20 ms·

A simple rule change that seems fair and will improve the view of American public towards H1B is visa bidding based on salary (as opposed to first-come, first-s

• jzwinck 11y ago
  Rather than a corporate conspiracy, your suggestion won't be implemented because it would exclude most scientists from the program in favor of bankers.
  • jfim 11y ago
    It would also increase the compensation of scientists (who also have other options than the H1B visa, such as the O1).
  • Fede_V 11y ago
    Scientists applying for academic positions do not count against the H1B limit. That only applies for academic position though, not work in private industry.
• sokoloff 11y ago
  That would tend to concentrate all the H1-Bs in high cost of living areas and in high-salary fields, but other than that, it seems like a reasonable modification, provided that the companies are bidding on the minimum salary they'll pay, not the precise salary (to allow them some flexibility on the upside, but to still make it a market).
  • wlesieutre 11y ago
    Is there a standard cost of living adjustment that the government tracks (how are federal salary scales determined for the same job in SF vs DC vs wherever)? If so, you could weight the H1-B salary auctions in the same way. Wouldn't solve the weighting toward high-salary fields, but should make weighting toward $3000/month for a closet areas like SF less of a problem.
    • uremog 11y ago
      Yes. The gov has both cost of living (COLA) and avg pay per field per location (Locality) tables.
  • _delirium 11y ago
    Isn't concentrating them towards high-salary fields exactly what should happen? The stated point of H-1Bs is to solve skill shortages, and fields with relatively low wages presumably have no skill shortage, or the supply/demand imbalance would have driven the prevailing wages up.
    • sokoloff 11y ago
      Though I love the market system in general, it's pretty clear to me that neither salary and skills nor salary and societal good are anywhere near linear (or even monotonic for that matter) across fields. School teachers, nurses, and regional pilots are three fields I can think of where we may well have skill shortages despite fairly low wages. (in the third case, I think it's because of low wages, but no matter...)
      • 11y ago
• scient 11y ago
  There actually is a salary condition in the requirements. In order to apply for the visa, the company needs to submit a job description along with the salary to the DOL, who then either approves or denies it. The salary for the position has to be above average for the position in the US. Yet this does not seem to stop any of these companies.
  • SeanBoocock 11y ago
    The article describes a loophole by which companies like Tata can pay their H1B workers anything north of $60,000 instead of market rate for the position.
    • lukeschlather 11y ago
      $60k sounds fine, it just should have been indexed to CPI back when the law was passed (I think in 1994?) http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=019f28cb2b081515d27508dd0c18321f&node=pt20.3.655&rgn=div5#sp20.3.655.h http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=019f28cb2b081515d27... In 1994 dollars, that's about $96k.
    • ojbyrne 11y ago
      I wish that they had more detail on that "loophole" - every H-1B application I've seen has to meet the prevailing wage determination for the place where the person will be employed. Perhaps they use a rural location.
      • Lawtonfogle 11y ago
        Fudging job duties is what I'm use to. They will have job duties broken down for the lowest paying position, with a 5% other work, but on the job they will be doing work of a better paid position, with that 5% other work constituting 90% of what they are doing.
        • ojbyrne 11y ago
          Which is not actually a loophole, it's illegal. If a job is substantially different from what it was supposed to be, you're supposed to get it reclassified.
• JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  A proposal that money buy privilege? In the land of the free and the home of the brave? Its counter to everything we're supposed to stand for.
  • humanrebar 11y ago
    Why not? The market, at least, is signalling that some skills are more valuable than others. How else will we decide? Bureaucrats and politicians picking interest groups? That's why technology workers are exempt from overtime rules
    • bduerst 11y ago
      >How else will we decide? Opening up the archaic caps on talented H1B labor. Clearly there is demand for it.
      • UK-AL 11y ago
        Your still rationing. Who works out who is and who doesn't come? My ideal solution would be a gradual removal of all barriers to entry. However that isn't possible. So why not make H1B open to all types of workers(not just on job titles/industries), and build in a bidding system based on salary. Maybe a system if you pay a substantial amount of salary, you're allowed unlimited.
        • bduerst 11y ago
          Why even implement a bidding system at all? The auction is a solution to the problem that the cap creates. Remove the cap and you don't need an auction. H1B visas traditionally have been for skilled labor, under the assumption that these educated workers will help stimulate the economy. This is good as long as the workers don't drive down the wages for citizens working the same jobs, so an immigrant already has to make the same or more than U.S. citizens. Isn't that wage enough to achieve the goal of H1B visas?
          • 11y ago
• djb_hackernews 11y ago
  The thing about your example is that if a startup is hiring an engineer at 80k in the bay area, then they are underpaying and it is no wonder they can't find a US citizen interested in the job. Which is the issue with your proposal. None of the individuals interviewed would be able to compete with the large corporations if a salary were taken in to account. Which I think is fine because none of them actually sounded like the jobs the foreigners were doing were all that special and the talent could definitely be found within the US borders as long as the right price is willing to be paid.
  • justinhj 11y ago
    But according to the article the large corporations are bringing workers in at the minimum $60k salary which is why it's worthwhile to do so. If they have to pay market rates or higher and that influences their chances of getting a visa, their business model disappears.
• dataker 11y ago
  That would only benefit companies like IBM, Microsoft, etc. Startups wouldn't be able to afford such high salaries (many rely on equity or even founding engineers). Software engineers that work in startups are different from the corporate ones.
  • scient 11y ago
    So why does a startup need to bring in (theoretically) high skilled talent on a work visa, especially if they cant afford it?
    • davidw 11y ago
      Why not, if both parties are happy with the arrangement?
      • x0x0 11y ago
        Because Paul's dream of open immigration for startup employees is a giant negative externality for the rest of us.
        • davidw 11y ago
          > Because Paul's dream of open immigration for startup employees is a giant negative externality for the rest of us. How is that? The more talented, hard-working people, the merrier! Also, by "us", you are not referring to "those of us on HN", but "those of us on HN who had the good sense to have been born in the US", correct? Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
          • x0x0 11y ago
            Lump of labour nonsense -- a claim I certainly didn't make -- is your response to VCs/large employers doing their best to leverage h1bs to reduce wages for software engineers? If that's the best you can do, let's just call that you conceding the point.
• davidw 11y ago
  I'd prefer a system without a "magic number" of people allowed in. http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-optimal-number-of-immigrants.html http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-optimal-number...
  • rayiner 11y ago
    Population density is not the limiting factor--the rate at which people can be assimilated into American culture is. Immigration is great--I am an immigrant and am incredibly thankful for the opportunity. But what makes America an attractive place to immigrate to is ultimately rooted in its culture: low corruption, high tolerance for free thinking, low tolerance for racism and classism, respect for the economic contribution of women, directness and honesty, etc. You can't maintain culture with unrestricted immigration. The idea that you can is based on the ridiculous assumption that there is something special about America the place. There isn't. What's special is America the people.
    • brianlweiner 11y ago
      It costs our public education system over 300K to educate an American child K-12. Why not reap the benefits of pre-educated, highly skilled persons who want to make a life for themselves in America? There are only 65,000 H1-B visas per year. Surely the fabric of our country wouldn't dissolve if that number were doubled or even tripled.
      • rayiner 11y ago
        I was responding to the point in the article linked by 'davidw: the optimal number of immigrants into the U.S. is over 2 billion (i.e. to match the population density of the U.K.) But I will also note that just because someone is educated does not mean they share American values. I have met very educated people who defend practices such as requiring women to be chaperoned in public. Where I come from (south asia), coming out as gay is still unacceptable, even in educated upper-class circles. I'm willing to pay $300k educating a kid here in the U.S. if we can use that opportunity to inculcate the proper values.
• segmondy 11y ago
  >> If only the highest paid people receive the visa, then the public would not complain as much about replacing American workers for wage reason. Not true. The public will complain about how we are rewarding foreigners instead of locals. They will lament that about poor schools, and companies not wanting to train local talent. They will cry about how the "imported workers" are taking their high wages/dollars and sending it out of the country. I will like to see every company that get's a H1B worker mandated that they must hire two paid interns. The idea behind this is that as they pay H1B workers, they also get to train younger workers who will not be hired for "lack of experience."
  • serge2k 11y ago
    > I will like to see every company that get's a H1B worker mandated that they must hire two paid interns. The idea behind this is that as they pay H1B workers, they also get to train younger workers who will not be hired for "lack of experience." The (big) companies that aren't abusing the program (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc...) already do this. They hire loads of interns and then give offers to anyone who is up to their standard. It's a win/win system. So again, seems like we are back to the crappy outsourcing consultants.
• URSpider94 11y ago
  When I read through your comments that you added in response to the objections below, I wonder if you consider what a bureaucratic nightmare this would be to administer? You're also creating a thicket of new calculations and regulations that could all equally be used to game the system. Some small nit-picks as an example: H1-B's are not locked to a specific location, so it would be easy enough to bring in employees for the Kansas City office, then immediately relocate them to the Bay Area at the same salary. Changing this will be really hard since free travel across the country is a fundamental US right.
  • zerr 11y ago
    > I wonder if you consider what a bureaucratic nightmare this would be to administer? Except that minimum salary thresholds for H1B's are already set (for each region). We're talking about just increasing these thresholds (e.g. 55K --> 85K and so on...).
    • blinkingled 11y ago
      You don't address his question though - which was, if you set the new threshold to 85K a company can bring in a H1B at 85K in Kansas city and then relocate him/her to SFO at the same salary. This is gaming the system again - the company gets a cheap resource without having to pay Bay Area salaries. Now we have to talk about cost of living adjusted thresholds.
      • solutionyogi 11y ago
        As I replied to the parent comment, this is not how H1B works. H1B is given for a given LCA which is location specific.
        • blinkingled 11y ago
          It can be trivially amended without change in salary - you don't even need to wait for the amendment to be approved before you can move the employee to the new location. In any case the point still stands that there would need to be location specific minimum salary requirement.
• wobbleblob 11y ago
  But what if your start up is a Mongolian restaurant, and what you really need is a cook skilled in traditional Mongolian cuisine? It's completely plausible that such a candidate can only be found in Mongolia, but what startup restaurant can afford to pay a cook $100k ?
  • Throwaway23412 11y ago
    That's technically illegal anyway. Can't discriminate by race/nationality.
    • amatix 11y ago
      eh? Parent didn't say anything about race/nationality - "what you really need is a cook skilled in traditional Mongolian cuisine? It's completely plausible that such a candidate can only be found in Mongolia"
      • Throwaway23412 11y ago
        You can say "I need a cook skilled in traditional Mongolian cuisine" but saying "such a candidate can only be found in Mongolia" would technically be against the law in the United States (if you have 15 or more employees). Freakonomics had a whole podcast about this.
      • walshemj 11y ago
        Analogy doesn't really work is TMT work is the same world wide - and that's not counting the nice opportunities for kickbacks that would obviously occur.
  • lightbritefight 11y ago
    The answer is that you pay to train someone in mongolian cuisine before you start the business, find local mongolian cuisine talent for under 100k, or you fail. Who starts a business without the person that makes it possible in the first place on staff? If you dont have a buisness without someone you cant afford to hire, you dont have a buisness to begin with.
• dheera 11y ago
  This would be completely counter-productive to bringing in foreign talent. The most talented and highly-skilled jobs are typically buried in the mid-range salaries. People on the higher ends of the salary range are your armchair grey-haired CEOs, armchair real estate owners, and Wall Street analysts. People on the lower ends of the salary range are your service industry personnel. Doctors, startup founders, software engineers, rocket scientists, professors, world-class musicians, and everyone you actually want to be importing foreign talent for, typically gets a modest, medium-range, middle-class salary in the US, at least when they start on any new project. Even Nobel laureates and Pulitzer prize winners usually get very mediocre salaries. Having the H1B admission be based on salary would probably just fill up all the H1B quota from Wall Street, not serve as an effective talent filter.
  • Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    Or could it put upward pressure on salaries for those who are high talent but mid salary?
  • JPKab 11y ago
    This is such a crappy argument. You're acting like cost of living at work location couldn't easily be tied in, as well as incorporating average salaries at said locations.
  • deskamess 11y ago
    If a company needs the talent they will pay for it. Do not worry about CEO's and C-levels outsourcing themselves. Either the H1B will go unused or the salaries will be paid. Either way the market will find out what the 'natural' need for outside talent is. There are other approaches but a salary floor plus an open work permit would be a decent start.
    • dheera 11y ago
      Not everyone has the money to pay market salaries, especially early-stage startups running on meager angel funds. Add to that investors who still actually think you should bootstrap yourself on ramen before trying to get any investment to properly pay your team members and employees. There's simply no way a talent-hungry startup could possibly pay anything close to what Google, Facebook, et al. offer. People who choose to work for the startup instead are doing it because they identify strongly with the problem or market, want to have a voice, or want equity. Those people also tend to be highly talented folks who value their opportunities to apply their talents much more than the monetary compensation. Freedom, ego, and voice have always been a bigger attractant for talent than salary, assuming basic life necessities are met. I've turned down multiple $300K+ job offers just because they were too boring, and simple brain rot would drain me of all the abilities that I have invested time learning and accumulating over the years.
• JPKab 11y ago
  This is exactly the right move: The H1B abusers all have the same business model: Pretend like they can't find an American to do the job (when in reality they can but their client is willing to pay enough) and then fill it. In the end, everyone loses, because you just get a non-exceptional immigrant in place of an exceptional immigrant. I've got co-workers who are brilliant guys who have had to go back to their country, while Tata, Wipro, and all the other parasites land H1Bs so they can place a SQL Server admin who works for $45K a year and is afraid to take vacations.
  • bduerst 11y ago
    Except these are wages, not POS goods on ebay. Wages are typically set months in advance of sponsorship, and the volatility from an auction would deter most from even hiring during OPT. Lottery volatility is already making it hard, but an auction favors employers like the H1B shops who have more market signals and tips it in their favor. Since the bidding is a solution to a problem caused by the cap on # of H1B visas, why not just do away with the cap?
    • cameldrv 11y ago
      The best part about the auction model is that you could have it monthly, and then the winning bid would be fairly well known in advance. Say it's 80k for a software developer, you know that you need to pay the guy 81k or don't bother. This also massively reduces the power of the wipros of the world that employ thousands of people and apply for all of them every year, filling up the quota for people that don't already work for an outsourcing company.
      • bduerst 11y ago
        Again, why not just remove the cap? If you're rearranging the application process to solve problems created with the bidding, which is to solve problems from created from cap, why not just solve the original problem? The review process and due diligence for H1B takes months, so signals are still only available in large intervals, which creates volatility that favors high quantity employers like H1B shops.
• fra 11y ago
  This is exactly the right idea. 1. It makes H1B sweat-shops unfeasible 2. It motivates employers to train American workers whenever possible 3. It makes it significantly more likely that the visa will go to the most in-demand skills than the current lottery system does. To those of you complaining that this is pay-to-play: there is something unpleasant about it on the face of it. The way I look at it though is that we are using salary as the best proxy we have for scarcity of a given skillset.
  • cbr 11y ago
    > It makes H1B sweat-shops unfeasible Calling a $60k job in tech in the US a "sweat shop" really trivializes the term.
    • bcassedy 11y ago
      The employees at the types of places that the parent post is referring to are often in a situation that amounts to indentured servitude. They're locked to one employer for a long period of time in one location. They have almost zero control over their situation. They're not stitching soccer balls in Vietnam, but they aren't really free either.
    • sheepmullet 11y ago
      Does it? $60k in a high cost of living area is a very small amount of money. In these tech chop shops they are usually working 12+ hour days doing shitty work. The only reason it's worthwhile for the worker is the worker is supporting family and/or setting themselves up back home. The same reason workers work in actual sweat shops.
      • dennisgorelik 11y ago
        Yes, $60k is not a "sweatshop" amount of money. http://www.sfrealtors.com/US/Neighborhood/CA/San-Francisco-Demographics.html http://www.sfrealtors.com/US/Neighborhood/CA/San-Francisco-D... San Francisco Median Income Over 65 $57,502
• jt2190 11y ago
  Why not let the market set the salary? The H1B program sets salaries using a "central planning" model, and changing the rules for the central planners won't really fix the problem, because employers will learn how to game the new rules. A better approach is to remove the "you can only work for one employer" restriction from the H1B, and let the employee take their H1B visa with them to any job they can get. This would give the employee the same negotiating power as other employees, which will allow them to get raises or take higher-paying work for another employer.
  • ticviking 11y ago
    The problem with that approach is that the sponsoring employer has borne the cost of the Red Tape, and now the employee has increased negotiating power as they are in the USA. Using a market within the central planning of the visa program is still an incremental improvement in the efficiency of the policy and therefore a worthwhile reform to consider.
    • serge2k 11y ago
      > The problem with that approach is that the sponsoring employer has borne the cost of the Red Tape, and now the employee has increased negotiating power as they are in the USA. Which is why you better pay them market rate. This is also the exact reason for the golden handcuffs idea. Toss them a bunch of stock at the 1 and 2 year marks.
    • Zigurd 11y ago
      That's a feature, not a bug. It incentivizes the sponsor to offer a compensation package that won't be sniped.
• makmanalp 11y ago
  There is an easier way - put an absolute cap on larger companies, or make the fee increase exponentially. This way, smaller companies can still get the talent they need, larger companies can't abuse the system. There already is a clause for "H-1B dependent" companies - if your employee pool is over 15% H-1B, you get classified as one of these. There are additional attestation requirements, but apparently not enough of an impediment.
  • KevinEldon 11y ago
    Large companies will create smaller companies to do the hiring or will work through proxies.
    • AstroJetson 11y ago
      +1 "You tell me the rules and I'll tell you how I'll beat the system" - Statement above the entrance to almost every Law School in the world.
    • spacecowboy_lon 11y ago
      Put in an general avoidance rule like they do for tax and/or have the IRS sign off on all H1B as they have an interest in maximizing the tax take.
• nickff 11y ago
  Why not make people bid for the permits themselves? This would select the applicants who are most differentiated compared with their American competitors.
  • nostrademons 11y ago
    It still wouldn't fix downward pressure on American wages, and it also increases the negotiating leverage of employers vs. their H1B employees. If employers bid for the permits themselves, there'd be a large fixed-cost component to employing an H1B, but then no incentive (indeed, an extra disincentive, since the company had to shell out to get them to the U.S.) to pay them well afterwards. And since H1Bs are sponsored by their employer, they have limited job mobility and can't just go work for a competitor, particularly since the competitor would then have to shell out even more money to win the auction for the visa. That'll put downward pressure on immigrant salaries, which in turn will put downward pressure on American salaries for workers who do the same job, as employers could substitute a one-time fixed cost to "lock in" an H1B rather than paying prevailing market wages.
    • nickff 11y ago
      It would reduce downward pressure on wages, because the permit cost would be bid up until there was an equilibrium (based on the present cost of all potential wage savings on the future). This would serve two purposes; first, there would be more transparency, and the number of visas available could be adjusted to find the 'right balance', and second, employers would be most willing to pay a high premium for talents unavailable in the domestic market. To be clear, I think all these restrictions are terrible, and am an open borders advocate, but find the design of these programs very interesting (and near impossible).
• bduerst 11y ago
  This is a terrible idea. All employers will be incentivized not to sponsor H1B visas because it will become a bidding war. It's not a 1-day event - most of the sponsored immigrants have been already working for the employer for months through temporary OPT or CPT. The solution is to finally open up more H1B visa seats and do away with the lottery system. To be approved for the visa the immigrant already needs to be making the same or greater than the average U.S. citizen salary in the same area anyways. Edit: The problem with a bidding war isn't the price as many of you are thinking, it's the volatility. Employers are setting these wages when they hire immigrants many months in advance, and they won't do it if there is a risk they will be outbid later.
  • nostrademons 11y ago
    If all employers will be incentivized not to sponsor H1B visas, then the salary needed to get an H1B will fall to zero, and all employers will be incentivized to sponsor H1Bs since they can trivially get foreign labor. That's the mark of a successful market system: negative feedback loops so that the more out of equilibrium the system gets, the more incentive there is to bring it back into equilibrium.
    • klipt 11y ago
      Yeah but the number of H1-Bs per year (65000, some of which are reserved for Chile or Singapore) isn't set by the market, but arbitrarily by the government. Why is that number set in stone regardless of economic climate? It was obviously more than enough during the 2009-2012 slump, when there was no lottery, but not enough now.
      • nostrademons 11y ago
        Political reasons. There is a segment of America that believes that's already too much immigration for a group of people that don't share their skin color and will be making more money than them. I'd rather see the caps disappear too, but changing from a lottery to an auction seems politically achievable (particularly since it helps Apple/Google/Facebook, all of which have strong lobbying arms, while hurting TCS/Infosys/Wipro, who most Americans would be happy to see disappear), while declaring open-season on tech immigration would engender strong resistance from people who have nothing to do with tech.
• nostrademons 11y ago
  If you change it to visa bidding based on the cash value of total compensation, you can eliminate some of the startup penalty without a huge bureaucratic nightmare. A startup would first hire a noncitizen remotely and give them equity, and then by the time they're ready to bring the remote employee on-site (maybe after a B round or so), the value of that equity will have skyrocketed, making their total comp competitive with big tech companies. Startups that aren't on that growth curve shouldn't be hiring remotely, or hiring at all really. I'm not certain that a COL adjustment is necessary either. The higher COL in the Bay Area and NYC reflects the higher productivity of workers in firms in those regions. If you want to allocate foreign specialists where they will generate the most economic value, it makes sense that they go to tech hubs with high average salaries and high costs of living. It also solves the "domestic worker displacement" problem, which seems to be more of an issue in Kansas City than in San Jose. Also, such a change would be in the interests of major tech companies like Microsoft, Google, and Apple. They already pay their H1Bs close to market rate, significantly more than Wipro/Infosys/TCS pay theirs, and so they would win a lot more of the H1B visas under this system. Someone (any insiders here?) should let their public policy teams know; they may be useful allies.
  • chucksmash 11y ago
    > The higher COL in the Bay Area and NYC reflects the higher productivity of workers in firms in those regions. What do you base this on?
    • nostrademons 11y ago
      The definitions of those statistics, median wages of employees in those industries, and the pricing behavior of highly inelastic goods like real estate. Productivity is defined as output/employees, where output is measured in dollar terms as the firm's revenue. You can run the numbers yourself, but the tech industry in Silicon Valley and the financial industry in NYC have consistently high productivity numbers. Google has consistently run at $1M+/employee for the last 10 years, for example, and Apple makes about $2M/employee. Goldman Sachs is similar. Strong competition between firms within an industry in those locales means that workers can capture a decent share of that productivity. It's not unusual for a senior engineer at Google to pull in $300K+/year in total comp, and Goldman Sachs was famous for having a mean salary of $630K+/year during the height of the financial crisis. When you have a large number of people in a region with lots of disposable income to spend, it tends to push the price of basic life expenses higher. One or two rich folks is not going to move the price of housing: they buy one or two houses (or maybe 5-10, max), and nobody else can charge more. However, a hundred thousand people that can afford a $5M mortgage is definitely going to push the price higher. They all need housing, and landlords realize that they can demand higher prices and they will find a willing buyer. Hence, cost of living increases. tl;dr: Firms in these areas hold monopoly positions that let them extract a lot of money out of customers. Employees at these firms hold competitive bargaining positions which let them (as a group) extract significant amounts of money from their employers. Widespread availability of money in the region makes prices rise.
• wfo 11y ago
  I was under the impression there already is a requirement similar to this yet the general tactic is to hire someone for a job far, far under what they are actually going to be doing. For example, hire someone with a PhD and years of experience to be a "web designer" (a very highly paid one, making 70k!) on paper but who actually does complex distributed systems that happen to serve web pages. Honestly I'd favor an absolute minimum limit. Hiring someone through this kind of visa should be an extreme method you use to find talent you simply cannot find here at any price (not sidestep the American job market and devalue labor) since their visa is contingent upon them willing to work for you -- it's nearly indentured servitude. So you should have no problem paying them at least $200,000/year.
  • serge2k 11y ago
    > since their visa is contingent upon them willing to work for you Which is part of the problem. Why can't a visa holder just say screw you to these companies and go out and get a new job without a huge amount of risk and stress.
    • vadym909 11y ago
      The good ones mostly do and switch to their client companies so effectively a large portion of the TCS/Wipro/Infosys cadre end up at the right places that pay the most. The bad ones suck it up and stick around. So the offshore companies purposely don't hire the best ones.
  • diogenescynic 11y ago
    >hire someone with a PhD and years of experience to be a "web designer" (a very highly paid one, making 70k!) on paper but who actually does complex distributed systems that happen to serve web pages. I worked at a law firm that specialized in immigration and that's exactly what happens. They deflate the title and experience and claim much less than they could/should. The employee doesn't protest because they are still coming out ahead from where they were. All the biggest tech companies are doing this too.
• Retric 11y ago
  You are much better off focusing on industry's than job titles. Otherwise you get into companies submitting for a junior developer with 15 years experience. Or calling a heart surgeon a doctor to avoid the pay premium. IMO, there is an advantage to importing world class talent, but subsiding companies that don't want to pay the going rate for a junior dev is a real issue.
• salem 11y ago
  I would add one thing, that the quota be issued throughout the year for immediate use. So you get a better signal of the winning compensation thresholds and so that people with serious job offers for highly skilled jobs have a chance at starting work within a couple of months, regardless of the time of year.
• bradleyjg 11y ago
  While this is a pretty clever idea the industry and area specific version is so subject to gaming that it drains much of the appeal of the proposal. On the other hand, the objections that lead to the modification also have some strength. So, I'm not sure it is a fruitful avenue to pursue. The law already has a provision to identify these abusive filers -- "H1B dependent employers". As the article notes, Congress let a special fee for such employers lapse. If it cared to, it could easily forbid such employers from filing further applications. Problem solved.
• Eridrus 11y ago
  > Objections below regarding salary differences between fields (scientists vs bankers) and costs of living in different areas can be addressed by considering average salary in each field and area. I would also point out that this requirement is not without precedent and the data is already there, because there is exactly such a requirement for O-1 visas (well not exactly a requirement, but you get extra consideration if you are).
• Aldo_MX 11y ago
  I personally like idea of bidding for the visa, as a foreigner I would even go as far as paying to increase the bid to acquire the visa.
• fiatmoney 11y ago
  Starting with a market mechanism and then "tweaking" it by adding "corrections" by field and "points" for startups is a surefire way to end up where you started. The solution is not to bid via salary or total comp package or other BS metrics (also gameable), but to place bids directly on the visa slots - ie, the government simply holds an auction for N visas in sector X and collects the market clearing price as income. Visas will then flow to companies that can productively use them (ie, high delta between the cost of the visa + salary, and what they figure the employee produces in value. No bias towards high-salary, low-surplus occupations). A low price for visas in a field is also a handy sign that there is no actual "shortage".
  • etherealmachine 11y ago
    Defining a sector is problematic. To narrow and you can just bid for jobs in the "systems administration" sector and then move them to software engineer after hire. To broad and we miss companies that produce non-monetary value like biotech or chemical research.
    • fiatmoney 11y ago
      It's not really necessary to segment by sector; you can simply have one pool of visas. The efficiency implications actually work better that way - a "shortage" of workers in a non-productive economic sector isn't really a shortage. If you think an industry has non-economic benefits or positive externalities the correct response is to help them capture that directly, not futz with the labor market to give them an implicit subsidy.
      • etherealmachine 11y ago
        I'm thinking not of industry, but of academia and research. It's not going to work to just give blanket subsidies (like say, 20k to all Postdoc researchers) - you need a system that allows in foreign researchers, and my point is it's hard to differentiate academic research from industry research. Also, everything discussed is "futzing" with the labor market - it's not like setting up a government run auction is some sort of pure free market.
• shmed 11y ago
  That would be incredibly unfair for companies in less profitable markets. H1-B is about being able to bring in individual with skills that you have a hard time finding in the US, not necessarily about finding "incredibly profitable software engineers that we can afford to pay $150k". Let's say an university want to bring in a Vietnamese teacher to teach about South-East Asian's studies. The university simply could not find someone with that kind of knowledge in the US, hence they want to bring in someone from a foreign country to take the role, and that person is very qualified for that role. Should their application just be dismissed because they can't offer wages that compete with big tech companies offering $200k salaries to foreign engineers? When comparing h1-b applications to fulfill jobs that are of similar position in similar markets, then comparing salaries make sense, but it doesn't make sense to compare wages across different markets and positions, as it gives a HUGE advantage to profession in more profitable markets like big tech/big pharma.
  • vowelless 11y ago
    > Let's say an university want to bring in a Vietnamese teacher to teach about South-East Asian's studies. Most universities (maybe all) are not subjected to the cap. Non-profits in general are not subjected to the cap. The proposed change should only be for the non-cap exempt jobs anyway (which tend to be at for profit places).
    • shmed 11y ago
      >The proposed change should only be for the non-cap exempt jobs anyway (which tend to be at for profit places). This still doesn't solve the issue. You are just giving the advantage to high paying industry, rather than give the advantage to companies who actually have a very specific need that they have a hard time fulfilling by hiring locally (which is the point of H1-B). Let's take for example a very profitable industry, like pharmaceutical research. Let's say for a sec that the average pharma researcher makes $200k a year. Let's also assume that there's a decent pool of people in the US that have the necessary skills to work in pharma research. Now, let's say those pharma companies would rather get foreign researchers and pay them $150k a year. Those pharma companies will still have a much easier time getting those H1-b visa compared to another company that really CAN'T find the employees they need locally due to specific need (but are still not in a industry as profitable as pharma). For example, let's say you work in a marketing firms that does international projects. For example, you want to promote American sporting apparel in a foreign country. The profile you are searching to fill : Speaking the foreign language, familiar with the foreign culture, experience in sport marketing, management experience. You can't find someone locally, but it would be pretty easy to find someone with this exact profile in the foreign country you are targeting. Unfortunately, now, you can't get that person except if you are willing to pay him the same wage as someone with a Ph.D in pharmaceutical research, because you are auctioning for the same spot. Now let's say you go for it because it's essential to the success of your project, you might end up having to pay someone 3-4 time his "market" value, making it unfair to his "locally hired" colleague that have the same amount of experience and responsibilities, but don't have the right profile for a specific project.
• thetruthseeker1 11y ago
  Lets assume that your plan works first year and there is almost zero gaming the system. Companies like BoA or Wells Fargo, the ones who are clients of TCS/Wipro etc, what do you think they will do to account for the change in landscape (and still keep their profits high), there will be lobbying in foreign countries, and, they may make it easier for BoA or Wells Fargo to setup offices in India and move some less important divisions there if not the most important divsions? Here its hard to predict whether common sense solutions will solve the problem, because you dont know what the Nash equilibrium solution here is or you dont know how other rational actors will adapt to this rule. So the govt will have to go back and forth to get this right, the energy is better utilized in the big ticket job items that have costed america millions of jobs (not a few 10 thousands like in this one).... see my other comment on this topic.