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As a former H1-B worker myself (please put down the pitch-forks :)), I can tell you that regular companies aren't hiring H1-Bs to replace you directly. Instead

As a former H1-B worker myself (please put down the pitch-forks :)), I can tell you that regular companies aren't hiring H1-Bs to replace you directly. Instead they contract swarms of us through companies like WiPro and other body shops. This, along with the inability to seek a more fitting job on your own regardless of skill level is the main problem I see. You're essentially shackled to these body shops. You can't go home because of their BS employee agreements that force you to pay thousands if you leave before a certain time, you can't ask for higher salary or healthcare benefits, you don't get to choose where you work so it may be Texas today, WA tomorrow, Alabama next week so forget having a family life, you're wife can't work if you bring her and kids with you so you have to just follow along to their whims regardless. It is pretty much human trafficking once you get here. I can tell most folks here are American, they have no idea how messed up the H1-B system is.

dclowd9901 10y ago
Is it a common reaction to raise pitchforks at H1-B's? I mostly feel sorry for workers on visa. They don't have the flexibility I do to change jobs if they're not happy. That would be the absolute worst for me, as someone who is always looking for a better gig.
- pm90 10y ago
  This is a common misconception. It is a very easy process to change jobs on an H1B. The difficult part is the Green Card process, which gets reset (IANAL) and currently getting a green card takes upto 10 years, if you're from India. The problem essentially is that many of these workers either don't know that they can switch jobs, don't have the skills relevant to get another job or, in many cases, have a sort of loyalty to their present company for 'giving them an opportunity to come to the US'. The last sentiment is a lot more common than you would imagine.
  - ropiku 10y ago
    I wouldn't say 'very easy' but 6 years after you get an H1B you are cap-exempt. So any new employer can apply for an H1B for you right away though it only gives you the years left in the original visa not another 6y.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    >>This is a common misconception. It is a very easy process to change jobs on an H1B. No it isn't. Even though the process is informally called an "H-1B transfer", changing employers while on H1B actually requires filing a brand new H-1B petition with USCIS. The only difference is that this petition is not subject to the annual cap. Everything else - the crazy requirements and loops you and the sponsoring employer have to jump through - is the same. What this means is that there is a big risk associated with the process. Since it's a new petition, it can be rejected. You are literally at the mercy of the USCIS officer processing your application, and they can deny it for any reason. Of course, this also assumes that you're able to find an employer who is willing to sponsor your visa. Considering the legal expenses (thousands of dollars per worker), the hassle and the risk, most companies don't. And if your skills are in a niche field, good luck finding any that do.
    - brendangregg 10y ago
      Yes, but it can be worse than that. There was a different article about it recently, where the employer threatened to falsely report their visa employees as illegal if they complained. Which means the employees can wind up leaving the country and possibly never returning. For an employee who has worked in that country for years and calls it home, this is akin to being threatened with exile.
    - nopzor 10y ago
      I've done h1b transfers before, as an employer. I wouldn't say it's "very easy", but it's not super hard either. I don't disagree with what you're saying in general, but shouldn't there be some cost incurred by the new company? Remember, like it or not, the h1b program is technically designed to only come into play when a company can't find suitable local talent to fill a position. In our case it was a few thousand dollars of legal fees and gov "expedite" fees If we were doing a lot of them our legal fees could go way down, and we'd get good at doing them. The cap is a big deal, and the reason most h1bs get rejected. Like you said, if an h1b worker is already here, the cap doesn't apply -- I think that's a good thing. It seems to be a common misconception that h1bs are bound to their employer. I simply don't think that's true.
  - brendangregg 10y ago
    > This is a common misconception. It is a very easy process to change jobs on an H1B. Have you tried changing jobs on a H-1B, with an employer who wants to stop you, and who gets legal advice on how to go about doing that? It SHOULD be an easy process to change jobs.
  - hibikir 10y ago
    The problem is that many of those workers WANT green cards, as getting one while you are an H1 is arguably the most sensible path forward, and chances are that a company that sponsors your green card will make you pay a penalty if you change jobs while the process is going + 1 year. The end result is that You have an H1, but you not only have to restart the green card process (or at least set it back, depending on the moment you are applying), but you might end up paying 10K+ for the privilege... on top of the other company sponsoring the H1 AND the Green Card. So, in practice, the mobility provisions are only non-onerous in a small percentage of the cases: If you don't want to stay in the US, or you want to, but no Green Card paperwork has been filed. There's also companies that play games with your green card: A friend of mine changed departments (the company he is on goes through constant reorgs, and the company decided that the job description had been changed enough that they had to file a new labor certification. Guess what? If you have a 10 year wait, and every time your job description changes a bit, you decide your green card must restart, you'll never, ever get it. And you can't ask for the green card by yourself: The employer does, so you are at the mercy of their lawyers too.
    - mavelikara 10y ago
      You can apply for a new green card via the new employer (or any potential employer too). Once you get through to the I-140 stage of your second GC again - provided that the new job is one similar to your previous one - you can use your same place-in-line in the GC as before. The green card application can get stuck in the bureaucratic backlog for any number of reasons - for years. These delays messes up with your peace of mind in ways you can probably imagine. Internet is full of horror stories about these things. This prevents people from changing jobs, or making any long term plans about buying a house etc. It is a long-standing request from many people stuck in GC backlogs to not have them go through the _unpredictable_ re-application process, when they switch jobs. This was hinted as part of President Obama's Executive Action on immigration reform. In a memo[1] dated 11/20/2014, Jeh Johnson (Secretary of Dept. of Homeland Security) stated: As you know, our employment-based immigration system is afflicted with extremely long waits for immigrant visas, or "green cards," due to relatively low green card numerical limits established by Congress 24 years ago in 1990. ... To correct this problem, I hereby direct USCIS to take several steps to modernize and improve the immigrant visa process. But USCIS has not done anything to improve this situation yet. 18 months have passed since Secretary Johnson's original memo, but USCIS has not made any move to grant an EAD to people waiting in long GC backlogs. While everyone rails at politicians, body shops etc, USCIS gets a free pass at continuing their ineptitude. The latest visa bulletin [2] lists India EB2 priority date as 1st Nov 2004. Let me translate that for people not familiar with the jargon - an immigrant from India who is being granted Green Card now applied on 1st Nov 2004 and s/he already had 5 years industry experience then. USCIS rarely wastes an opportunity to remind [3] everyone that it receives very little taxpayer money for immigration services and about 95% of it's budget comes from fees. But this self-financing is made possible by leeching off of thousands of legal immigrants for decades. If they could do their assigned jobs properly - providing EAD for immigrants with approved I-140, recapturing unused green card applications from prior years etc - it would have been a huge relief for many immigrants. [1] Executive Action: Support High-skilled Business and Workers - https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/14_1120_memo_business_actions_1.pdf https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/14_1120... [2] Visa Bulletin July 2016 - https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/law-and-policy/bulletin/2016/visa-bulletin-for-july-2016.html https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/law-and-policy/bul... [3] USCIS on Twitter - https://twitter.com/USCIS/status/740574919717715968 https://twitter.com/USCIS/status/740574919717715968
- jmspring 10y ago
  WiPro, Disney, IBM, and others are the face of the "bring people in on a visa to train your job for offshore" -- WiPro often being the body shop. In this instance it isn't the category of Visa, per say, but how immigrant visas are being used. OP makes a good point about being shackled to a company. The bigs (MSFT, others), don't seem to do such, but the body shops certainly do take advantage of the situation. Really, if you look at visas granted by company, those at the top are often body shops and should be both ineligible and required to pay significantly more.
- ap3 10y ago
  Most of us/them are not in bad situations. I was H1B and it was great - stressful during the downturns, but better off than not coming here. Scammers will prey on those with less chance to make it. Edit: btw, when things got bad at my sponsor company I was able to get another company to sponsor, transfered my H1B and continued the GC process.
Spooky23 10y ago
Your perspective is the one missing from this debate. I don't have a problem with immigration -- my grandparents were all immigrants. I have a problem with this three-tier system of greencards, guest visas and systematic import of undocumented workers. These leech companies are farming exploited quasi-immigrant labor while screwing up the labor market for everyone else. You should be able to come to this country like my ancestors did -- pass a physical and get a green card. An Indian technology worker shouldn't be separated from his kids, a Chinese restaurant waiter shouldn't be an indentured slave, and Americans of all backgrounds shouldn't have their salaries kneecapped by thousands of workers with no rights.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  >>You should be able to come to this country like my ancestors did -- pass a physical and get a green card... Americans of all backgrounds shouldn't have their salaries kneecapped by thousands of workers with no rights. If anyone could come into the US by simply passing a physical exam, salaries would be impacted much more drastically, this time by the sheer increase in the labor supply.
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    NAFTA did that anyway. We just systematically deprived those workers of their rights while they built stuff, worked in meat packing plants, restaurants, etc. Meanwhile the urban poor deal with 50%+ unemployment rates.
  - sgk284 10y ago
    In the 20th century the total population of employable humans doubled in roughly a decade. That is, when women were allowed to enter the workforce in a real capacity. We adjusted and the economy grew. Concerns like yours were the same concerns raised by Americans regarding Asians a little over a century ago, leading to our closed borders. These fears were unfounded. America is still succeeding based on the momentum of our former liberal open border policy and in another century or so I'm sure we'll regret having tightened immigration as much as we have. It's crazy that if you're born here by random chance you get incredible perks in life, but if you want to come here and earn those perks you're pretty much screwed unless you've already proven success in your current country.
techie64 10y ago
Nobody is talking about L1B or L1A visas yet. L1B allows these bodyshops to overcome the limits set forth by the H1B visas. While H1Bs are indentured servants and tied to their employers it is still possible for them to switch jobs once they're in the US. However, L1Bs is worse. There are no limits to the number of L1B visas that are issued. They cannot switch jobs. They do not have to be paid fairly according to market wages. They are slaves. Also - I'm on H1B. But the difference is I graduated from a top school in the US and I am employed not to replace an American worker but I have certain skills that are not easily found in the tech industry. Unfortunately, I'm lumped into the same category as the body shopping H1Bs and so I've not yet received my greencard despite paying taxes for the past 7 years. And FYI I've consistently hit AMT for the past so many years and I own property and investments in this country. So, this kind of BS not only hurts American workers. It hurts the genuine immigrants as well. It also hurts the economy overall because although I wanted to start my own startup I have not been able to due to my visa status and restrictions. I would've generated economic opportunity for several individuals. I have also had to turn down CTO positions because usually tiny startups do not have the ability to sponsor H1Bs and they just don't want to deal with the paperwork. I am also working with a founder right now who wants to bring me on but is in a legal dilemma due to my status.
gdilla 10y ago
Not all H1-B workers come via body shops. FB, Google, MSFT, Amazon all hire their own H1-Bs and pay wages no American could complain depresses anyone. This is how I came. It boggles the mind that body shops are allowed to exploit this system and abuse workers who come and do their best to drive wages down. The one solution is end the indentured servitude aspect of it. If H1Bs are free to move around and work where they please, the abuse would end overnight. Free markets work when the labor force also has, you know, freedom.
- TheCoelacanth 10y ago
  Yes, but none of those companies save Microsoft are anywhere near the top of the list of companies employing H1-B workers. The top employers for H1-B workers are mostly bodyshops like WiPro.
- 55acdda48ab5 10y ago
  That's a horrible idea. The whole point of the visa is to service a specific job that was impossible to fill. It makes perfect sense that an H1-b holder should be forced to stay at only one job and not be allowed to compete on the wider job market. The solution to the abuse of the visa is to get rid of all the legal and bureaucratic tests and hoops and auction off the slots instead. The firm with the winning bid gets to import a foreigner. If this is really about filling important roles where it's impossible to hire or train an American, the winning bids should be in the hundreds of thousands. If it's really just a system of wage suppression, well the bids will be low, for all to see.
  - IndianAstronaut 10y ago
    They desperately need to turn this into an auction system so only the best candidates get chosen. It is also tough for those of us who have to work with sub par H1B candidates and clean up their mess.
  - gdilla 10y ago
    If you want indentured servitude, that's how you get indentured servitude. It is also, not a system of wage suppression that people think it is (although it certainly is abused in that way). The entire pool of H1Bs represent a tiny pimple of the US workforce.

dclowd9901 10y ago

Is it a common reaction to raise pitchforks at H1-B's? I mostly feel sorry for workers on visa. They don't have the flexibility I do to change jobs if they're not happy. That would be the absolute worst for me, as someone who is always looking for a better gig.

pm90 10y ago
This is a common misconception. It is a very easy process to change jobs on an H1B. The difficult part is the Green Card process, which gets reset (IANAL) and currently getting a green card takes upto 10 years, if you're from India. The problem essentially is that many of these workers either don't know that they can switch jobs, don't have the skills relevant to get another job or, in many cases, have a sort of loyalty to their present company for 'giving them an opportunity to come to the US'. The last sentiment is a lot more common than you would imagine.
- ropiku 10y ago
  I wouldn't say 'very easy' but 6 years after you get an H1B you are cap-exempt. So any new employer can apply for an H1B for you right away though it only gives you the years left in the original visa not another 6y.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  >>This is a common misconception. It is a very easy process to change jobs on an H1B. No it isn't. Even though the process is informally called an "H-1B transfer", changing employers while on H1B actually requires filing a brand new H-1B petition with USCIS. The only difference is that this petition is not subject to the annual cap. Everything else - the crazy requirements and loops you and the sponsoring employer have to jump through - is the same. What this means is that there is a big risk associated with the process. Since it's a new petition, it can be rejected. You are literally at the mercy of the USCIS officer processing your application, and they can deny it for any reason. Of course, this also assumes that you're able to find an employer who is willing to sponsor your visa. Considering the legal expenses (thousands of dollars per worker), the hassle and the risk, most companies don't. And if your skills are in a niche field, good luck finding any that do.
  - brendangregg 10y ago
    Yes, but it can be worse than that. There was a different article about it recently, where the employer threatened to falsely report their visa employees as illegal if they complained. Which means the employees can wind up leaving the country and possibly never returning. For an employee who has worked in that country for years and calls it home, this is akin to being threatened with exile.
  - nopzor 10y ago
    I've done h1b transfers before, as an employer. I wouldn't say it's "very easy", but it's not super hard either. I don't disagree with what you're saying in general, but shouldn't there be some cost incurred by the new company? Remember, like it or not, the h1b program is technically designed to only come into play when a company can't find suitable local talent to fill a position. In our case it was a few thousand dollars of legal fees and gov "expedite" fees If we were doing a lot of them our legal fees could go way down, and we'd get good at doing them. The cap is a big deal, and the reason most h1bs get rejected. Like you said, if an h1b worker is already here, the cap doesn't apply -- I think that's a good thing. It seems to be a common misconception that h1bs are bound to their employer. I simply don't think that's true.
- brendangregg 10y ago
  > This is a common misconception. It is a very easy process to change jobs on an H1B. Have you tried changing jobs on a H-1B, with an employer who wants to stop you, and who gets legal advice on how to go about doing that? It SHOULD be an easy process to change jobs.
- hibikir 10y ago
  The problem is that many of those workers WANT green cards, as getting one while you are an H1 is arguably the most sensible path forward, and chances are that a company that sponsors your green card will make you pay a penalty if you change jobs while the process is going + 1 year. The end result is that You have an H1, but you not only have to restart the green card process (or at least set it back, depending on the moment you are applying), but you might end up paying 10K+ for the privilege... on top of the other company sponsoring the H1 AND the Green Card. So, in practice, the mobility provisions are only non-onerous in a small percentage of the cases: If you don't want to stay in the US, or you want to, but no Green Card paperwork has been filed. There's also companies that play games with your green card: A friend of mine changed departments (the company he is on goes through constant reorgs, and the company decided that the job description had been changed enough that they had to file a new labor certification. Guess what? If you have a 10 year wait, and every time your job description changes a bit, you decide your green card must restart, you'll never, ever get it. And you can't ask for the green card by yourself: The employer does, so you are at the mercy of their lawyers too.
  - mavelikara 10y ago
    You can apply for a new green card via the new employer (or any potential employer too). Once you get through to the I-140 stage of your second GC again - provided that the new job is one similar to your previous one - you can use your same place-in-line in the GC as before. The green card application can get stuck in the bureaucratic backlog for any number of reasons - for years. These delays messes up with your peace of mind in ways you can probably imagine. Internet is full of horror stories about these things. This prevents people from changing jobs, or making any long term plans about buying a house etc. It is a long-standing request from many people stuck in GC backlogs to not have them go through the _unpredictable_ re-application process, when they switch jobs. This was hinted as part of President Obama's Executive Action on immigration reform. In a memo[1] dated 11/20/2014, Jeh Johnson (Secretary of Dept. of Homeland Security) stated: As you know, our employment-based immigration system is afflicted with extremely long waits for immigrant visas, or "green cards," due to relatively low green card numerical limits established by Congress 24 years ago in 1990. ... To correct this problem, I hereby direct USCIS to take several steps to modernize and improve the immigrant visa process. But USCIS has not done anything to improve this situation yet. 18 months have passed since Secretary Johnson's original memo, but USCIS has not made any move to grant an EAD to people waiting in long GC backlogs. While everyone rails at politicians, body shops etc, USCIS gets a free pass at continuing their ineptitude. The latest visa bulletin [2] lists India EB2 priority date as 1st Nov 2004. Let me translate that for people not familiar with the jargon - an immigrant from India who is being granted Green Card now applied on 1st Nov 2004 and s/he already had 5 years industry experience then. USCIS rarely wastes an opportunity to remind [3] everyone that it receives very little taxpayer money for immigration services and about 95% of it's budget comes from fees. But this self-financing is made possible by leeching off of thousands of legal immigrants for decades. If they could do their assigned jobs properly - providing EAD for immigrants with approved I-140, recapturing unused green card applications from prior years etc - it would have been a huge relief for many immigrants. [1] Executive Action: Support High-skilled Business and Workers - https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/14_1120_memo_business_actions_1.pdf https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/14_1120... [2] Visa Bulletin July 2016 - https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/law-and-policy/bulletin/2016/visa-bulletin-for-july-2016.html https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/law-and-policy/bul... [3] USCIS on Twitter - https://twitter.com/USCIS/status/740574919717715968 https://twitter.com/USCIS/status/740574919717715968
jmspring 10y ago
WiPro, Disney, IBM, and others are the face of the "bring people in on a visa to train your job for offshore" -- WiPro often being the body shop. In this instance it isn't the category of Visa, per say, but how immigrant visas are being used. OP makes a good point about being shackled to a company. The bigs (MSFT, others), don't seem to do such, but the body shops certainly do take advantage of the situation. Really, if you look at visas granted by company, those at the top are often body shops and should be both ineligible and required to pay significantly more.
ap3 10y ago
Most of us/them are not in bad situations. I was H1B and it was great - stressful during the downturns, but better off than not coming here. Scammers will prey on those with less chance to make it. Edit: btw, when things got bad at my sponsor company I was able to get another company to sponsor, transfered my H1B and continued the GC process.

Spooky23 10y ago

Your perspective is the one missing from this debate. I don't have a problem with immigration -- my grandparents were all immigrants. I have a problem with this three-tier system of greencards, guest visas and systematic import of undocumented workers. These leech companies are farming exploited quasi-immigrant labor while screwing up the labor market for everyone else. You should be able to come to this country like my ancestors did -- pass a physical and get a green card. An Indian technology worker shouldn't be separated from his kids, a Chinese restaurant waiter shouldn't be an indentured slave, and Americans of all backgrounds shouldn't have their salaries kneecapped by thousands of workers with no rights.

enraged_camel 10y ago
>>You should be able to come to this country like my ancestors did -- pass a physical and get a green card... Americans of all backgrounds shouldn't have their salaries kneecapped by thousands of workers with no rights. If anyone could come into the US by simply passing a physical exam, salaries would be impacted much more drastically, this time by the sheer increase in the labor supply.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  NAFTA did that anyway. We just systematically deprived those workers of their rights while they built stuff, worked in meat packing plants, restaurants, etc. Meanwhile the urban poor deal with 50%+ unemployment rates.
- sgk284 10y ago
  In the 20th century the total population of employable humans doubled in roughly a decade. That is, when women were allowed to enter the workforce in a real capacity. We adjusted and the economy grew. Concerns like yours were the same concerns raised by Americans regarding Asians a little over a century ago, leading to our closed borders. These fears were unfounded. America is still succeeding based on the momentum of our former liberal open border policy and in another century or so I'm sure we'll regret having tightened immigration as much as we have. It's crazy that if you're born here by random chance you get incredible perks in life, but if you want to come here and earn those perks you're pretty much screwed unless you've already proven success in your current country.

techie64 10y ago

Nobody is talking about L1B or L1A visas yet. L1B allows these bodyshops to overcome the limits set forth by the H1B visas. While H1Bs are indentured servants and tied to their employers it is still possible for them to switch jobs once they're in the US. However, L1Bs is worse. There are no limits to the number of L1B visas that are issued. They cannot switch jobs. They do not have to be paid fairly according to market wages. They are slaves. Also - I'm on H1B. But the difference is I graduated from a top school in the US and I am employed not to replace an American worker but I have certain skills that are not easily found in the tech industry. Unfortunately, I'm lumped into the same category as the body shopping H1Bs and so I've not yet received my greencard despite paying taxes for the past 7 years. And FYI I've consistently hit AMT for the past so many years and I own property and investments in this country. So, this kind of BS not only hurts American workers. It hurts the genuine immigrants as well. It also hurts the economy overall because although I wanted to start my own startup I have not been able to due to my visa status and restrictions. I would've generated economic opportunity for several individuals. I have also had to turn down CTO positions because usually tiny startups do not have the ability to sponsor H1Bs and they just don't want to deal with the paperwork. I am also working with a founder right now who wants to bring me on but is in a legal dilemma due to my status.

gdilla 10y ago

Not all H1-B workers come via body shops. FB, Google, MSFT, Amazon all hire their own H1-Bs and pay wages no American could complain depresses anyone. This is how I came. It boggles the mind that body shops are allowed to exploit this system and abuse workers who come and do their best to drive wages down. The one solution is end the indentured servitude aspect of it. If H1Bs are free to move around and work where they please, the abuse would end overnight. Free markets work when the labor force also has, you know, freedom.

TheCoelacanth 10y ago
Yes, but none of those companies save Microsoft are anywhere near the top of the list of companies employing H1-B workers. The top employers for H1-B workers are mostly bodyshops like WiPro.
55acdda48ab5 10y ago
That's a horrible idea. The whole point of the visa is to service a specific job that was impossible to fill. It makes perfect sense that an H1-b holder should be forced to stay at only one job and not be allowed to compete on the wider job market. The solution to the abuse of the visa is to get rid of all the legal and bureaucratic tests and hoops and auction off the slots instead. The firm with the winning bid gets to import a foreigner. If this is really about filling important roles where it's impossible to hire or train an American, the winning bids should be in the hundreds of thousands. If it's really just a system of wage suppression, well the bids will be low, for all to see.
- IndianAstronaut 10y ago
  They desperately need to turn this into an auction system so only the best candidates get chosen. It is also tough for those of us who have to work with sub par H1B candidates and clean up their mess.
- gdilla 10y ago
  If you want indentured servitude, that's how you get indentured servitude. It is also, not a system of wage suppression that people think it is (although it certainly is abused in that way). The entire pool of H1Bs represent a tiny pimple of the US workforce.