7 ms·

Even if you give the visa to the employee, now you run the risk of employers sizing up an employee's status (are they a citizen or an immigrant who needs a job

Even if you give the visa to the employee, now you run the risk of employers sizing up an employee's status (are they a citizen or an immigrant who needs a job to stay in the country) and hiring or offering salaries based on that. It'll still lead to the wrong behaviors. Citizenship questions are illegal but still get asked. Are you going to outlaw asking about an employee's immigration status? Good luck enforcing that.

belltaco 8y ago
My point is that it will make it easier for employees stuck in a bad spot due to employee abuse to switch jobs. Lets say they join the company you cite and the boss dumps 80 hours a week worth of work every week and doesn't pay overtime. Currently it's a huge hassle and risky to switch jobs, so that employee may continue thus hurting the job market. If you give the employee the visa, they can shop around for jobs like citizens and the company they left will have to find someone else to replace them, hopefully at better market rates this time. The biggest leverage the companies have on immigrant labor is the threat of being fired and deported, if you make that less costly and not turn their life upside down in a day, the problem will be lessened and make the job market more fair and competitive for everyone looking for jobs, and also greatly hurt staffing companies. It also lets the employee say "No." more easily when asked to work 80 hours for the fourth week in a row with no extra pay. This is the reason companies lobby against making this happen.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  In my company most H1 workers that come from Infosys and others are mainly there because they are cheap and not because they are "highly qualified" as the intent of H1 is. If Infosys just had to pay market rates they would lose competitiveness and open up visa spots for the people who truly deserve one.
  - belltaco 8y ago
    If you make it easier for those folks to switch, they will switch away from Infosys to a better job after spending a month or two working for cheap, as you say. If that happens a lot Infosys will stop bringing in new people since they mostly leave early but they already paid for their immigration costs which add up. The employees also will be less inclined to work 80 hrs a week for Infosys to rake in the profits. If they want to retain people, Infosys will have to increase their salaries to close to market rate by charging the client more, which means the client is less likely to hire from Infosys. Either way it's a win.
  - mavelikara 8y ago
    You Infosys colleagues might be slightly underpaid than you, but not by much. But real cost saving Infosys offers to your employer is the team that works offshore. Your Infosys colleagues are acting as bridges between that team and yours. Infosys made almost $11B in 2018. They are not going to sweat the salary of few H-1B engineers. If American engineers, or Indian ones having Green Card, will do the job - liaison the communication between onshore and offshore teams - they will hire those if H-1Bs are not available. Or, your employer might move the whole operation to India, laying off the onshore team. TL;DR: You are probably barking up the wrong tree. The "cheap" H-1Bs you hear about are hired by American staffing companies, not outsourcers.
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
      We have both types. A lot of Indian contractors get paid very little money and they are often hired through two or three agencies that all take their cut. The Infosys guys are paid a little better but still under market and from what I have heard Infosys is slow in processing their green card application. I think in both cases it would be better if the H1 people didn't need a company sponsor but could change jobs easier and apply for visas themselves so they can't get held captive by the company.
    - lawnchair_larry 8y ago
      I’ve seen the difference in pay, and it’s very large. They aren’t proxying offshore either. Not at the big tech companies who use them for staff augmentation anyway.
- tracer4201 8y ago
  >My point is that it will make it easier for employees stuck in a bad spot due to employee abuse to switch jobs. Sure. I think that's fair, but getting a work visa should be harder in the first place. One of my previous companies got IT workers heavily through a big contracting company. We received folks who: 1) Didn't understand their domain 2) Couldn't communicate in English, neither verbal or written This person clearly never visited a US Consulate, or if they did, they never were asked to speak English. This is not a complaint about an individual's accent or elementary grammar. This person does not know the grammar period. And no, they were not disabled.
  - belltaco 8y ago
    How do you enforce that at a govt level when companies okay with it? Why didn't your company ask for interviews of contractors? We are seeing a free market failure here that is better fixed by companies rather than complicated and cumbersome regulation. How will USCIS and consulate officers be able to do a better job determining if someone is suitable to work in a company than the company themselves? Why should tax dollars be spent because companies are too lazy or incompetent to filter and vet people they are hiring?
    - tracer4201 8y ago
      We obviously had to let these people go. A director was also later let go because it turned out he was getting freebies under the table by the contracting company. We hire an external company to send us people because they have supposed to have vetted them. We pay for that service. This isn't just a company problem. Feel free to call the company lazy all you want, but why is someone who has no expertise in an area and cannot speak English allowed to enter the country under a program that lets exceptiobap people in because apparently we don't have talented people here? So if I understand you correctly, we should let people enter the country without vetting them because its a waste of taxpayer money? Let's say my employer perfectly filtered out this person as soon as they came in the door. Let's say the contracting company employing him lets him go too. So what if he now falls on the social system? It's cool? You're okay to pay for that? With respect, your logic makes no sense to me. We shouldn't allow unqualified people to goldmine through these programs. There needs to be a much higher bar. Right now there isn't one at all.
reaperducer 8y ago
Citizenship questions are illegal but still get asked Can you clarify this? Of the dozens of jobs I've had in the United States, every one required me to prove that I'm a citizen or eligible to work in the country.

belltaco 8y ago

My point is that it will make it easier for employees stuck in a bad spot due to employee abuse to switch jobs. Lets say they join the company you cite and the boss dumps 80 hours a week worth of work every week and doesn't pay overtime. Currently it's a huge hassle and risky to switch jobs, so that employee may continue thus hurting the job market. If you give the employee the visa, they can shop around for jobs like citizens and the company they left will have to find someone else to replace them, hopefully at better market rates this time. The biggest leverage the companies have on immigrant labor is the threat of being fired and deported, if you make that less costly and not turn their life upside down in a day, the problem will be lessened and make the job market more fair and competitive for everyone looking for jobs, and also greatly hurt staffing companies. It also lets the employee say "No." more easily when asked to work 80 hours for the fourth week in a row with no extra pay. This is the reason companies lobby against making this happen.

maxxxxx 8y ago
In my company most H1 workers that come from Infosys and others are mainly there because they are cheap and not because they are "highly qualified" as the intent of H1 is. If Infosys just had to pay market rates they would lose competitiveness and open up visa spots for the people who truly deserve one.
- belltaco 8y ago
  If you make it easier for those folks to switch, they will switch away from Infosys to a better job after spending a month or two working for cheap, as you say. If that happens a lot Infosys will stop bringing in new people since they mostly leave early but they already paid for their immigration costs which add up. The employees also will be less inclined to work 80 hrs a week for Infosys to rake in the profits. If they want to retain people, Infosys will have to increase their salaries to close to market rate by charging the client more, which means the client is less likely to hire from Infosys. Either way it's a win.
- mavelikara 8y ago
  You Infosys colleagues might be slightly underpaid than you, but not by much. But real cost saving Infosys offers to your employer is the team that works offshore. Your Infosys colleagues are acting as bridges between that team and yours. Infosys made almost $11B in 2018. They are not going to sweat the salary of few H-1B engineers. If American engineers, or Indian ones having Green Card, will do the job - liaison the communication between onshore and offshore teams - they will hire those if H-1Bs are not available. Or, your employer might move the whole operation to India, laying off the onshore team. TL;DR: You are probably barking up the wrong tree. The "cheap" H-1Bs you hear about are hired by American staffing companies, not outsourcers.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    We have both types. A lot of Indian contractors get paid very little money and they are often hired through two or three agencies that all take their cut. The Infosys guys are paid a little better but still under market and from what I have heard Infosys is slow in processing their green card application. I think in both cases it would be better if the H1 people didn't need a company sponsor but could change jobs easier and apply for visas themselves so they can't get held captive by the company.
  - lawnchair_larry 8y ago
    I’ve seen the difference in pay, and it’s very large. They aren’t proxying offshore either. Not at the big tech companies who use them for staff augmentation anyway.
tracer4201 8y ago
>My point is that it will make it easier for employees stuck in a bad spot due to employee abuse to switch jobs. Sure. I think that's fair, but getting a work visa should be harder in the first place. One of my previous companies got IT workers heavily through a big contracting company. We received folks who: 1) Didn't understand their domain 2) Couldn't communicate in English, neither verbal or written This person clearly never visited a US Consulate, or if they did, they never were asked to speak English. This is not a complaint about an individual's accent or elementary grammar. This person does not know the grammar period. And no, they were not disabled.
- belltaco 8y ago
  How do you enforce that at a govt level when companies okay with it? Why didn't your company ask for interviews of contractors? We are seeing a free market failure here that is better fixed by companies rather than complicated and cumbersome regulation. How will USCIS and consulate officers be able to do a better job determining if someone is suitable to work in a company than the company themselves? Why should tax dollars be spent because companies are too lazy or incompetent to filter and vet people they are hiring?
  - tracer4201 8y ago
    We obviously had to let these people go. A director was also later let go because it turned out he was getting freebies under the table by the contracting company. We hire an external company to send us people because they have supposed to have vetted them. We pay for that service. This isn't just a company problem. Feel free to call the company lazy all you want, but why is someone who has no expertise in an area and cannot speak English allowed to enter the country under a program that lets exceptiobap people in because apparently we don't have talented people here? So if I understand you correctly, we should let people enter the country without vetting them because its a waste of taxpayer money? Let's say my employer perfectly filtered out this person as soon as they came in the door. Let's say the contracting company employing him lets him go too. So what if he now falls on the social system? It's cool? You're okay to pay for that? With respect, your logic makes no sense to me. We shouldn't allow unqualified people to goldmine through these programs. There needs to be a much higher bar. Right now there isn't one at all.

reaperducer 8y ago

Citizenship questions are illegal but still get asked Can you clarify this? Of the dozens of jobs I've had in the United States, every one required me to prove that I'm a citizen or eligible to work in the country.