B from being used as a mechanism for driving down wages.

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Re:H-1B Visa Cap: The Imminent Threat to US Tech Innovation by vilmosi on Thursday May 14, 2015 @09:22AM (#9544990)

If quality is your concern, shouldn't you propose a point based system instead?

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Re:H-1B Visa Cap: The Imminent Threat to US Tech Innovation by pliftkl on Thursday May 14, 2015 @03:27PM (#9547057)

It's not specifically to address the quality, but the way in which those employees are valued. If a company wants to bring in a crappy engineer for $200k/year, I think that's their business. If we put in place a point system (education, years of experience, technologies), you'll simply end up with all out fraud and resume packing. It ultimately comes down to what a sponsoring company is willing to pay. Let the market decide which ones are most valuable, rather than a random lottery.

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Re:H-1B Visa Cap: The Imminent Threat to US Tech Innovation by vilmosi on Tuesday May 19, 2015 @07:10AM (#9569146)

Quality is how employees are valued in a business. That's how salaries are made. Overpaying in an industry is just a big of a problem as underpayment, it's far from a free market as you think.

Point based systems work in many countries very well, I don't know why you think "paying" for citizenship is the answer. What's stopping anyone in the world to simply pay a troll company for guaranteed live and work status in the US?

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