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H-1B Visas: U.S. Lawmaker Re-Introduces Bill to Tighten Rules

285 points by alfozan 10y ago

EduardoBautista 10y ago
Honestly, I am all for raising the wage requirement. This will definitely help to reduce the use of H1B for hiring underpaid foreign labor.
- edblarney 10y ago
  " This will definitely help to reduce the use of H1B for hiring underpaid foreign labor." Surely it will, but it also may damage many companies ability to compete effectively. A lot of talented R&D folks, outside of the Valley, may be earning 80-95K doing valuable work - and most of the surpluses will go to those companies, to the US in form of taxes, and remember those people spend mostly in the US as well. So the issue is the degree to which Americans are actually displaced by those foreigners - that's the real underlying issue.
  - geebee 10y ago
    Here's the thing - if a corporation's "competitiveness" is dependent on a deeply coercive ability to control their employee's right to live and work in the US, with severely limited mobility rights for the worker, I'm not sure I care all that much. If you can't pay high enough wages to compete for talent that has the freedom to choose which job and industry they work in, then you're probably not a high value employer.
    - edblarney 10y ago
      "dependent on a deeply coercive ability to control their employee's right to live and work in the US" This is a little misplaced I think. Google, FB et. al. are major users of H1 programs and I seriously doubt they are not 'high value employers'. 'The right to live and work' is governed by citizenship, which goes way beyond just economic issues. In the 'general case' the H1 program is valuable: US companies can bring in top-talent from foreign places for a few years to do great work. That's good. It's when the H1's are used to displace local workers simply to lower wages - this is the problem.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - geebee 10y ago
        On principle, I'm generally opposed to any arrangement where the employer controls the employee's right to live and work in the US. That includes bestowing the right in the first place, but it's especially pernicious when that power continues throughout the relationship. Truth is, even "high value" employers like google are up to mischief. Remember that wage suppression no-hire collusion? I don't really trust them with this power, and not just because I generally don't trust corporations with this power. Google and the other participants in this no-hire scheme gave us good reason not to trust them in this regard. Now, on a practical note, though, I think sometimes principles need fuzzy boundaries. It's bad PR for high tech employers to talk about a critical shortage of workers while firing $100k a year mid-level tech employees and requiring that they train their H1B replacements as a condition of receiving severance and 6 more months of employment as they scramble to find a new job. But in a same vein, it would be bad PR for critics of the H1B program to get too vocal about the "exploitation" of $250k+ a year SSE's at google. That would not play well in peoria. Honestly, if we set a very high minimum salary for the H1B (say, 200k a year), I think the problems we see with it would largely fade - though I assure you tech employers would be up in arms[1]. 100k does seem too low to me - not because tech employees are "entitled" to more than this (nobody is), but because generally, US employers are required to hire from the pool of people who currently have live/work rights in the US - a country with a population of 300 million that takes an additional 1.2 (roughly) legal immigrants into the country every year. We created the H1B visa largely because high tech employers claimed that they couldn't find critically needed highly skilled workers from this massive labor pool, so they needed the power to bestow (and maintain control over!) limited live/work rights in the US on new hires. So we're talking about a unique and very serious power and privilege accorded to these companies, granted on the agreement that these are rare and unusual workers with high levels of skill who are supplementing, not displacing, the existing workforce. If a corporation wants that power, but then says 100k is too much to pay this worker (in the bay area, no less!), then I pretty much feel we should dismiss that claim with scorn, frankly. Seriously, this is an utterly critical worker to you and the US economy, you need this person to work in the most expensive city in the country, and 100k is too much? Look, sounds like you can compete for the existing labor workforce like everyone else. Believe it or not, $250k a year isn't an outrageous salary for a highly skilled worker in San Francisco. That's hardly an unusual salary for a lawyer or physician, and many of these critical H1B hires do have advanced degrees in STEM fields, which at the elite level are arguably more difficult to obtain than law or MBA degrees. But overall, yeah, I certainly wouldn't be arguing as vociferously against this visa if use were limited to people paid SSE level salaries at google. Nor, I suspect, would most of the people who object to it. The only objections you'd see there would be from the heavy users of this visa, especially the body shops. [1] I do wonder if there's a good strategy in this for google and Facebook, though. Clearly, these companies are frustrated when they can't get enough visas. So far, their approach has been to lobby for expansion of the number of visas, but that is causing a PR problem at this point. If they were to get a much higher minimum salary - even 100k would help, $150 would be better - they would no longer have to contend with body shops snapping up all the visas. I'm honestly very cynical about this at this point, especially hearing Zoe Lofgren starting to criticize the program. But I think what is happening here is that the industry, and their allies in government, are starting to realize that the H1B program, because of the serious abuses, is gaining a very bad reputation, and they're at risk of losing it. It makes strategic sense to get out ahead of this and reform it so that google can still use it but the body shops can't get visas.
- mjevans 10y ago
  I feel like this proposed bill doesn't go far enough. H-1B visas should ONLY be granted for workers that are in such need that they are above the 90th percentile of pay for that role. They should also be limited to no more commitment to the company than their peer workers. Once within the country, an H-1B worker should also be able to leave for other employment (without the top market rate requirement) whenever they choose and with a 6-12 month grace period for finding new work if they quit or are laid off. The entire point should be about bringing valuable future citizens in to the country, and the program should definitely be a strong path to citizenship. It also makes sense to have a different (easier to get) type of immigration for workers that want to start a company (and have most of those jobs) within the US.
  - EduardoBautista 10y ago
    I agree with everything you are saying. Almost everything about the work visa and employment based immigration needs to be reviewed. I grew up in the USA (undocumented) and had to leave because I wanted to try to come back legally. Unfortunately, it's not easy even if I can easily get a six figure job or start a business.
  - learc83 10y ago
    >they are above the 90th percentile of pay for that role The problem with that is that companies will do what they are doing now. Give people titles for lower wage jobs (support, QA etc...) pay them the 90% for the lower wage job, and have them perform the duties of the higher wage job.
    - jrs95 10y ago
      That is a problem. I do agree that it doesn't go far enough though. It probably ought to be like $150k for a minimum, and tie that to inflation. Even if that creates a short term supply problem, that'll just incentivize investment in job training and raise wages.
    - tomjen3 10y ago
      Make it so that if this is the case, the manager goes to prison, the employee gets paid the difference and a green card. Anybody would snitch in that case and the manager knows that.
- treebeard901 10y ago
  In theory that sounds good... In practice does the wage difference go directly to the companies who manage the H-1B employees? It's not like they would pass that on...
learc83 10y ago
Raising the minimum is about the only way (short of auctions) to prevent companies from playing games with the prevailing wage requirements.
- user5994461 10y ago
  The only way to have proper wages for H1B is to allow workers to change company. Right now, the H1B workers have zero leverage power, zero negotiation power and they can't change job.
  - outworlder 10y ago
    They can. It's harder than what it would be for a permanent resident, but they can, as there is a grace period. Maybe you are thinking of L1?
    - vecinu 10y ago
      There is no grace period when you're terminated from an H-1B. There might be one January 17th if it doesn't get revoked but right now officially you have 0 days to leave the country, no?
  - gozur88 10y ago
    That's no longer true.
    - vecinu 10y ago
      The new 60 days grace period rule has not gone into effect yet so it is still true at this moment.
  - yazaddaruvala 10y ago
    To be frank: The companies who abuse the H1B system are smart enough to hire people who are not typically hirable elsewhere, but which also are just about able to overcome their respective tasks. One instance of this is: Hire someone who is not typically hire-able elsewhere, but encourage them to work an extra 30 hours a week, and get acceptable throughput out of them.
edblarney 10y ago
It's an interesting paradox ... the top users of H1s are foreign companies, like Infosys and Tata - they bring in people on these visas. So in a way, it's kind of 'insourcing' not 'outsourcing'. I truly wonder if those companies would opt to just leave their staff in India, and to hire mostly just customer-facing support types here otherwise. In that case, the US would lose a lot of tax revenue (and spending) from those foreigners who are in the US on H1's - who are clearly generating a lot of value, not exactly slouches on welfare or what-not. Granted - it could be that Infosys may have to hire real talent locally. All of this outside the issue of FB, Google etc. hiring on H1's. I wish someone would chime in with some hard research on this ... it'd be nice to know the exact skills of those on H1's and how those align with US labour market ... I often think these laws are passed without grasp of the nuance ...
- pashabitz 10y ago
  The quota of H1b visas (compared to demand) is so low that it's very likely it will be filled even after losing the low paying applications. So tax revenue shouldn't go down.
- serge2k 10y ago
  > the top users of H1s are foreign companies, like Infosys and Tata - they bring in people on these visas IIRC the top 10 were all consulting companies the last few years. You can look at the pay rates vs google/MS/etc... and see the difference. You can also look at the number of green card sponsorships. It's really awful.
- learc83 10y ago
  >I truly wonder if those companies would opt to just leave their staff in India, and to hire mostly just customer-facing support types here otherwise. It's already much cheaper to employ someone in India than to pay that person in the US. The only reason they are using H-1B employees based in the US, is that some companies that are contracting Infosys and Tata want US based employees.
  - edblarney 10y ago
euphoria83 10y ago
Raising the minimum wage is a welcome move to counter abuse of this visa. However, the minimum level needs to be set based on the city of employment and it's living cost. It cannot be a flat rate.
- adrr 10y ago
  Counter argument to that is that its better for government and country to have higher paid employees as it increases tax revenues. Tax rates don't change based on living costs. My proposal would be stack rank all h1b candidates based on salary and take the top X. This would push up the salaries for H1bs and stop the abuse. It would indirectly lead to increase of all engineering salries both my removing negative pressure of having low salaried employees but also H1Bs salaries are public record.
  - cardine 10y ago
    > Counter argument to that is that its better for government and country to have higher paid employees as it increases tax revenues. Tax rates don't change based on living costs. The goal of reform is to prevent employers hiring h1b workers at below market rates instead of hiring qualified US citizens. It is not to increase tax revenue. If you don't adjust for cost of living you'll end up removing all h1b workers from lower cost of living areas - or those areas will simply outsource all their tech work overseas - while in higher cost of living areas companies will still be hiring h1b workers at below market rates. So in essence the wage threshold won't be doing its intended job. However if you adjust for cost of living you can make sure that in all locations the required salary is setup to prevent h1bs as being abused as a cheap source of labor.
- codeonfire 10y ago
  Businesses will just lie about where the person is working. Also this is probably not constitutional. If the rate were left up to states to set it might be constitutional, but places like CA and WA would just set their rate to $60k, 50% below market, because that's where all the rich elites who want cheap indentured labor are.
nbakshi 10y ago
100K in Bay area is not equal to 100K in some other part of US. Also H1B is not only used by the IT industry but other industries as well, where paying 100K may be tough.
- xname2 10y ago
  Exactly. I am in Arkansas, $100k is crazy, only a director of a big department can make this kind of money.
  - learc83 10y ago
    Really, a senior dev can't make $100k with bonuses? You should come to Atlanta. Only about a 15% higher cost of living than Little Rock, and you can definitely make $100k as a senior developer.
    - steverb 10y ago
      Heck, come to Knoxville TN. Lower cost of living and 100K is fairly easily attainable for a senior dev.
- jxy 10y ago
  Not many options left for exchange scholars beyond the extension of J visas now. It'll have some impact on science output in the US.
- _delirium 10y ago
  Maybe they don't need H1Bs then? The stated goal of the H1B is to attract talent that is otherwise unavailable in the United States. If someone is offering six figures and still can't find applicants, I'm willing to believe there is really no available talent. But if someone is offering $60k and can't find talent, an alternate hypothesis is: maybe you aren't offering enough to attract the talent? Have you tried $70k or $80k? You may argue that $60k is a fairly high salary for the area, but that isn't enough to establish that such talent is unavailable in the United States. There are alternate rationales where it would be justifiable to support an H1B-type system in that case too, but the H1B system's stated rationale isn't to allow companies in lower-cost areas to hire cheap-ish labor when they aren't willing to pay the national going rate for the talent they're looking for.
gopalv 10y ago
There are probably some Indians who are celebrating this ... a minimum 100k wage + a cost of living adjustment every 3 years. If this is like the 2015 bill, that also includes the requirement to sign them up for stock options, similar to a US employee. However, the rule does have a corner case which allows bonuses to be part of the 100k, so the employers might continue to pay low salaries all year round, with a dangled 40-50k bonus at the end of the year. Because the tech industry is something with a fairly long lag between demand & supply, the best case scenario is that the wages go up all around & hopefully that is spent in the US, instead of hoarded for a princely return to India. The worst case scenario for a cost increase is that more work moves overseas, taking the spending side-effects & tax revenue away from the US IRS, while the corporate profits are unaffected, just total revenue cuts down.
- EduardoBautista 10y ago
  > Because the tech industry is something with a fairly long lag between demand & supply, the best case scenario is that the wages go up all around & hopefully that is spent in the US, instead of hoarded for a princely return to India. For that, employment based immigration needs to be addressed. Ideally, one should be able to self-petition to immigrate after a few years legally working in the USA.
- yazaddaruvala 10y ago
  > with a dangled 40-50k bonus at the end of the year. There is nothing wrong with this, unless they are "fired" a week before their bonus kicks in. I would really like to see a "minimum guaranteed salary" (guaranteed to the government, not the employee). Basically, if a company employs an H1-B, they sign a contract with the government, such that that H1-B will cost the employer $X. e.g. If they promise to pay at minimum $120K, but then fire the employee before paying them $60K. Then, at the end of they year, the company is fined 60K, or has to replace that candidate with another H1-B to fill that 60K void.
- Hondor 10y ago
  > hopefully that is spent in the US, instead of hoarded for a princely return to India. Did you notice the anti-equality implications of what you said there? It's roughly equivalent to: "I hope that when poor people get rich, they eventually give their money back to the rightfully rich people and don't keep it for themselves or use it to support their poor family or to develop their poor economy." Do you apply that idea generally to any poor people or just Indians?
outworlder 10y ago
> The proposed legislation would increase required salaries for positions granted under the H-1B scheme that replace American workers from $60,000 to $100,000 per year. Big whoop. There are (three?) big players that are heavily outsourcing folks at "client sites". Ideally, H1Bs should be relatively easy to get for the first ones – after all, many companies have a legitimate need to bring in specialized labor from abroad. Then tack an exponential difficulty curve per company. This way, a startup would be able to recruit a very talented individual from abroad. But big corps wouldn't be able to layoff and replace their workforce.
harry8 10y ago
Can you remove the restraint of trade so you can H1-B a president?
- walshemj 10y ago
  not such a silly idea I think Arnie or even a dual citizen leftie like Bo Jo (Boris Johnson) would make a better president
lutorm 10y ago
I wonder if the $100k would apply to academic H1B's too. If so, that's pretty much the end of those.
- codeonfire 10y ago
  What is an "academic H1B?" Students get a F1 visa, people with real credentials get a J-1 or O-1 visa.
  - bbrian 10y ago
    The J1 isn't comparable to the H1B – it's a 12 month visa which must be started within 12 months of graduation. There's also no suggestion of working in academia on a J1 – it's the "intern" visa. I'm on it now in San Francisco, with a view to getting a H1B.
    - hocuspocus 10y ago
      J-1 isn't only for interns and trainees. A lot of postdocs and researchers in universities and public labs are on a renewable (!) 2-year J-1, without quotas (in a for profit company the number of interns on a J-1 is limited). That's another visa that is vastly abused, but in a very different way :)
  - copperx 10y ago
    An H1B with no caps. Colleges have no caps.
  - lutorm 10y ago
    J-1's are issued for a maximum of 5 years per individual. Beyond that, universities can only hire postdocs etc under H-1B, because academic hires are exempt from the quotas. It's unlikely a postdoc-level position would qualify for an O-1.
shas3 10y ago
I think there's a big misconception here on this thread, thanks to the poorly written WSJ blog post. Rep. Issa's bill only applies to companies which have more than 15% of their workforce of 50 or more on visas. That number is calibrated to affect outsourcing companies like Infosys, TCS, HCL, etc. So, while it's fun to jump on the "foreigners shouldn't work in America" bandwagon on this thread, this bill is not what you are looking for. https://www.americanbazaaronline.com/2017/01/06/new-h-1b-visa-bill-darrell-issa-will-hurt-indian-companies-zoe-lofgren-introduce-new-bill/ https://www.americanbazaaronline.com/2017/01/06/new-h-1b-vis... However, Rep. Zoe Lofgren's bill is a little different and does two things, replace lottery by a bidding type system and eliminate country caps, which, by introducing an artificial 8-12 year wait time for Indians, makes even non-outsourcing company employees de facto indentured labor. (So, if you are one of five experts in the world on say, mining safety, you still have to wait 10 years for a permanent residency just by virtue of where you were born.)
- diogenescynic 10y ago
  Sounds awesome considering those body shops use up most of the H-1B quota and significantly underpay their employees compared to industry wages. For example, somewhere between 47% and 85% of H-1Bs are being significantly underpaid compared to their peers, evidence that the program is not being used to bring over workers with "specialized knowledge" as they claim--but to drive down wages. It makes sense though, when you look at the biggest H-1B recipients: http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2015-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2015-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx It's mostly the low quality outsourcing shops like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL, and Cognizant. Instead of accepting 65,000 H-1Bs at random--accept the 65,000 H-1Bs with the highest wages. That way we are getting the immigrants with the highest valued skills and stopping companies like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL, and Cognizant that game the immigration system by applying for the cheapest H-1Bs possible.
  - shas3 10y ago
    I'm not sure about the bidding war. I've been in situations where companies are looking for people with specific skills (e.g. working with specific microbiology techniques) but would never be able to outbid what Facebook or someone in Bay Area would pay for generalist skills in another field. There is nowhere close to 100% elasticity in wages to make an auction system fair. Also, this would handicap companies in low-cost-of-living regions of the US. This includes a massive chunk of the economy in solid economies with low costs of living like Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia.
suryacom 10y ago
On one talks about the actual issue with the H1B. I'm a H1B holder from India, living and working in USA for past 10 years. The actual incentive for companies is that, an H1B holder from India has less rights, they cannot change job or even travel freely outside USA (for decades). That gives the employers full control of the employee. Any guess why companies only recruit from India and China? Because, the country based wait time -- to become a US citizen -- is decades for these countries. So, consultancies will have no problem paying higher salary for someone from India or China. Immigration Attorneys are making a fortune of this broken system; for e.g., every year my company has to pay attorney fee to renew my visa. Any time I change my job, green card process has to be restarted from square one..more cash to attorneys. P.S. I remember when I first came here 10 years back I was told by the attorney to wait for 5 years to be a resident. Last year, in 2016, when I went to another attorney he too tells me to wait for another 5 years. So, they never tells the actual wait time is 50 to 70 years. Even the USCIS don't disclose the actual wait time. So, hundreds of thousands highs killed immigrants place all their bets based on the words of Immigration Attorney and get into a mess from where they find hard to get out. [Edit]: In my opinion, a possible fix shall be to give H1B holder job mobility. I.e., if TCS/Infosys brings in H1B holders to replace American workers; and those H1B holders leave TCS/Infosys the next day; then that business model will not work to begin with.
- suryacom 10y ago
  If TCS/Infosys brings in H1B folks to replace American workers; and those H1B folks leave TCS/Infosys the next day; then that business model will not work to begin with.
  - DashRattlesnake 10y ago
    Personally, I'd have no problem with that.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- tn13 10y ago
  > Any time I change my job, green card process has to be restarted from square one..more cash to attorneys. That is not true. Visa can be transferred in mere 15 days. Why dont you change jobs?
blinkingled 10y ago
This will just increase outsourcing - I wonder if there's a law that's going to address that too - a tariff for software and services brought from outside the country. Seriously, attacking H1B problem purely with salary raises is the wrong approach for many reasons - not all jobs cost a 100k that you can always find American workers to do, it doesn't consider cost of living and further entices companies to look into having offshore workforce. Instead, a slight upward salary adjustment including cost of living adjustments and untying the VISA itself from employer so H1Bs can change jobs freely and making the extension process match the residency delays will go far ways in addressing abuse.
- ksk 10y ago
  >a tariff for software and services brought from outside the country. Its an interdependent world, and such things will probably cause another global depression. "While you're squeezing the other guy's balls, someone else has their hands on your balls" Outsourcing is not a very black and white issue. For one thing, people can't simultaneously claim that "My employers are able to recognize my talent" while also claiming that "My employers are unable to recognize the lack of talent of those other people"
  - blinkingled 10y ago
    Oh I am absolutely not advocating tariff on outsourcing, far from it. I actually prefer a balanced system hardened against abuse - it's just that there's so much hot headedness going on right now I was wondering if more protectionism in the name of creating jobs is on the way.
    - ksk 10y ago
      Sorry, I guess I mis-read your comment. Feel free to ignore my reply :)
- camus2 10y ago
  > This will just increase outsourcing No it won't, outsourcing IT to a third world country, India or China is incredibly hard and costly. In fact I know no big corporation which successfully outsourced their entire IT department. Plenty tried and failed, for many reasons.
tn13 10y ago
Classic case of no-skin-in-the-game politicians making rules about other people with dubious objectives to be achieved using naive policies.
davidw 10y ago
Why not take a courageous approach and let people in who want to work? Don't tie them to one job. Don't pick arbitrary numbers of the 'right' number of immigrants. Don't try ever more complex schemes based on where people live and what job they do. Keep the government involved to vet them in terms of avoiding criminals, and let the market handle how many people to bring in, not government bureaucrats and politicians. I mean, IT work is pretty easy to outsource, so make it hard enough for talented people to come to the US and the work will just get shipped abroad. http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-optimal-number-of-immigrants.html http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-optimal-number...
- serge2k 10y ago
  You would tank salaries.
  - davidw 10y ago
    I doubt it. IT work is pretty easy to send abroad as it is, so if an employer is only looking at cost, that's already been an option for the past 10/15 years. It's only going to get easier in the future. And if it were, across the board, a lot of other things would get a bit cheaper too, no? Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - imtringued 10y ago
      It's not easy when you consider time zone differences.
  - slaveofallah93 10y ago
    In the short run, maybe. After the market reaches equilibrium, no.
    - 10y ago
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throw345hn 10y ago
One of the problems with the highest bidder approach its going to favor senior devs. This is good thing but you also have to look at graduates who have come to the US to study and may not be able to earn that much immediately but are just as likely to earn a lot more in a few years. If the ruling forces them to move them, then it will result in draining the talent.
- forrestthewoods 10y ago
  Agreed. It would be absurd to open our universities to foreign talent only to deny them local jobs.
- BhavdeepSethi 10y ago
  Students from universities already have an OPT valid for 36 months (12+24), which is sufficient time to move to the highest bidder approach.
  - nishs 10y ago
    > (12+24) The 24 month extension is only available to STEM graduates.
    - learc83 10y ago
      What non STEM jobs are hiring H-1B visa holders?
      - ofcrpls 10y ago
        MBAs also get the OPT but no STEM extension.
  - chrisper 10y ago
    It's 12 + 12 if you are stem. Not 12 + 24.
- jedberg 10y ago
  They really need to couple it with an automatic conversion of a student visa to a work visa upon graduating an accredited four year institution. You would need some protections to make sure that the university isn't just a funnel for back door visas, like requiring at least 50% enrollment by citizens or something like that, but it would be a great way to entice smart people to come here and stay here. And in fact remove a lot of the stress of graduating for a foreign student.
findjashua 10y ago
The real problem with H1B, that outsourcing firms exploit, is the lottery system. Issa's proposal doesn't address that problem. Zoe Lofgren's bill, which replaces the lottery with a salary ranking system, would be much more effective, in my opinion. http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/06/technology/h1b-reform-bill/ http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/06/technology/h1b-reform-bill/
- hibikir 10y ago
  We didn't have a lottery system a decade ago: What we had was big quotas, but the same number of green cards as we've had for many decades. So instead of a useless H1-B system which only helped big outsourcers, what we had was a big H1B population that had to wait even longer to get permanent residency. Make green cards quotas bigger and people that will stay here anyway will just spend a lot less time as indentured servants, making them far less interesting to the companies that are actually exploitative. But that sounds like we are bringing in more immigrants, and that's not something that the now suddenly very protectionist US will want to do.
  - mavelikara 10y ago
    Of the 1M people immigrating every year, only 14% goes to skilled workers on H-1B. Of these both the primary applicant and their family get counted separately, so the actual number is closer to 7%. Of these 7%, there is a per-country limits - Iceland (population 320K) and India (population 1.2B) both are allotted the same number of Green Cards. These limits treat each nation equally, but not immigrant equally. Applicants from Iceland get their Green Card in few months, but those from India will have to wait many years to get theirs. This is broken.
- cthalupa 10y ago
  Without a provision to account for recent grads, this is also a terrible bill. Recent grads are going to be competing against people with years of experience, and the pay is going to reflect this. That means there's less reason for kids to go to school in the US, since they're going to have to leave, or if they do go, we lose that talent. They might not be paid as much as someone coming in with more experience, but they might ultimately provide more long term value to the country. Ideally I'd like a new visa without a lottery system that basically guarantees graduates of US universities a chance to live and work in the country after graduation. Why in the world should we institute something that would result in brain drain?
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jinglbox 10y ago
This is an attempt by the corrupt Darrel Issa to help H1B fraudsters continue their wage theft. This bill is an attempt to get out in front of any real reform by making it seem unnecessary. A child's trick. The fact is that everyone knows that Silicon Valley corporations like Google, Facebook, and Apple use H1B fraud to suppress (steal) wages. You don't have to be even one ounce xenophobic or racist to think it's wrong that American corporations hire foreign workers into indenture servitude instead of paying free American workers more money... Look at the job descriptions on the H1B disclosure sites...those are all just regular jobs in Silicon Valley anyone would do for the right money... Fraud.
- dmode 10y ago
  Google, Apple, and Facebook are literally the highest paying companies in the world. If that is an example of "suppressed wages"...
  - flamedoge 10y ago
    His complaint is that it isn't higher than Snoop Dogg
  - jasonlotito 10y ago
    Well, keep in mind Apple, Google, and others were behind a wage fixing scheme[1] that kept salaries lower. And because people see them as the highest paying companies, that negatively impacts everyone's wages in the industry. So, yes, it is an example of "suppressed wages," and if you think stealing from people is alright, I'm not sure what to say. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
- serge2k 10y ago
  > The fact is that everyone knows that Silicon Valley corporations like Google, Facebook, and Apple use H1B fraud to suppress (steal) wages. Just how much do you think they should be paying? > Look at the job descriptions on the H1B disclosure sites...those are all just regular jobs in Silicon Valley anyone would do for the right money... and they hire loads of Americans as well. They hire people who pass the interview.
dmode 10y ago
I support many H1B reforms - it is essentially a broken program. Canadian and Australian immigration systems provide a good model to build off of a successful high skilled guest worker program. Of course, like everything in the US, an army of lobbyists will prevent such common sense programs to be implemented. Raising the minimum wage to 100K is the wrong approach. Computer science degree programs are a major source of development talent for many organizations, and I doubt most companies will be willing to pay 100K for jr developers graduating out of Master's program. This will start a weird loop were US higher education will no longer be attractive and talent pools will dwindle with universities suffering from major revenue shortfalls. And if students start going back to their native countries after a US higher education, it just enriches the talent pool abroad making outsourcing even more compelling. Further, there are a number of professions outside of software that employ H1B candidates to perform important roles - mechanical engineers, industrial engineers, earthquake analysts etc Those fields have even more shortage of talent and a minimum 100K wage will further shrink the talent pool.
- cbhl 10y ago
  CS grads can easily make over 110k with a Bachelor's on H1B in the SF Bay Area. If you're looking to hire someone for less than that... hire an American!
  - cthalupa 10y ago
    In the SF Bay Area. There are plenty of people who have no desire to live in places with that high of a cost of living.
  - kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
    But those markets and NYC are basically the only place to get those starting salaries and only in narrowly scoped fields that are "hot".
- nness 10y ago
  Coincidentally, Australian's can apply for a high-skilled 2-year working visa with the US, the E3 visa (separate from the H1B). Whenever I hear the US discuss visa reforms, I panic a little that they'd alter or outright scrap the E3 visa.
ebbv 10y ago
We need to open our borders and let anyone who wants to come live and work in the US come here. Fear of foreigners is a poison in the heart of this country. Previous generations of immigrants have made the US what it is. The H1B program benefits the companies at the expense of the people for b.s. reasons. I say let anyone come here who wants to and if they can hold a job for 5 years and they pay taxes make them a citizen. People are generally good and xenophobia is stupid.
- politician 10y ago
  This is a dangerous idea. Let everyone in, and then watch housing prices shoot to infinity. Let everyone in, and watch cities deteriorate into slums with the associated no-go areas and warlords. Let everyone in, let them drive wages to zero. Let everyone starve. This is what you're advocating? > Previous generations of immigrants have made the US what it is. Previous generations had a physical barrier in the form of transportation costs to the US. Today, we have airplanes and autos. Transportation costs are a fraction of what they were in the Ellis Island era. Have you seen the housing situation in Rio? The food lines in Venezuela? The intense poverty in India? The pollution in China? We don't have the technological or social controls to handle the affects of high population density that would be the result of accepting your Open Borders proposal.
  - ebbv 10y ago
    Your xenophobia is really sad. The US won't turn into Venezuela, Brazil or China because immigrants come here. Additionally, jobs won't go to zero because more population creates more demand for goods and services which necessitates more jobs. This same absurd argument you're making was used to stoke fears about Irish and Italian immigrants in the past. Now we realize how stupid it was then. It's just as stupid now.
    - politician 10y ago
      How many people do you think would take advantage of your opportunity? How quickly would we expect them to act?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jtcond13 10y ago
It's hard to think of another political issue on which the public has been so completely fooled. Your average man-on-the-street really thinks these go to, like, PhDs who are desperately needed in a lab somewhere. But no, they're for pumping the bottom line of Infosys, Tata, Cognizant, et. al.
raspasov 10y ago
If you're really worried about someone from abroad coming and stealing your job, you should probably work harder and smarter yourself. Can't help but feel that most Americans don't have a legitimate fear of someone stealing their job and this is just a politicians' dumb game to try to make themselves feel important by pretending they are increasing employment and "doing something for their people". Total crap.
- raspasov 10y ago
  Whoever is going to down vote me - watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVXYmMNwGXM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVXYmMNwGXM and then come back and give me the vote back :).
kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
I would like to see a requirement for contracting companies to keep at least 51% of their domestic staff as US citizens. It's obscene that businesses are allowed to game the H1B program by staffing through these middlemen. That is not the original intent for these visas. After the Disney fiasco it's clear that the rules for which jobs qualify need to be tightened up. There is no way rank and file IT skills are so special that guest workers need to be brought in.
- nsxwolf 10y ago
  I found the whole Disney affair to be confusing. I thought the H1B rules were written to specifically disallow what they did. I didn't think you were allowed to use H1B labor to replace US citizens who are already employed.
- codeonfire 10y ago
  It's not only obscene but completely racist and violates employment law in a very open and flagrant way. There should be a lot more lawsuits like this: http://www.computerworld.com/article/3137500/it-careers/infosys-u-s-workforce-is-mostly-south-asian-and-no-accident-plaintiffs-allege.html http://www.computerworld.com/article/3137500/it-careers/info...
luckydata 10y ago
I'm a liberal AND an immigrant and I strongly favor a reduction in the availability of H1B visas, they are a tool for wage control and nothing else.
vadym909 10y ago
Why $100K makes sense. Data from 2014 showing how many H1b and the average salary for the top H1b seekers. The legit companies are paying on average >$100K Infosys 32,379 $76,494 Tcs 8,785 $66,113 Wipro 6,733 $69,953 Igate 2,056 $67,168 Cognizan 1,704 $67,506 L & T 4,380 $59,933 Hcl 3,012 $81,376 Tech Mah 2,249 $73,374 Ust Glob 1,549 $73,374 Deloitte 8,028 $85,295 Ibm 5,839 $87,789 Accenture5,099 $70,878 E& Y 2,188 $88,353 NttData 1,156 $100,889 Microsft 3,911 $113,408 Qualcom 3,086 $105,169 Google 2,163 $126,565 Intel 1,945 $102,883 Oracle 1,773 $113,065 Amazon 1,256 $109,409 Jpmorgan 1,256 $105,837 Apple 1,038 $130,690
- mavelikara 10y ago
  Your data presented with better formatting: Infosys 32,379 $76,494 TCS 8,785 $66,113 Wipro 6,733 $69,953 IGate 2,056 $67,168 Cognizant 1,704 $67,506 L & T 4,380 $59,933 HCL 3,012 $81,376 Tech Mahindra 2,249 $73,374 UST Global 1,549 $73,374 Deloitte 8,028 $85,295 IBM 5,839 $87,789 Accenture 5,099 $70,878 E & Y 2,188 $88,353 NttData 1,156 $100,889 Microsft 3,911 $113,408 Qualcom 3,086 $105,169 Google 2,163 $126,565 Intel 1,945 $102,883 Oracle 1,773 $113,065 Amazon 1,256 $109,409 JP Morgan 1,256 $105,837 Apple 1,038 $130,690
rodgerd 10y ago
Always entertaining watching the HN zeitgeist on H-1Bs or offshoring of tech jobs and contrasting it with the attitude to, say, the elimination of millions of trucking or retail jobs.
- Clubber 10y ago
  Most of the opinions I read consider the eliminating millions of trucking jobs would be horrible for the middle class and are for a living wage to attempt to combat it.
partycoder 10y ago
This post might be hard to read, but believe me I wish to be as respectful as possible and contribute my perspective. Economy follows the path of least resistance. If hiring a local costs $120,000 but a guy you can message via LinkedIn and interview over the phone can do the same work for $80,000 with less negotiating power and less job mobility, then you do it. If you don't do it, your competitor or someone else will and then use the advantage to beat you in the market. The path of least resistance is also the reason companies move their headquarters to tax havens. Then, there is a culture issue. Americans are very competitive, even in situations where the best strategy is to collaborate. It can be hard to work with someone who you know will compete at any opportunity even when it makes no sense at all, like getting angry when receiving a suggestion no matter the intention. Then, everyone is defensive of what is said and how it is said because basically anything can get you sued. The most valuable American management skill is basically how to avoid getting the company sued. Like saying everything on a 1 on 1 meeting with no witnesses or record of it happening. Then, Americans can hop jobs easily. Make someone angry (e.g: giving feedback, assigning a boring task or project) and that person will quit. Not so easily with H-1Bs. This creates a culture where it is cheaper to set people for failure and fire them rather than giving them proper feedback, or letting them spend millions in reinventing the wheel with a pet project rather than seeing them go en-masse.
sunilkumarc 10y ago
Is this bill is passed, what does it mean for a person in India who wants to apply(from India) and get hired by a US company who has a very good skill set but doesn't have a master's degree?
- whenwillitstop 10y ago
  It means you arent welcome
  - nishs 10y ago
    Be civil [0]. That was blunt, non-constructive, and perhaps mildly xenophobic. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
anirudh24seven 10y ago
Does this affect remote working in any manner? I am from India and have considered working remotely in later stages of my career. I have no intentions of leaving India and moving to the US, but I might be applying to organizations within the US.
baristaGeek 10y ago
Isn't it a HUGE problem that it's not discriminated by cities according to its living costs? I'm not an expert in macroeconomic policy but I guess it wouldn't be so hard ad doing the discrimination for say the minimum salary, as business owners/shareholders tend to have a better understanding of the concept of the price index than minimum salary earners. And I'm saying this because tech companies in the Bay Area won't have such a hard time following this rule than startups in cheaper cities. Which would be a recoil in terms of making all America have knowledge-based industries. Wouldn't it? As for people taking the H-1B, would this be something better? Or worse?
- sratner 10y ago
  It is discriminated by city. Prevailing wage for the labour certification is a function of location, position, and level. I am assuming the article is just talking about raising the bottom end of the scale, but can't be sure - it is certainly light on details.
general_ai 10y ago
Long time reader, first time poster. Both lawmakers being Califoria democrats, I don't trust this one bit. Hear me out on this one. I have actually experienced the H1B system on my own hide. As others have mentioned in the comments, today H1B is basically indentured servitude visa. While theoretically you can move to another job, few people dare, especially if they have families, because in case of any screwup whatsoever, you have to leave the country within 2 weeks. That's _insane_. When I was H1-B I chose to wait until I got the green card before making any moves. That took 8 years, during which I did not quite made the kind of career progress I was hoping for. Now that I'm not an H1B, _magically_ I have no problems whatsoever with advancing my career. What a bizarre coincidence. And I'm not Asian, for Asians it takes longer than that. Another type of abuse you often see (and that was the case with me) is companies hire a very experienced worker in a much lower level position than he ought to be in, considering the experience, and then keep them there until they either work up the courage to move, or get the green card. The _real_ fix for this should be two fold: 1. Allow H1Bs to move more freely between jobs. If you're a programmer, you should be able to move into e.g. DevOps or Data Science, or DB administration without risking that some bureaucrat decides that's not an eligible transition. 2. Allow more time for them to do so, so they don't have to find another job before leaving their current one. Six months to a year ought to be enough. Implement a cliff of e.g. 1 year to make this more fair to employers if need be, but don't kick families out of the country in 2 weeks just because the breadwinner can't tolerate the abuse anymore. This will make the market for H1B workers price-competitive with native workers (since they will be able to command market rates given their levels of experience), and DRAMATICALLY reduce abuse. That's literally all that needs to be done. This will also make it easier for people just out of school to get well paid jobs that would today be taken by overqualified and underpaid H1Bs, because the employer will not be able to exploit their ignorance of the job market for long. Instead they are proposing some tactical bullshit that will only get in the way of a more comprehensive reform that the Trump administration might (or might not, the election is over) come up with.
- randseq 10y ago
  Factual correction (per first sentence of the article): Issa is a republican and the sponsor of the bill.
throwaway2017ab 10y ago
I was a full time H1B employee at AMEX for 3 years. Its not only the Indian outsourcing firms who abuse the H1B visa system. All American companies including AMEX also do that. The company never even had plans to give me a promotion, not even increase my salary a bit even though I worked hard than the Americans for 3 years !. They pretty well knew I was an indentured servant and paid me 79K/annum. All salary raises and promotions were going to a handful of lazy Americans who rolls into the office whenever they wish. They will never bother to fix bugs or do production releases( because for them, its not cool, we do only cool stuff like React,Angular 2, nodejs & docker. Customer escalated bugs are not cool, let an H1B slave do it). Anyways, now I am an ex-H1B, I left US and currently residing in Canada with my permanent residence process well on track. I will get PR within 1+ years. No one is going to abuse my status in Canada. I am totally free to work anywhere for anyone. The feeling of freedom when I left US is so gratifying. My PR process is not tied to my employer, its in my control and Canada's express entry system gives importance to my skills than my luck as in H1B. Its a good thing that the minimum wages are being raised, it will control the abuse to some levels,like they did to me, but then there is a problem of jobs being fully outsourced. Why should I bother now. Its all behind me. US and its broken H1B immigration system ! Downvote all you want. I am happy, I broke out this modern slavery system.
- usaphp 10y ago
  > "I worked hard than the Americans for 3 years !. They pretty well knew I was an indentured servant and paid me 79K/annum. All salary raises and promotions were going to a handful of lazy Americans who rolls into the office whenever they wish." You seem to have a pretty aggressive attitude towards people whose country gave you job and paid much more than you were making in your home country. You also seem to have a measure of how hard someone works based on when they come to work, in tech it's who works smartest not hardest is the most valuable. > "I am happy I broke out this modern slavery system" Did Americans force you to come to states and work for them? It was your decision and you were always free to go and find something better in a different country if you wished.
  - thesagan 10y ago
kc10 10y ago
I don't think this bill would solve or fix anything. If anything it makes really hard for companies far from cities to find workforce. 100K base salary is very less in bay area and in most cities, so it's not hard for these companies to hire H1B workers. Think about companies that are far from any cities, they may not find lot of developers and they can't even hire H1B workers unless they pay 100K, why may be a lot more than average labor wages. So, it would be more expensive for businesses. The same would be the case for proposed bill to introduce bidding system. It just gets expensive for the businesses far from cities. Removing the country quotas for the green cards is the fix needed. People are tied to the employer now waiting years working low wages. Remove the country quotas or at least give EAD - that encourages people to move if an employer pays low salary.
throwaway2017ab 10y ago
hackernews' audience is mostly Americans, so expect to get downvoted for any comments that hurts their ego. My upvote for you in speaking out the truth.
- dang 10y ago
  Please don't make up generalizations about HN to score rhetorical points. Unless you have real data to support them, such points tend to be dominated by bias and unsubstantive. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13361461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13361461 and marked it off-topic.
  - throwaway2017ab 10y ago
    we have a winner !
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
maxpert 10y ago
I can see Indian companies who where cheating with getting cheap workforce here getting in trouble.
yalogin 10y ago
H1B is to hire from other countries because there is shortage of skilled people in the US. If that is the case, why not make the minimum salary 2 times (or some moderately unreasonable) amount the normal prevailing wage. The companies already abuse the previaling wage. So making the minimum 2-3 times is still OK.
c517402 10y ago
IIRC this report[1] says the schools in Dodge City, KS are having funding problems because 86% of the students come to school not speaking English and have to be taught English. This is because the meat-packing industry imports most of its labor. Please explain to me why foreigner workers are needed to trim meat off of beef carcasses. Maybe everything isn't about coding. [1] https://news.vice.com/story/kansas-school-funding-crisis https://news.vice.com/story/kansas-school-funding-crisis
yuqewoooi 10y ago
I have heard that americans can be easily dissuaded, but today I am seeing that in the comments here. ITT butthurt americans! 1. It's okay to storm another country, cause millions of deaths, but someone takes a job from lazy american and everyone is up in the arms. 2. Not all people that TCS, Infosys et al. bringing here are morons. They have earned bachelors degree in engineering or science, as oppose to Americans going to college for FUCKFEST or muh liberal arts degree. 3. I will disclose an insider secret. Major beneficiaries of H1B are american people and country. By snitching talent from other countries, they are keeping technology on lock down. No other country comes even close when it comes to tech innovation. 4. America's demographics has changed a lot. There are 40% new immigrants in last 30 years. So you are no actually fighting for Americans, but for another immigrant only. 5. Why not pick on Chinese people? Because Asian girls are cute and Asian men are weaboos? Muh, white dicks hungry for asian pussy. 6. If you want to protest, then use fucking brain and protest against H1B for non-stem jobs. Why H1b is given for accountants, business analysts, campaign manager et al? How these non-tech jobs can not be filled by Americans? Tl;dr- Americans are angry for no reason and will be idiots forever.
la6470 10y ago
I see lot of Chinese and Russians too .. what visa do they use?
jecjec 10y ago
The H1B program is literally a giveaway to the 1%, owners of capital. I am glad Trump wants to reduce immigration!
known 10y ago
No labor shortages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Criticisms_of_the_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Criticisms_of_the_pr...
sytelus 10y ago
Two biggest improvements that can be made in H1B program: - Fill slots by sorting candidates with highest salaries instead of lottery - Allow H1B holders to change employers as long as they are paid same or higher salaries This will create amazing market competition and pay rise for everyone while making sure H1B holders don't get exploited by so called "body shoppers" taking away majority of their pay.
- hocuspocus 10y ago
  H-1B holders are already allowed to change employers. The issue lies within the Green Card application process that is extremely long for some nationalities. An auction system sounds great but it would very heavily favor a handful of companies in the tech industry.
iamspoilt 10y ago
This complements the post: http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-uc-visas-20170108-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-uc-vis...
throwaway012017 10y ago
As an employee on an H1B auth in the US, I cannot express my support for this bill enough. I'd support making the minimum required H1B wage $150K base, adjusted for living expenses. God, I hate the stigma attached to mentioning what work auth I'm here on. Sadly I have to let my work show that all H1s are not created equal. The image of the H1B program has been tarnished because it has been used to import people either for not-so-difficult jobs or lower costs, and, in some cases, misrepresentation of abilities. This bill, if passed, will go a long way in rehabilitating the image of and correcting course for the H1B program. And THAT would be a weight lifted off the minds of truly deserving H1 beneficiaries who are ready to stand up to scrutiny and prove themselves worthy of a program meant for premium talent. I agree with Congressman Issa on very little. This is something I wholeheartedly support and this Congress better be ready to have some serious justification if they don't pass this bill.
mattfrommars 10y ago
I'm looking for serious recommendation on what to do right now in my life. I'm currently 25 year old with roughly two year of industrial experience and looking for a career change. One thing I absolutely want to work out is by applying for Master's program from a US university and finding work after graduation which will require H1B visa. Is this a wise option? I will be moving from a third world country and be mostly on self finance Masters. I know it will be expensive but I'm seeing it as an investment which will pay off. The intended field is in the tech side although I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering. Did this new bill make it far more difficult to get work visa or will the lottery system work? I have a lot to lose if I don't get a work VISA really which would force me to return to home country. Note: I'm not from India

285 points by alfozan 10y ago

Honestly, I am all for raising the wage requirement. This will definitely help to reduce the use of H1B for hiring underpaid foreign labor.

edblarney 10y ago
" This will definitely help to reduce the use of H1B for hiring underpaid foreign labor." Surely it will, but it also may damage many companies ability to compete effectively. A lot of talented R&D folks, outside of the Valley, may be earning 80-95K doing valuable work - and most of the surpluses will go to those companies, to the US in form of taxes, and remember those people spend mostly in the US as well. So the issue is the degree to which Americans are actually displaced by those foreigners - that's the real underlying issue.
- geebee 10y ago
  Here's the thing - if a corporation's "competitiveness" is dependent on a deeply coercive ability to control their employee's right to live and work in the US, with severely limited mobility rights for the worker, I'm not sure I care all that much. If you can't pay high enough wages to compete for talent that has the freedom to choose which job and industry they work in, then you're probably not a high value employer.
  - edblarney 10y ago
    "dependent on a deeply coercive ability to control their employee's right to live and work in the US" This is a little misplaced I think. Google, FB et. al. are major users of H1 programs and I seriously doubt they are not 'high value employers'. 'The right to live and work' is governed by citizenship, which goes way beyond just economic issues. In the 'general case' the H1 program is valuable: US companies can bring in top-talent from foreign places for a few years to do great work. That's good. It's when the H1's are used to displace local workers simply to lower wages - this is the problem.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - geebee 10y ago
      On principle, I'm generally opposed to any arrangement where the employer controls the employee's right to live and work in the US. That includes bestowing the right in the first place, but it's especially pernicious when that power continues throughout the relationship. Truth is, even "high value" employers like google are up to mischief. Remember that wage suppression no-hire collusion? I don't really trust them with this power, and not just because I generally don't trust corporations with this power. Google and the other participants in this no-hire scheme gave us good reason not to trust them in this regard. Now, on a practical note, though, I think sometimes principles need fuzzy boundaries. It's bad PR for high tech employers to talk about a critical shortage of workers while firing $100k a year mid-level tech employees and requiring that they train their H1B replacements as a condition of receiving severance and 6 more months of employment as they scramble to find a new job. But in a same vein, it would be bad PR for critics of the H1B program to get too vocal about the "exploitation" of $250k+ a year SSE's at google. That would not play well in peoria. Honestly, if we set a very high minimum salary for the H1B (say, 200k a year), I think the problems we see with it would largely fade - though I assure you tech employers would be up in arms[1]. 100k does seem too low to me - not because tech employees are "entitled" to more than this (nobody is), but because generally, US employers are required to hire from the pool of people who currently have live/work rights in the US - a country with a population of 300 million that takes an additional 1.2 (roughly) legal immigrants into the country every year. We created the H1B visa largely because high tech employers claimed that they couldn't find critically needed highly skilled workers from this massive labor pool, so they needed the power to bestow (and maintain control over!) limited live/work rights in the US on new hires. So we're talking about a unique and very serious power and privilege accorded to these companies, granted on the agreement that these are rare and unusual workers with high levels of skill who are supplementing, not displacing, the existing workforce. If a corporation wants that power, but then says 100k is too much to pay this worker (in the bay area, no less!), then I pretty much feel we should dismiss that claim with scorn, frankly. Seriously, this is an utterly critical worker to you and the US economy, you need this person to work in the most expensive city in the country, and 100k is too much? Look, sounds like you can compete for the existing labor workforce like everyone else. Believe it or not, $250k a year isn't an outrageous salary for a highly skilled worker in San Francisco. That's hardly an unusual salary for a lawyer or physician, and many of these critical H1B hires do have advanced degrees in STEM fields, which at the elite level are arguably more difficult to obtain than law or MBA degrees. But overall, yeah, I certainly wouldn't be arguing as vociferously against this visa if use were limited to people paid SSE level salaries at google. Nor, I suspect, would most of the people who object to it. The only objections you'd see there would be from the heavy users of this visa, especially the body shops. [1] I do wonder if there's a good strategy in this for google and Facebook, though. Clearly, these companies are frustrated when they can't get enough visas. So far, their approach has been to lobby for expansion of the number of visas, but that is causing a PR problem at this point. If they were to get a much higher minimum salary - even 100k would help, $150 would be better - they would no longer have to contend with body shops snapping up all the visas. I'm honestly very cynical about this at this point, especially hearing Zoe Lofgren starting to criticize the program. But I think what is happening here is that the industry, and their allies in government, are starting to realize that the H1B program, because of the serious abuses, is gaining a very bad reputation, and they're at risk of losing it. It makes strategic sense to get out ahead of this and reform it so that google can still use it but the body shops can't get visas.
mjevans 10y ago
I feel like this proposed bill doesn't go far enough. H-1B visas should ONLY be granted for workers that are in such need that they are above the 90th percentile of pay for that role. They should also be limited to no more commitment to the company than their peer workers. Once within the country, an H-1B worker should also be able to leave for other employment (without the top market rate requirement) whenever they choose and with a 6-12 month grace period for finding new work if they quit or are laid off. The entire point should be about bringing valuable future citizens in to the country, and the program should definitely be a strong path to citizenship. It also makes sense to have a different (easier to get) type of immigration for workers that want to start a company (and have most of those jobs) within the US.
- EduardoBautista 10y ago
  I agree with everything you are saying. Almost everything about the work visa and employment based immigration needs to be reviewed. I grew up in the USA (undocumented) and had to leave because I wanted to try to come back legally. Unfortunately, it's not easy even if I can easily get a six figure job or start a business.
- learc83 10y ago
  >they are above the 90th percentile of pay for that role The problem with that is that companies will do what they are doing now. Give people titles for lower wage jobs (support, QA etc...) pay them the 90% for the lower wage job, and have them perform the duties of the higher wage job.
  - jrs95 10y ago
    That is a problem. I do agree that it doesn't go far enough though. It probably ought to be like $150k for a minimum, and tie that to inflation. Even if that creates a short term supply problem, that'll just incentivize investment in job training and raise wages.
  - tomjen3 10y ago
    Make it so that if this is the case, the manager goes to prison, the employee gets paid the difference and a green card. Anybody would snitch in that case and the manager knows that.
treebeard901 10y ago
In theory that sounds good... In practice does the wage difference go directly to the companies who manage the H-1B employees? It's not like they would pass that on...

learc83 10y ago

Raising the minimum is about the only way (short of auctions) to prevent companies from playing games with the prevailing wage requirements.

user5994461 10y ago
The only way to have proper wages for H1B is to allow workers to change company. Right now, the H1B workers have zero leverage power, zero negotiation power and they can't change job.
- outworlder 10y ago
  They can. It's harder than what it would be for a permanent resident, but they can, as there is a grace period. Maybe you are thinking of L1?
  - vecinu 10y ago
    There is no grace period when you're terminated from an H-1B. There might be one January 17th if it doesn't get revoked but right now officially you have 0 days to leave the country, no?
- gozur88 10y ago
  That's no longer true.
  - vecinu 10y ago
    The new 60 days grace period rule has not gone into effect yet so it is still true at this moment.
- yazaddaruvala 10y ago
  To be frank: The companies who abuse the H1B system are smart enough to hire people who are not typically hirable elsewhere, but which also are just about able to overcome their respective tasks. One instance of this is: Hire someone who is not typically hire-able elsewhere, but encourage them to work an extra 30 hours a week, and get acceptable throughput out of them.

edblarney 10y ago

It's an interesting paradox ... the top users of H1s are foreign companies, like Infosys and Tata - they bring in people on these visas. So in a way, it's kind of 'insourcing' not 'outsourcing'. I truly wonder if those companies would opt to just leave their staff in India, and to hire mostly just customer-facing support types here otherwise. In that case, the US would lose a lot of tax revenue (and spending) from those foreigners who are in the US on H1's - who are clearly generating a lot of value, not exactly slouches on welfare or what-not. Granted - it could be that Infosys may have to hire real talent locally. All of this outside the issue of FB, Google etc. hiring on H1's. I wish someone would chime in with some hard research on this ... it'd be nice to know the exact skills of those on H1's and how those align with US labour market ... I often think these laws are passed without grasp of the nuance ...

pashabitz 10y ago
The quota of H1b visas (compared to demand) is so low that it's very likely it will be filled even after losing the low paying applications. So tax revenue shouldn't go down.
serge2k 10y ago
> the top users of H1s are foreign companies, like Infosys and Tata - they bring in people on these visas IIRC the top 10 were all consulting companies the last few years. You can look at the pay rates vs google/MS/etc... and see the difference. You can also look at the number of green card sponsorships. It's really awful.
learc83 10y ago
>I truly wonder if those companies would opt to just leave their staff in India, and to hire mostly just customer-facing support types here otherwise. It's already much cheaper to employ someone in India than to pay that person in the US. The only reason they are using H-1B employees based in the US, is that some companies that are contracting Infosys and Tata want US based employees.
- edblarney 10y ago

euphoria83 10y ago

Raising the minimum wage is a welcome move to counter abuse of this visa. However, the minimum level needs to be set based on the city of employment and it's living cost. It cannot be a flat rate.

adrr 10y ago
Counter argument to that is that its better for government and country to have higher paid employees as it increases tax revenues. Tax rates don't change based on living costs. My proposal would be stack rank all h1b candidates based on salary and take the top X. This would push up the salaries for H1bs and stop the abuse. It would indirectly lead to increase of all engineering salries both my removing negative pressure of having low salaried employees but also H1Bs salaries are public record.
- cardine 10y ago
  > Counter argument to that is that its better for government and country to have higher paid employees as it increases tax revenues. Tax rates don't change based on living costs. The goal of reform is to prevent employers hiring h1b workers at below market rates instead of hiring qualified US citizens. It is not to increase tax revenue. If you don't adjust for cost of living you'll end up removing all h1b workers from lower cost of living areas - or those areas will simply outsource all their tech work overseas - while in higher cost of living areas companies will still be hiring h1b workers at below market rates. So in essence the wage threshold won't be doing its intended job. However if you adjust for cost of living you can make sure that in all locations the required salary is setup to prevent h1bs as being abused as a cheap source of labor.
codeonfire 10y ago
Businesses will just lie about where the person is working. Also this is probably not constitutional. If the rate were left up to states to set it might be constitutional, but places like CA and WA would just set their rate to $60k, 50% below market, because that's where all the rich elites who want cheap indentured labor are.

nbakshi 10y ago

100K in Bay area is not equal to 100K in some other part of US. Also H1B is not only used by the IT industry but other industries as well, where paying 100K may be tough.

xname2 10y ago
Exactly. I am in Arkansas, $100k is crazy, only a director of a big department can make this kind of money.
- learc83 10y ago
  Really, a senior dev can't make $100k with bonuses? You should come to Atlanta. Only about a 15% higher cost of living than Little Rock, and you can definitely make $100k as a senior developer.
  - steverb 10y ago
    Heck, come to Knoxville TN. Lower cost of living and 100K is fairly easily attainable for a senior dev.
jxy 10y ago
Not many options left for exchange scholars beyond the extension of J visas now. It'll have some impact on science output in the US.
_delirium 10y ago
Maybe they don't need H1Bs then? The stated goal of the H1B is to attract talent that is otherwise unavailable in the United States. If someone is offering six figures and still can't find applicants, I'm willing to believe there is really no available talent. But if someone is offering $60k and can't find talent, an alternate hypothesis is: maybe you aren't offering enough to attract the talent? Have you tried $70k or $80k? You may argue that $60k is a fairly high salary for the area, but that isn't enough to establish that such talent is unavailable in the United States. There are alternate rationales where it would be justifiable to support an H1B-type system in that case too, but the H1B system's stated rationale isn't to allow companies in lower-cost areas to hire cheap-ish labor when they aren't willing to pay the national going rate for the talent they're looking for.

gopalv 10y ago

There are probably some Indians who are celebrating this ... a minimum 100k wage + a cost of living adjustment every 3 years. If this is like the 2015 bill, that also includes the requirement to sign them up for stock options, similar to a US employee. However, the rule does have a corner case which allows bonuses to be part of the 100k, so the employers might continue to pay low salaries all year round, with a dangled 40-50k bonus at the end of the year. Because the tech industry is something with a fairly long lag between demand & supply, the best case scenario is that the wages go up all around & hopefully that is spent in the US, instead of hoarded for a princely return to India. The worst case scenario for a cost increase is that more work moves overseas, taking the spending side-effects & tax revenue away from the US IRS, while the corporate profits are unaffected, just total revenue cuts down.

EduardoBautista 10y ago
> Because the tech industry is something with a fairly long lag between demand & supply, the best case scenario is that the wages go up all around & hopefully that is spent in the US, instead of hoarded for a princely return to India. For that, employment based immigration needs to be addressed. Ideally, one should be able to self-petition to immigrate after a few years legally working in the USA.
yazaddaruvala 10y ago
> with a dangled 40-50k bonus at the end of the year. There is nothing wrong with this, unless they are "fired" a week before their bonus kicks in. I would really like to see a "minimum guaranteed salary" (guaranteed to the government, not the employee). Basically, if a company employs an H1-B, they sign a contract with the government, such that that H1-B will cost the employer $X. e.g. If they promise to pay at minimum $120K, but then fire the employee before paying them $60K. Then, at the end of they year, the company is fined 60K, or has to replace that candidate with another H1-B to fill that 60K void.
Hondor 10y ago
> hopefully that is spent in the US, instead of hoarded for a princely return to India. Did you notice the anti-equality implications of what you said there? It's roughly equivalent to: "I hope that when poor people get rich, they eventually give their money back to the rightfully rich people and don't keep it for themselves or use it to support their poor family or to develop their poor economy." Do you apply that idea generally to any poor people or just Indians?

outworlder 10y ago

> The proposed legislation would increase required salaries for positions granted under the H-1B scheme that replace American workers from $60,000 to $100,000 per year. Big whoop. There are (three?) big players that are heavily outsourcing folks at "client sites". Ideally, H1Bs should be relatively easy to get for the first ones – after all, many companies have a legitimate need to bring in specialized labor from abroad. Then tack an exponential difficulty curve per company. This way, a startup would be able to recruit a very talented individual from abroad. But big corps wouldn't be able to layoff and replace their workforce.

harry8 10y ago

Can you remove the restraint of trade so you can H1-B a president?

walshemj 10y ago
not such a silly idea I think Arnie or even a dual citizen leftie like Bo Jo (Boris Johnson) would make a better president

lutorm 10y ago

I wonder if the $100k would apply to academic H1B's too. If so, that's pretty much the end of those.

codeonfire 10y ago
What is an "academic H1B?" Students get a F1 visa, people with real credentials get a J-1 or O-1 visa.
- bbrian 10y ago
  The J1 isn't comparable to the H1B – it's a 12 month visa which must be started within 12 months of graduation. There's also no suggestion of working in academia on a J1 – it's the "intern" visa. I'm on it now in San Francisco, with a view to getting a H1B.
  - hocuspocus 10y ago
    J-1 isn't only for interns and trainees. A lot of postdocs and researchers in universities and public labs are on a renewable (!) 2-year J-1, without quotas (in a for profit company the number of interns on a J-1 is limited). That's another visa that is vastly abused, but in a very different way :)
- copperx 10y ago
  An H1B with no caps. Colleges have no caps.
- lutorm 10y ago
  J-1's are issued for a maximum of 5 years per individual. Beyond that, universities can only hire postdocs etc under H-1B, because academic hires are exempt from the quotas. It's unlikely a postdoc-level position would qualify for an O-1.

shas3 10y ago

I think there's a big misconception here on this thread, thanks to the poorly written WSJ blog post. Rep. Issa's bill only applies to companies which have more than 15% of their workforce of 50 or more on visas. That number is calibrated to affect outsourcing companies like Infosys, TCS, HCL, etc. So, while it's fun to jump on the "foreigners shouldn't work in America" bandwagon on this thread, this bill is not what you are looking for. https://www.americanbazaaronline.com/2017/01/06/new-h-1b-visa-bill-darrell-issa-will-hurt-indian-companies-zoe-lofgren-introduce-new-bill/ https://www.americanbazaaronline.com/2017/01/06/new-h-1b-vis... However, Rep. Zoe Lofgren's bill is a little different and does two things, replace lottery by a bidding type system and eliminate country caps, which, by introducing an artificial 8-12 year wait time for Indians, makes even non-outsourcing company employees de facto indentured labor. (So, if you are one of five experts in the world on say, mining safety, you still have to wait 10 years for a permanent residency just by virtue of where you were born.)

diogenescynic 10y ago
Sounds awesome considering those body shops use up most of the H-1B quota and significantly underpay their employees compared to industry wages. For example, somewhere between 47% and 85% of H-1Bs are being significantly underpaid compared to their peers, evidence that the program is not being used to bring over workers with "specialized knowledge" as they claim--but to drive down wages. It makes sense though, when you look at the biggest H-1B recipients: http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2015-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2015-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx It's mostly the low quality outsourcing shops like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL, and Cognizant. Instead of accepting 65,000 H-1Bs at random--accept the 65,000 H-1Bs with the highest wages. That way we are getting the immigrants with the highest valued skills and stopping companies like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL, and Cognizant that game the immigration system by applying for the cheapest H-1Bs possible.
- shas3 10y ago
  I'm not sure about the bidding war. I've been in situations where companies are looking for people with specific skills (e.g. working with specific microbiology techniques) but would never be able to outbid what Facebook or someone in Bay Area would pay for generalist skills in another field. There is nowhere close to 100% elasticity in wages to make an auction system fair. Also, this would handicap companies in low-cost-of-living regions of the US. This includes a massive chunk of the economy in solid economies with low costs of living like Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia.

suryacom 10y ago

On one talks about the actual issue with the H1B. I'm a H1B holder from India, living and working in USA for past 10 years. The actual incentive for companies is that, an H1B holder from India has less rights, they cannot change job or even travel freely outside USA (for decades). That gives the employers full control of the employee. Any guess why companies only recruit from India and China? Because, the country based wait time -- to become a US citizen -- is decades for these countries. So, consultancies will have no problem paying higher salary for someone from India or China. Immigration Attorneys are making a fortune of this broken system; for e.g., every year my company has to pay attorney fee to renew my visa. Any time I change my job, green card process has to be restarted from square one..more cash to attorneys. P.S. I remember when I first came here 10 years back I was told by the attorney to wait for 5 years to be a resident. Last year, in 2016, when I went to another attorney he too tells me to wait for another 5 years. So, they never tells the actual wait time is 50 to 70 years. Even the USCIS don't disclose the actual wait time. So, hundreds of thousands highs killed immigrants place all their bets based on the words of Immigration Attorney and get into a mess from where they find hard to get out. [Edit]: In my opinion, a possible fix shall be to give H1B holder job mobility. I.e., if TCS/Infosys brings in H1B holders to replace American workers; and those H1B holders leave TCS/Infosys the next day; then that business model will not work to begin with.

suryacom 10y ago
If TCS/Infosys brings in H1B folks to replace American workers; and those H1B folks leave TCS/Infosys the next day; then that business model will not work to begin with.
- DashRattlesnake 10y ago
  Personally, I'd have no problem with that.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
tn13 10y ago
> Any time I change my job, green card process has to be restarted from square one..more cash to attorneys. That is not true. Visa can be transferred in mere 15 days. Why dont you change jobs?

blinkingled 10y ago

This will just increase outsourcing - I wonder if there's a law that's going to address that too - a tariff for software and services brought from outside the country. Seriously, attacking H1B problem purely with salary raises is the wrong approach for many reasons - not all jobs cost a 100k that you can always find American workers to do, it doesn't consider cost of living and further entices companies to look into having offshore workforce. Instead, a slight upward salary adjustment including cost of living adjustments and untying the VISA itself from employer so H1Bs can change jobs freely and making the extension process match the residency delays will go far ways in addressing abuse.

ksk 10y ago
>a tariff for software and services brought from outside the country. Its an interdependent world, and such things will probably cause another global depression. "While you're squeezing the other guy's balls, someone else has their hands on your balls" Outsourcing is not a very black and white issue. For one thing, people can't simultaneously claim that "My employers are able to recognize my talent" while also claiming that "My employers are unable to recognize the lack of talent of those other people"
- blinkingled 10y ago
  Oh I am absolutely not advocating tariff on outsourcing, far from it. I actually prefer a balanced system hardened against abuse - it's just that there's so much hot headedness going on right now I was wondering if more protectionism in the name of creating jobs is on the way.
  - ksk 10y ago
    Sorry, I guess I mis-read your comment. Feel free to ignore my reply :)
camus2 10y ago
> This will just increase outsourcing No it won't, outsourcing IT to a third world country, India or China is incredibly hard and costly. In fact I know no big corporation which successfully outsourced their entire IT department. Plenty tried and failed, for many reasons.

tn13 10y ago

Classic case of no-skin-in-the-game politicians making rules about other people with dubious objectives to be achieved using naive policies.

davidw 10y ago

Why not take a courageous approach and let people in who want to work? Don't tie them to one job. Don't pick arbitrary numbers of the 'right' number of immigrants. Don't try ever more complex schemes based on where people live and what job they do. Keep the government involved to vet them in terms of avoiding criminals, and let the market handle how many people to bring in, not government bureaucrats and politicians. I mean, IT work is pretty easy to outsource, so make it hard enough for talented people to come to the US and the work will just get shipped abroad. http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-optimal-number-of-immigrants.html http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-optimal-number...

serge2k 10y ago
You would tank salaries.
- davidw 10y ago
  I doubt it. IT work is pretty easy to send abroad as it is, so if an employer is only looking at cost, that's already been an option for the past 10/15 years. It's only going to get easier in the future. And if it were, across the board, a lot of other things would get a bit cheaper too, no? Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - imtringued 10y ago
    It's not easy when you consider time zone differences.
- slaveofallah93 10y ago
  In the short run, maybe. After the market reaches equilibrium, no.
  - 10y ago

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throw345hn 10y ago

One of the problems with the highest bidder approach its going to favor senior devs. This is good thing but you also have to look at graduates who have come to the US to study and may not be able to earn that much immediately but are just as likely to earn a lot more in a few years. If the ruling forces them to move them, then it will result in draining the talent.

forrestthewoods 10y ago
Agreed. It would be absurd to open our universities to foreign talent only to deny them local jobs.
BhavdeepSethi 10y ago
Students from universities already have an OPT valid for 36 months (12+24), which is sufficient time to move to the highest bidder approach.
- nishs 10y ago
  > (12+24) The 24 month extension is only available to STEM graduates.
  - learc83 10y ago
    What non STEM jobs are hiring H-1B visa holders?
    - ofcrpls 10y ago
      MBAs also get the OPT but no STEM extension.
- chrisper 10y ago
  It's 12 + 12 if you are stem. Not 12 + 24.
jedberg 10y ago
They really need to couple it with an automatic conversion of a student visa to a work visa upon graduating an accredited four year institution. You would need some protections to make sure that the university isn't just a funnel for back door visas, like requiring at least 50% enrollment by citizens or something like that, but it would be a great way to entice smart people to come here and stay here. And in fact remove a lot of the stress of graduating for a foreign student.

findjashua 10y ago

The real problem with H1B, that outsourcing firms exploit, is the lottery system. Issa's proposal doesn't address that problem. Zoe Lofgren's bill, which replaces the lottery with a salary ranking system, would be much more effective, in my opinion. http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/06/technology/h1b-reform-bill/ http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/06/technology/h1b-reform-bill/

hibikir 10y ago
We didn't have a lottery system a decade ago: What we had was big quotas, but the same number of green cards as we've had for many decades. So instead of a useless H1-B system which only helped big outsourcers, what we had was a big H1B population that had to wait even longer to get permanent residency. Make green cards quotas bigger and people that will stay here anyway will just spend a lot less time as indentured servants, making them far less interesting to the companies that are actually exploitative. But that sounds like we are bringing in more immigrants, and that's not something that the now suddenly very protectionist US will want to do.
- mavelikara 10y ago
  Of the 1M people immigrating every year, only 14% goes to skilled workers on H-1B. Of these both the primary applicant and their family get counted separately, so the actual number is closer to 7%. Of these 7%, there is a per-country limits - Iceland (population 320K) and India (population 1.2B) both are allotted the same number of Green Cards. These limits treat each nation equally, but not immigrant equally. Applicants from Iceland get their Green Card in few months, but those from India will have to wait many years to get theirs. This is broken.
cthalupa 10y ago
Without a provision to account for recent grads, this is also a terrible bill. Recent grads are going to be competing against people with years of experience, and the pay is going to reflect this. That means there's less reason for kids to go to school in the US, since they're going to have to leave, or if they do go, we lose that talent. They might not be paid as much as someone coming in with more experience, but they might ultimately provide more long term value to the country. Ideally I'd like a new visa without a lottery system that basically guarantees graduates of US universities a chance to live and work in the country after graduation. Why in the world should we institute something that would result in brain drain?

deleted 10y ago

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jinglbox 10y ago

This is an attempt by the corrupt Darrel Issa to help H1B fraudsters continue their wage theft. This bill is an attempt to get out in front of any real reform by making it seem unnecessary. A child's trick. The fact is that everyone knows that Silicon Valley corporations like Google, Facebook, and Apple use H1B fraud to suppress (steal) wages. You don't have to be even one ounce xenophobic or racist to think it's wrong that American corporations hire foreign workers into indenture servitude instead of paying free American workers more money... Look at the job descriptions on the H1B disclosure sites...those are all just regular jobs in Silicon Valley anyone would do for the right money... Fraud.

dmode 10y ago
Google, Apple, and Facebook are literally the highest paying companies in the world. If that is an example of "suppressed wages"...
- flamedoge 10y ago
  His complaint is that it isn't higher than Snoop Dogg
- jasonlotito 10y ago
  Well, keep in mind Apple, Google, and others were behind a wage fixing scheme[1] that kept salaries lower. And because people see them as the highest paying companies, that negatively impacts everyone's wages in the industry. So, yes, it is an example of "suppressed wages," and if you think stealing from people is alright, I'm not sure what to say. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
serge2k 10y ago
> The fact is that everyone knows that Silicon Valley corporations like Google, Facebook, and Apple use H1B fraud to suppress (steal) wages. Just how much do you think they should be paying? > Look at the job descriptions on the H1B disclosure sites...those are all just regular jobs in Silicon Valley anyone would do for the right money... and they hire loads of Americans as well. They hire people who pass the interview.

dmode 10y ago

I support many H1B reforms - it is essentially a broken program. Canadian and Australian immigration systems provide a good model to build off of a successful high skilled guest worker program. Of course, like everything in the US, an army of lobbyists will prevent such common sense programs to be implemented. Raising the minimum wage to 100K is the wrong approach. Computer science degree programs are a major source of development talent for many organizations, and I doubt most companies will be willing to pay 100K for jr developers graduating out of Master's program. This will start a weird loop were US higher education will no longer be attractive and talent pools will dwindle with universities suffering from major revenue shortfalls. And if students start going back to their native countries after a US higher education, it just enriches the talent pool abroad making outsourcing even more compelling. Further, there are a number of professions outside of software that employ H1B candidates to perform important roles - mechanical engineers, industrial engineers, earthquake analysts etc Those fields have even more shortage of talent and a minimum 100K wage will further shrink the talent pool.

cbhl 10y ago
CS grads can easily make over 110k with a Bachelor's on H1B in the SF Bay Area. If you're looking to hire someone for less than that... hire an American!
- cthalupa 10y ago
  In the SF Bay Area. There are plenty of people who have no desire to live in places with that high of a cost of living.
- kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
  But those markets and NYC are basically the only place to get those starting salaries and only in narrowly scoped fields that are "hot".
nness 10y ago
Coincidentally, Australian's can apply for a high-skilled 2-year working visa with the US, the E3 visa (separate from the H1B). Whenever I hear the US discuss visa reforms, I panic a little that they'd alter or outright scrap the E3 visa.

ebbv 10y ago

We need to open our borders and let anyone who wants to come live and work in the US come here. Fear of foreigners is a poison in the heart of this country. Previous generations of immigrants have made the US what it is. The H1B program benefits the companies at the expense of the people for b.s. reasons. I say let anyone come here who wants to and if they can hold a job for 5 years and they pay taxes make them a citizen. People are generally good and xenophobia is stupid.

politician 10y ago
This is a dangerous idea. Let everyone in, and then watch housing prices shoot to infinity. Let everyone in, and watch cities deteriorate into slums with the associated no-go areas and warlords. Let everyone in, let them drive wages to zero. Let everyone starve. This is what you're advocating? > Previous generations of immigrants have made the US what it is. Previous generations had a physical barrier in the form of transportation costs to the US. Today, we have airplanes and autos. Transportation costs are a fraction of what they were in the Ellis Island era. Have you seen the housing situation in Rio? The food lines in Venezuela? The intense poverty in India? The pollution in China? We don't have the technological or social controls to handle the affects of high population density that would be the result of accepting your Open Borders proposal.
- ebbv 10y ago
  Your xenophobia is really sad. The US won't turn into Venezuela, Brazil or China because immigrants come here. Additionally, jobs won't go to zero because more population creates more demand for goods and services which necessitates more jobs. This same absurd argument you're making was used to stoke fears about Irish and Italian immigrants in the past. Now we realize how stupid it was then. It's just as stupid now.
  - politician 10y ago
    How many people do you think would take advantage of your opportunity? How quickly would we expect them to act?

deleted 10y ago

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jtcond13 10y ago

It's hard to think of another political issue on which the public has been so completely fooled. Your average man-on-the-street really thinks these go to, like, PhDs who are desperately needed in a lab somewhere. But no, they're for pumping the bottom line of Infosys, Tata, Cognizant, et. al.

raspasov 10y ago

If you're really worried about someone from abroad coming and stealing your job, you should probably work harder and smarter yourself. Can't help but feel that most Americans don't have a legitimate fear of someone stealing their job and this is just a politicians' dumb game to try to make themselves feel important by pretending they are increasing employment and "doing something for their people". Total crap.

raspasov 10y ago
Whoever is going to down vote me - watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVXYmMNwGXM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVXYmMNwGXM and then come back and give me the vote back :).

kevin_thibedeau 10y ago

I would like to see a requirement for contracting companies to keep at least 51% of their domestic staff as US citizens. It's obscene that businesses are allowed to game the H1B program by staffing through these middlemen. That is not the original intent for these visas. After the Disney fiasco it's clear that the rules for which jobs qualify need to be tightened up. There is no way rank and file IT skills are so special that guest workers need to be brought in.

nsxwolf 10y ago
I found the whole Disney affair to be confusing. I thought the H1B rules were written to specifically disallow what they did. I didn't think you were allowed to use H1B labor to replace US citizens who are already employed.
codeonfire 10y ago
It's not only obscene but completely racist and violates employment law in a very open and flagrant way. There should be a lot more lawsuits like this: http://www.computerworld.com/article/3137500/it-careers/infosys-u-s-workforce-is-mostly-south-asian-and-no-accident-plaintiffs-allege.html http://www.computerworld.com/article/3137500/it-careers/info...

luckydata 10y ago

I'm a liberal AND an immigrant and I strongly favor a reduction in the availability of H1B visas, they are a tool for wage control and nothing else.

vadym909 10y ago

Why $100K makes sense. Data from 2014 showing how many H1b and the average salary for the top H1b seekers. The legit companies are paying on average >$100K Infosys 32,379 $76,494 Tcs 8,785 $66,113 Wipro 6,733 $69,953 Igate 2,056 $67,168 Cognizan 1,704 $67,506 L & T 4,380 $59,933 Hcl 3,012 $81,376 Tech Mah 2,249 $73,374 Ust Glob 1,549 $73,374 Deloitte 8,028 $85,295 Ibm 5,839 $87,789 Accenture5,099 $70,878 E& Y 2,188 $88,353 NttData 1,156 $100,889 Microsft 3,911 $113,408 Qualcom 3,086 $105,169 Google 2,163 $126,565 Intel 1,945 $102,883 Oracle 1,773 $113,065 Amazon 1,256 $109,409 Jpmorgan 1,256 $105,837 Apple 1,038 $130,690

mavelikara 10y ago
Your data presented with better formatting: Infosys 32,379 $76,494 TCS 8,785 $66,113 Wipro 6,733 $69,953 IGate 2,056 $67,168 Cognizant 1,704 $67,506 L & T 4,380 $59,933 HCL 3,012 $81,376 Tech Mahindra 2,249 $73,374 UST Global 1,549 $73,374 Deloitte 8,028 $85,295 IBM 5,839 $87,789 Accenture 5,099 $70,878 E & Y 2,188 $88,353 NttData 1,156 $100,889 Microsft 3,911 $113,408 Qualcom 3,086 $105,169 Google 2,163 $126,565 Intel 1,945 $102,883 Oracle 1,773 $113,065 Amazon 1,256 $109,409 JP Morgan 1,256 $105,837 Apple 1,038 $130,690

rodgerd 10y ago

Always entertaining watching the HN zeitgeist on H-1Bs or offshoring of tech jobs and contrasting it with the attitude to, say, the elimination of millions of trucking or retail jobs.

Clubber 10y ago
Most of the opinions I read consider the eliminating millions of trucking jobs would be horrible for the middle class and are for a living wage to attempt to combat it.

partycoder 10y ago

This post might be hard to read, but believe me I wish to be as respectful as possible and contribute my perspective. Economy follows the path of least resistance. If hiring a local costs $120,000 but a guy you can message via LinkedIn and interview over the phone can do the same work for $80,000 with less negotiating power and less job mobility, then you do it. If you don't do it, your competitor or someone else will and then use the advantage to beat you in the market. The path of least resistance is also the reason companies move their headquarters to tax havens. Then, there is a culture issue. Americans are very competitive, even in situations where the best strategy is to collaborate. It can be hard to work with someone who you know will compete at any opportunity even when it makes no sense at all, like getting angry when receiving a suggestion no matter the intention. Then, everyone is defensive of what is said and how it is said because basically anything can get you sued. The most valuable American management skill is basically how to avoid getting the company sued. Like saying everything on a 1 on 1 meeting with no witnesses or record of it happening. Then, Americans can hop jobs easily. Make someone angry (e.g: giving feedback, assigning a boring task or project) and that person will quit. Not so easily with H-1Bs. This creates a culture where it is cheaper to set people for failure and fire them rather than giving them proper feedback, or letting them spend millions in reinventing the wheel with a pet project rather than seeing them go en-masse.

sunilkumarc 10y ago

Is this bill is passed, what does it mean for a person in India who wants to apply(from India) and get hired by a US company who has a very good skill set but doesn't have a master's degree?

whenwillitstop 10y ago
It means you arent welcome
- nishs 10y ago
  Be civil [0]. That was blunt, non-constructive, and perhaps mildly xenophobic. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

anirudh24seven 10y ago

Does this affect remote working in any manner? I am from India and have considered working remotely in later stages of my career. I have no intentions of leaving India and moving to the US, but I might be applying to organizations within the US.

baristaGeek 10y ago

Isn't it a HUGE problem that it's not discriminated by cities according to its living costs? I'm not an expert in macroeconomic policy but I guess it wouldn't be so hard ad doing the discrimination for say the minimum salary, as business owners/shareholders tend to have a better understanding of the concept of the price index than minimum salary earners. And I'm saying this because tech companies in the Bay Area won't have such a hard time following this rule than startups in cheaper cities. Which would be a recoil in terms of making all America have knowledge-based industries. Wouldn't it? As for people taking the H-1B, would this be something better? Or worse?

sratner 10y ago
It is discriminated by city. Prevailing wage for the labour certification is a function of location, position, and level. I am assuming the article is just talking about raising the bottom end of the scale, but can't be sure - it is certainly light on details.

general_ai 10y ago

Long time reader, first time poster. Both lawmakers being Califoria democrats, I don't trust this one bit. Hear me out on this one. I have actually experienced the H1B system on my own hide. As others have mentioned in the comments, today H1B is basically indentured servitude visa. While theoretically you can move to another job, few people dare, especially if they have families, because in case of any screwup whatsoever, you have to leave the country within 2 weeks. That's _insane_. When I was H1-B I chose to wait until I got the green card before making any moves. That took 8 years, during which I did not quite made the kind of career progress I was hoping for. Now that I'm not an H1B, _magically_ I have no problems whatsoever with advancing my career. What a bizarre coincidence. And I'm not Asian, for Asians it takes longer than that. Another type of abuse you often see (and that was the case with me) is companies hire a very experienced worker in a much lower level position than he ought to be in, considering the experience, and then keep them there until they either work up the courage to move, or get the green card. The _real_ fix for this should be two fold: 1. Allow H1Bs to move more freely between jobs. If you're a programmer, you should be able to move into e.g. DevOps or Data Science, or DB administration without risking that some bureaucrat decides that's not an eligible transition. 2. Allow more time for them to do so, so they don't have to find another job before leaving their current one. Six months to a year ought to be enough. Implement a cliff of e.g. 1 year to make this more fair to employers if need be, but don't kick families out of the country in 2 weeks just because the breadwinner can't tolerate the abuse anymore. This will make the market for H1B workers price-competitive with native workers (since they will be able to command market rates given their levels of experience), and DRAMATICALLY reduce abuse. That's literally all that needs to be done. This will also make it easier for people just out of school to get well paid jobs that would today be taken by overqualified and underpaid H1Bs, because the employer will not be able to exploit their ignorance of the job market for long. Instead they are proposing some tactical bullshit that will only get in the way of a more comprehensive reform that the Trump administration might (or might not, the election is over) come up with.

randseq 10y ago
Factual correction (per first sentence of the article): Issa is a republican and the sponsor of the bill.

throwaway2017ab 10y ago

I was a full time H1B employee at AMEX for 3 years. Its not only the Indian outsourcing firms who abuse the H1B visa system. All American companies including AMEX also do that. The company never even had plans to give me a promotion, not even increase my salary a bit even though I worked hard than the Americans for 3 years !. They pretty well knew I was an indentured servant and paid me 79K/annum. All salary raises and promotions were going to a handful of lazy Americans who rolls into the office whenever they wish. They will never bother to fix bugs or do production releases( because for them, its not cool, we do only cool stuff like React,Angular 2, nodejs & docker. Customer escalated bugs are not cool, let an H1B slave do it). Anyways, now I am an ex-H1B, I left US and currently residing in Canada with my permanent residence process well on track. I will get PR within 1+ years. No one is going to abuse my status in Canada. I am totally free to work anywhere for anyone. The feeling of freedom when I left US is so gratifying. My PR process is not tied to my employer, its in my control and Canada's express entry system gives importance to my skills than my luck as in H1B. Its a good thing that the minimum wages are being raised, it will control the abuse to some levels,like they did to me, but then there is a problem of jobs being fully outsourced. Why should I bother now. Its all behind me. US and its broken H1B immigration system ! Downvote all you want. I am happy, I broke out this modern slavery system.

usaphp 10y ago
> "I worked hard than the Americans for 3 years !. They pretty well knew I was an indentured servant and paid me 79K/annum. All salary raises and promotions were going to a handful of lazy Americans who rolls into the office whenever they wish." You seem to have a pretty aggressive attitude towards people whose country gave you job and paid much more than you were making in your home country. You also seem to have a measure of how hard someone works based on when they come to work, in tech it's who works smartest not hardest is the most valuable. > "I am happy I broke out this modern slavery system" Did Americans force you to come to states and work for them? It was your decision and you were always free to go and find something better in a different country if you wished.
- thesagan 10y ago

kc10 10y ago

I don't think this bill would solve or fix anything. If anything it makes really hard for companies far from cities to find workforce. 100K base salary is very less in bay area and in most cities, so it's not hard for these companies to hire H1B workers. Think about companies that are far from any cities, they may not find lot of developers and they can't even hire H1B workers unless they pay 100K, why may be a lot more than average labor wages. So, it would be more expensive for businesses. The same would be the case for proposed bill to introduce bidding system. It just gets expensive for the businesses far from cities. Removing the country quotas for the green cards is the fix needed. People are tied to the employer now waiting years working low wages. Remove the country quotas or at least give EAD - that encourages people to move if an employer pays low salary.

throwaway2017ab 10y ago

hackernews' audience is mostly Americans, so expect to get downvoted for any comments that hurts their ego. My upvote for you in speaking out the truth.

dang 10y ago
Please don't make up generalizations about HN to score rhetorical points. Unless you have real data to support them, such points tend to be dominated by bias and unsubstantive. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13361461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13361461 and marked it off-topic.
- throwaway2017ab 10y ago
  we have a winner !

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

maxpert 10y ago

I can see Indian companies who where cheating with getting cheap workforce here getting in trouble.

yalogin 10y ago

H1B is to hire from other countries because there is shortage of skilled people in the US. If that is the case, why not make the minimum salary 2 times (or some moderately unreasonable) amount the normal prevailing wage. The companies already abuse the previaling wage. So making the minimum 2-3 times is still OK.

c517402 10y ago

IIRC this report[1] says the schools in Dodge City, KS are having funding problems because 86% of the students come to school not speaking English and have to be taught English. This is because the meat-packing industry imports most of its labor. Please explain to me why foreigner workers are needed to trim meat off of beef carcasses. Maybe everything isn't about coding. [1] https://news.vice.com/story/kansas-school-funding-crisis https://news.vice.com/story/kansas-school-funding-crisis

yuqewoooi 10y ago

I have heard that americans can be easily dissuaded, but today I am seeing that in the comments here. ITT butthurt americans! 1. It's okay to storm another country, cause millions of deaths, but someone takes a job from lazy american and everyone is up in the arms. 2. Not all people that TCS, Infosys et al. bringing here are morons. They have earned bachelors degree in engineering or science, as oppose to Americans going to college for FUCKFEST or muh liberal arts degree. 3. I will disclose an insider secret. Major beneficiaries of H1B are american people and country. By snitching talent from other countries, they are keeping technology on lock down. No other country comes even close when it comes to tech innovation. 4. America's demographics has changed a lot. There are 40% new immigrants in last 30 years. So you are no actually fighting for Americans, but for another immigrant only. 5. Why not pick on Chinese people? Because Asian girls are cute and Asian men are weaboos? Muh, white dicks hungry for asian pussy. 6. If you want to protest, then use fucking brain and protest against H1B for non-stem jobs. Why H1b is given for accountants, business analysts, campaign manager et al? How these non-tech jobs can not be filled by Americans? Tl;dr- Americans are angry for no reason and will be idiots forever.

la6470 10y ago

I see lot of Chinese and Russians too .. what visa do they use?

jecjec 10y ago

The H1B program is literally a giveaway to the 1%, owners of capital. I am glad Trump wants to reduce immigration!

known 10y ago

No labor shortages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Criticisms_of_the_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Criticisms_of_the_pr...

sytelus 10y ago

Two biggest improvements that can be made in H1B program: - Fill slots by sorting candidates with highest salaries instead of lottery - Allow H1B holders to change employers as long as they are paid same or higher salaries This will create amazing market competition and pay rise for everyone while making sure H1B holders don't get exploited by so called "body shoppers" taking away majority of their pay.

hocuspocus 10y ago
H-1B holders are already allowed to change employers. The issue lies within the Green Card application process that is extremely long for some nationalities. An auction system sounds great but it would very heavily favor a handful of companies in the tech industry.

iamspoilt 10y ago

This complements the post: http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-uc-visas-20170108-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-uc-vis...

throwaway012017 10y ago

As an employee on an H1B auth in the US, I cannot express my support for this bill enough. I'd support making the minimum required H1B wage $150K base, adjusted for living expenses. God, I hate the stigma attached to mentioning what work auth I'm here on. Sadly I have to let my work show that all H1s are not created equal. The image of the H1B program has been tarnished because it has been used to import people either for not-so-difficult jobs or lower costs, and, in some cases, misrepresentation of abilities. This bill, if passed, will go a long way in rehabilitating the image of and correcting course for the H1B program. And THAT would be a weight lifted off the minds of truly deserving H1 beneficiaries who are ready to stand up to scrutiny and prove themselves worthy of a program meant for premium talent. I agree with Congressman Issa on very little. This is something I wholeheartedly support and this Congress better be ready to have some serious justification if they don't pass this bill.

mattfrommars 10y ago

I'm looking for serious recommendation on what to do right now in my life. I'm currently 25 year old with roughly two year of industrial experience and looking for a career change. One thing I absolutely want to work out is by applying for Master's program from a US university and finding work after graduation which will require H1B visa. Is this a wise option? I will be moving from a third world country and be mostly on self finance Masters. I know it will be expensive but I'm seeing it as an investment which will pay off. The intended field is in the tech side although I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering. Did this new bill make it far more difficult to get work visa or will the lottery system work? I have a lot to lose if I don't get a work VISA really which would force me to return to home country. Note: I'm not from India