8 ms·

Donald Trump to overhaul H-1B visa program

55 points by fujipadam 9y ago

davidf18 9y ago
Of all of the candidates both Republican and Democrat (and including President Obama) only one, President Trump was not in bed with Silicon Valley and Tech companies attempting to depress American Wages and replace Americans with cheaper foreign imports. Even the University of California San Francisco (The UC system trains lots of computer scientists, IT workers) replaced its own IT workers with H1-B Visa imports. What is notable is the US newspapers including NYT and WaPo don't write about this issue much. The Guardian (and Breitbart) have been the most consistent sources of information. Thomas Frank had warned of the real reasons for Trump's rise staring in March 2016. Here is a July 2016 article after the BrExit vote that warned the Dems. Click on the link and you'll see Obama pictured with Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg famously want to depress American tech wages by having his own lobbying organization that tries to import more H1-B visa workers. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/19/revenge-against-elites-americas-wake-up https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/19/reveng... At Wednesday night’s GOP debate, Rubio was asked about his co-authorship of controversial legislation–- known as the I-Squared bill — that would triple the number of wage-depressing H-1B visas up to 195,000 per year. In Rubio’s home state of Florida, the Walt Disney Company used H-1Bs to lay off hundreds of American workers and force them to train their foreign replacements. Disney’s CEO has endorsed Rubio’s I-Squared bill. http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2015/10/30/h-1b-expert-marco-rubio-fakes-opposition-h-1b-outsourcing/ http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2015/10/30/h... President Obama even allowed spouses of H1-B to work, displacing and lowering wages of yet more American workers. The intent of H1-B is only for jobs for which there are no Americans available. There should be an independent commission that reviews each and every one of these applications. Frankly, it begs credulity that there are 65,000 STEM jobs that are so specialized that there are no Americans to fill the roles.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  That may all be true, still, H1-B's were not an important issue in the election.
  - davidf18 9y ago
    H1-B not so much although Trump complained vociferously against Disney replacing US IT workers with imports. More significant was the displacement of US working class through free trade, and through illegal aliens. But in each case, the Republican contenders and the major Democratic contender ignored the job issues. Sanders was also consistent with Trump regarding working class jobs.
- 0xcafecafe 9y ago
  >>President Obama even allowed spouses of H1-B to work, displacing and lowering wages of yet more American workers. You need to be more informed. Not any H1-B spouse is allowed to work. That provision was created as a bandaid fix to alleviate the problems of people (mostly Indian and Chinese) who have to endure a decade+ long wait to get a green card (due to the stupid EB country cap limits). While that wait continues, their dependents cannot work. By this provision, only spouses of workers who have a permanent residency petition approved but are not able file for a green card due to unavailability of numbers are able to apply. The estimated number of spouses expected to apply was around 179k out of which only about 37% ended up applying. In contrast, the US issues 860,000 green cards every year (non employment based) which by your argument should be displacing even more local workers. And not all spouses work in the software field. My wife works in healthcare and this provision was a Godsend for us since it has been 5 years and counting since my green card was applied for by my company. If this provision goes away or the immigration system does not improve for the better (reducing backlogs), we are seriously contemplating our future here.
  - davidf18 9y ago
    I'm sorry for your personal suffering, but as a systemic issue, immigrants are taking jobs away from Americans. Whether it be in software, healthcare, or other professional job, Americans are being displaced. As for the number of Green cards, I can only take your word for it, but I'm guessing most of them are not displacing college graduates/ STEM/ etc. 179K * .37 is still > 65,000 jobs that Americans could have done filled by others and depressing wage conditions regardless of the field. Remember that most of the people in the US on H1-B are here because the law which states that there must not be any American capable of filling the job was violated. That is the law. The H1-B has been used by US firms many of which are very wealthy to try to drive down wage rates. That is the problem. If someone is here on H1-B according to the law where there is no American with the skill set (perhaps a PhD nuclear physicist that deals with machine learning and nuclear reactions) then that is a completely different matter. But any H1-B hired for almost any software development there are American that can do the job.
  - mavelikara 9y ago
    Spouses of L and J visa holders are able to work; and as you said, 860K immigrants are added to the system every year. I don't quite understand the grief over spouses of H visa holders from India and China being allowed to work legally. The family, by then, have filed for a green card, made clear indication of wanting to immigrate to the country and are not allowed to do so only because of unfair per-country quota limits. As an aside, I hope HR 392 [1] passes. It eases out the per-country quota limits for skilled immigration over 5 years. It currently has 173 co-sponsors in the house. [1]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/392 https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/392
anindha 9y ago
This would make it harder for startups to recruit since it would be hard to value equity in a visa application.
- timewarrior 9y ago
  I agree that there will be some challenges and hopefully future changes fix that. However current reality is that very few startups employ H1. I founded a startup when I was on H1 hired someone else on H1 and it was a pain to go through all paperwork. Right now, if the potential employee doesn't already have an H1 - the startup will need to apply for H1 lottery where odds are 1/4 and if they win it wait for 6 months before the employees can join. Recently I built an Incubator where the intention was to pay market salaries while people try out ideas. And once the idea gets traction - raise funding and spin it out. Everyone on H1 refused to join the spin out because they didn't want to deal with the pains of being on H1 while dealing with uncertainties of a startup. I hope that these regulations stop the abuse happening on H1. This will help in two ways: 1. No lottery - so people who want to move to US have a predictable path. 2. Better path for Indians to get Green Card. Right now the delay is insane (20+ years). Once they get Green Cards they can participate with more freedom.
wakkaflokka 9y ago
What kind of salaries should H1-B-heavy jobs expect if the visa didn't exist? I'm wondering because I get the feeling that the general populace believes these positions (programming and everything related) pay pretty well. You might get the opposite feeling when browsing HN.
- timewarrior 9y ago
  H1 visas work like a long tail. Most of the visas are used by big consulting companies to suppress wages. Most of these jobs pay less than 65k and displace American workers because they would demand more. A small part of the visas (less than 10%) is used in the long tail by companies like Google and Facebook. They jobs pay relatively well. However because of difficulty in job mobility, the immigrant employees lose on negotiation and aren't paid we well as they could have gotten paid. At least these jobs do not displace American workers. The above companies have a lot of unfilled openings and if an American worker is available with the right skills, they would hire that person.
timewarrior 9y ago
The intent of H1-B was to get talented immigrants for jobs for which we had a shortage of American labor. Instead it has become a tool for indentured labor of foreigners (especially Indians) to be used to suppress wages and exploit the foreign nationals. I have suffered because of this. I spent 6 years on H1 with no end in sight. It would take at least 20 years for Indians to get a Green Card. Till then, you have to do do insane amount of paperwork, deal with lot of uncertainty when we you are up for renewal and are in a limbo state. Most of my friends who are really smart and are in US, have resigned to their fate and given up on their entrepreneurial aspirations. If people think that companies like Facebook and Google are not exploiting people, they are mistaken. Even though the wages that they pay are much higher - H1 creates lack of job mobility, within that class of employees. I worked with someone really smart in an earlier startup in India. He spent 7 years in Microsoft because it seemed like he will get Green Card next year. I worked with someone senior at FWD.us and as per that person the intention of FWD.us is to get more H1 and not Green Cards. I have lived through this and hopefully out of this cycle. However the best from India aren't moving to US anymore. They now know about the uncertainties in their life because of H1 and are choosing to stay behind in India to build startups there. Big consultancy companies (TCS, Infosys, Cognizant etc) are abusing the system. I hope someone puts and end to this. Edited: formatting
- davidf18 9y ago
  > "The intent of H1-B was to get talented immigrants for jobs for which we had a shortage of American labor." Actually, the intent of H1-B is to fill jobs for which there are no Americans that have the skill set. A "shortage" simply means that they aren't offering high enough wages. Of the major tech firms (Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Oracle, ...) only Google has a presence in NYC of any size even though NYC has far more software people than SV, SF, Seattle. If there really, truly was a shortage as they claim, they would have much larger offices in NYC. My understanding is that Gates in founding Microsoft in Seattle instead of SV did so precisely because he did not want to have to compete with SV firms for their tech labor which is another way of saying that Microsoft was in Seattle to maintained depressed tech wages.
  - 9y ago
_of 9y ago
Isn't the risk that these companies will just let Indian's do the work in India instead of bringing them to the US? Won't the US loose tax money with such a setup?
- timewarrior 9y ago
  If it's possible consultancy companies already move the jobs to India. And if the intention is to solve the problem of jobs moving to India, create a law designed to fix that. H1 wasn't designed to fix this problem. Let it do what it was designed to do!
employee8000 9y ago
The abuse and exploitation of the h1b by Indian bodyshop and lack of action by Bush and Obama have ruined it for everyone. I hope the body shops go out of business and we get a more sane immigration visas. But we need immigration. Thinking removing immigration will make more uS jobs is stupid. It will hasten global employers to build r&d centers outside of the US and then we are all screwed.
- timewarrior 9y ago
  I agree with all your points. Consultancy companies are lobbying to keep this system broken. I hope they all go out of business.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
maerF0x0 9y ago
How will the government assess who has the top skills? Considering that the industry has a hard time doing this in fairly intensive interview processes, I can't imagine the government will fare as well or better. I, cynically, assume they're just going to be like "PHD is better than masters, is better than bachelor's" etc.
- StillBored 9y ago
  Its actually pretty easy in the US.. Pay! If they aren't being paid in the top 1% then its unlikely they are producing that way. That is why like many things, I think a more "free market" solution here is in order. A requirement for a H1B should be an extreme salary band. That proves that they are actually exceptional, while simultaneously discouraging companies from using them for cheap labor.
  - maerF0x0 9y ago
    Well, thats a pretty poor metric. An organization that sets its pay higher is not guaranteed to hire a better employee. They maybe get better applicants though. So while its necessary, its not sufficient.
tn135 9y ago
Paper tiger of Mr. Trump. The executive order does nothing but kind of recycles old claims without much change to anything.
tn135 9y ago
Paper tiger of Mr. Trump. The executive order does nothing but kind of recycles old claims without much change to anything.

55 points by fujipadam 9y ago

Of all of the candidates both Republican and Democrat (and including President Obama) only one, President Trump was not in bed with Silicon Valley and Tech companies attempting to depress American Wages and replace Americans with cheaper foreign imports. Even the University of California San Francisco (The UC system trains lots of computer scientists, IT workers) replaced its own IT workers with H1-B Visa imports. What is notable is the US newspapers including NYT and WaPo don't write about this issue much. The Guardian (and Breitbart) have been the most consistent sources of information. Thomas Frank had warned of the real reasons for Trump's rise staring in March 2016. Here is a July 2016 article after the BrExit vote that warned the Dems. Click on the link and you'll see Obama pictured with Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg famously want to depress American tech wages by having his own lobbying organization that tries to import more H1-B visa workers. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/19/revenge-against-elites-americas-wake-up https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/19/reveng... At Wednesday night’s GOP debate, Rubio was asked about his co-authorship of controversial legislation–- known as the I-Squared bill — that would triple the number of wage-depressing H-1B visas up to 195,000 per year. In Rubio’s home state of Florida, the Walt Disney Company used H-1Bs to lay off hundreds of American workers and force them to train their foreign replacements. Disney’s CEO has endorsed Rubio’s I-Squared bill. http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2015/10/30/h-1b-expert-marco-rubio-fakes-opposition-h-1b-outsourcing/ http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2015/10/30/h... President Obama even allowed spouses of H1-B to work, displacing and lowering wages of yet more American workers. The intent of H1-B is only for jobs for which there are no Americans available. There should be an independent commission that reviews each and every one of these applications. Frankly, it begs credulity that there are 65,000 STEM jobs that are so specialized that there are no Americans to fill the roles.

maxerickson 9y ago
That may all be true, still, H1-B's were not an important issue in the election.
- davidf18 9y ago
  H1-B not so much although Trump complained vociferously against Disney replacing US IT workers with imports. More significant was the displacement of US working class through free trade, and through illegal aliens. But in each case, the Republican contenders and the major Democratic contender ignored the job issues. Sanders was also consistent with Trump regarding working class jobs.
0xcafecafe 9y ago
>>President Obama even allowed spouses of H1-B to work, displacing and lowering wages of yet more American workers. You need to be more informed. Not any H1-B spouse is allowed to work. That provision was created as a bandaid fix to alleviate the problems of people (mostly Indian and Chinese) who have to endure a decade+ long wait to get a green card (due to the stupid EB country cap limits). While that wait continues, their dependents cannot work. By this provision, only spouses of workers who have a permanent residency petition approved but are not able file for a green card due to unavailability of numbers are able to apply. The estimated number of spouses expected to apply was around 179k out of which only about 37% ended up applying. In contrast, the US issues 860,000 green cards every year (non employment based) which by your argument should be displacing even more local workers. And not all spouses work in the software field. My wife works in healthcare and this provision was a Godsend for us since it has been 5 years and counting since my green card was applied for by my company. If this provision goes away or the immigration system does not improve for the better (reducing backlogs), we are seriously contemplating our future here.
- davidf18 9y ago
  I'm sorry for your personal suffering, but as a systemic issue, immigrants are taking jobs away from Americans. Whether it be in software, healthcare, or other professional job, Americans are being displaced. As for the number of Green cards, I can only take your word for it, but I'm guessing most of them are not displacing college graduates/ STEM/ etc. 179K * .37 is still > 65,000 jobs that Americans could have done filled by others and depressing wage conditions regardless of the field. Remember that most of the people in the US on H1-B are here because the law which states that there must not be any American capable of filling the job was violated. That is the law. The H1-B has been used by US firms many of which are very wealthy to try to drive down wage rates. That is the problem. If someone is here on H1-B according to the law where there is no American with the skill set (perhaps a PhD nuclear physicist that deals with machine learning and nuclear reactions) then that is a completely different matter. But any H1-B hired for almost any software development there are American that can do the job.
- mavelikara 9y ago
  Spouses of L and J visa holders are able to work; and as you said, 860K immigrants are added to the system every year. I don't quite understand the grief over spouses of H visa holders from India and China being allowed to work legally. The family, by then, have filed for a green card, made clear indication of wanting to immigrate to the country and are not allowed to do so only because of unfair per-country quota limits. As an aside, I hope HR 392 [1] passes. It eases out the per-country quota limits for skilled immigration over 5 years. It currently has 173 co-sponsors in the house. [1]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/392 https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/392

anindha 9y ago

This would make it harder for startups to recruit since it would be hard to value equity in a visa application.

timewarrior 9y ago
I agree that there will be some challenges and hopefully future changes fix that. However current reality is that very few startups employ H1. I founded a startup when I was on H1 hired someone else on H1 and it was a pain to go through all paperwork. Right now, if the potential employee doesn't already have an H1 - the startup will need to apply for H1 lottery where odds are 1/4 and if they win it wait for 6 months before the employees can join. Recently I built an Incubator where the intention was to pay market salaries while people try out ideas. And once the idea gets traction - raise funding and spin it out. Everyone on H1 refused to join the spin out because they didn't want to deal with the pains of being on H1 while dealing with uncertainties of a startup. I hope that these regulations stop the abuse happening on H1. This will help in two ways: 1. No lottery - so people who want to move to US have a predictable path. 2. Better path for Indians to get Green Card. Right now the delay is insane (20+ years). Once they get Green Cards they can participate with more freedom.

wakkaflokka 9y ago

What kind of salaries should H1-B-heavy jobs expect if the visa didn't exist? I'm wondering because I get the feeling that the general populace believes these positions (programming and everything related) pay pretty well. You might get the opposite feeling when browsing HN.

timewarrior 9y ago
H1 visas work like a long tail. Most of the visas are used by big consulting companies to suppress wages. Most of these jobs pay less than 65k and displace American workers because they would demand more. A small part of the visas (less than 10%) is used in the long tail by companies like Google and Facebook. They jobs pay relatively well. However because of difficulty in job mobility, the immigrant employees lose on negotiation and aren't paid we well as they could have gotten paid. At least these jobs do not displace American workers. The above companies have a lot of unfilled openings and if an American worker is available with the right skills, they would hire that person.

timewarrior 9y ago

The intent of H1-B was to get talented immigrants for jobs for which we had a shortage of American labor. Instead it has become a tool for indentured labor of foreigners (especially Indians) to be used to suppress wages and exploit the foreign nationals. I have suffered because of this. I spent 6 years on H1 with no end in sight. It would take at least 20 years for Indians to get a Green Card. Till then, you have to do do insane amount of paperwork, deal with lot of uncertainty when we you are up for renewal and are in a limbo state. Most of my friends who are really smart and are in US, have resigned to their fate and given up on their entrepreneurial aspirations. If people think that companies like Facebook and Google are not exploiting people, they are mistaken. Even though the wages that they pay are much higher - H1 creates lack of job mobility, within that class of employees. I worked with someone really smart in an earlier startup in India. He spent 7 years in Microsoft because it seemed like he will get Green Card next year. I worked with someone senior at FWD.us and as per that person the intention of FWD.us is to get more H1 and not Green Cards. I have lived through this and hopefully out of this cycle. However the best from India aren't moving to US anymore. They now know about the uncertainties in their life because of H1 and are choosing to stay behind in India to build startups there. Big consultancy companies (TCS, Infosys, Cognizant etc) are abusing the system. I hope someone puts and end to this. Edited: formatting

davidf18 9y ago
> "The intent of H1-B was to get talented immigrants for jobs for which we had a shortage of American labor." Actually, the intent of H1-B is to fill jobs for which there are no Americans that have the skill set. A "shortage" simply means that they aren't offering high enough wages. Of the major tech firms (Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Oracle, ...) only Google has a presence in NYC of any size even though NYC has far more software people than SV, SF, Seattle. If there really, truly was a shortage as they claim, they would have much larger offices in NYC. My understanding is that Gates in founding Microsoft in Seattle instead of SV did so precisely because he did not want to have to compete with SV firms for their tech labor which is another way of saying that Microsoft was in Seattle to maintained depressed tech wages.
- 9y ago

_of 9y ago

Isn't the risk that these companies will just let Indian's do the work in India instead of bringing them to the US? Won't the US loose tax money with such a setup?

timewarrior 9y ago
If it's possible consultancy companies already move the jobs to India. And if the intention is to solve the problem of jobs moving to India, create a law designed to fix that. H1 wasn't designed to fix this problem. Let it do what it was designed to do!

employee8000 9y ago

The abuse and exploitation of the h1b by Indian bodyshop and lack of action by Bush and Obama have ruined it for everyone. I hope the body shops go out of business and we get a more sane immigration visas. But we need immigration. Thinking removing immigration will make more uS jobs is stupid. It will hasten global employers to build r&d centers outside of the US and then we are all screwed.

timewarrior 9y ago
I agree with all your points. Consultancy companies are lobbying to keep this system broken. I hope they all go out of business.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

maerF0x0 9y ago

How will the government assess who has the top skills? Considering that the industry has a hard time doing this in fairly intensive interview processes, I can't imagine the government will fare as well or better. I, cynically, assume they're just going to be like "PHD is better than masters, is better than bachelor's" etc.

StillBored 9y ago
Its actually pretty easy in the US.. Pay! If they aren't being paid in the top 1% then its unlikely they are producing that way. That is why like many things, I think a more "free market" solution here is in order. A requirement for a H1B should be an extreme salary band. That proves that they are actually exceptional, while simultaneously discouraging companies from using them for cheap labor.
- maerF0x0 9y ago
  Well, thats a pretty poor metric. An organization that sets its pay higher is not guaranteed to hire a better employee. They maybe get better applicants though. So while its necessary, its not sufficient.

tn135 9y ago

Paper tiger of Mr. Trump. The executive order does nothing but kind of recycles old claims without much change to anything.

tn135 9y ago

Paper tiger of Mr. Trump. The executive order does nothing but kind of recycles old claims without much change to anything.