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Granted that H-1B visas should ostensibly be filled only for positions where it is difficult to find qualified American citizens or permanent residents, but in

Granted that H-1B visas should ostensibly be filled only for positions where it is difficult to find qualified American citizens or permanent residents, but in all honesty are the Department of Labor's allegations really that surprising? In the Bay Area, qualified job candidates are so scarce that it's quite common for citizens/permanent-residents to change jobs frequently. H1-B candidates are attractive for companies because it is harder for them to switch jobs. Companies can lock these employees for longer, and they can pay them less. Rather than going after the companies, shouldn't we be focusing on fixing the H-1B visa process instead? It almost seems like the government has set up a broken process for companies to take advantage of, and instead of fixing things, they blame the companies.

wuxb 8y ago
So an obvious solution would be allowing H1B holders to freely change jobs, even with gaps. Accordingly, the employers won't be able to lock the visa holders. Then there will be fair competition that makes sense. But anyway the big companies don't want to lose the "lock" so it would be hard to change.
- untog 8y ago
  Clarification in case any H1B holders are reading: you absolutely can transfer your H1B visa, though I think a break of more than 30 days would be a violation. The trick is when you H1B employer also offers to sponsor your green card. That isn't transferrable, and if you're from certain countries (like India) it can take up to ten years to get one.
  - whack 8y ago
    > "The trick is when you H1B employer also offers to sponsor your green card. That isn't transferrable" Yes but the priority date itself is transferable. This allows you to job hop as many times as you want, without losing your place in line. If you have to wait 10 years for your green card, you might as well take advantage of this option and only worry about your green card 9 years down the road.
    - ksolanki 8y ago
      Unless you want a promotion (from what I understand). And most want a promotion or change in job responsibilities in 10 years.
      - whack 8y ago
        You don't lose your priority date if you get a promotion within the same job role. Eg, you can go from entry-level developer to senior-staff developer, without any issues. Google senior-staff developers make over half-a-million, so that's quite a high ceiling. I even know someone who made the switch from hardware-engineering to software, and kept his priority date.
yholio 8y ago
Seems like such a simple issue to fix: the only condition for getting a specialist visa should be to find an employer willing to pay a specialist salary, say above 150K. Doctors included, I see no reason to protect them from competition. Hop jobs at will but need to maintain within 85% of that level. If a company can't find workers, it should pay more up until a level that puts the competitiveness of the economy under question. Below that level, it's the citizen's right to a fair salary without labour dumping from a poor country. Above that level, it's everybody's right to fairly priced services without professional rents.
- tejaswiy 8y ago
  Needs to be adjusted for cost of living, salary changes over time by profession (Tech salaries are in a bubble rn. which makes 150k reasonable by bay area standards, but they may go significantly up / down in the future) which is complicated enough but there's edge cases like Universities / Non profits etc. that can't pay salaries to compete with the private sector but people work there anyway because of passion.
  - yholio 8y ago
    I disagree, if you can find cheap programmers in Des Moines, Iowa, then by all means expand there, spread the love within the country before going for import labour. As for bubbles, that's the point, there shouldn't be any if labour is available and willing to come in.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - zeckalpha 8y ago
      Or pay people in Des Moines $150k+
    - tejaswiy 8y ago
      Most IT / h1 roles are not based out of the Bay Area [1]. Significant amounts of H1b population goes to doing cookie cutter consulting projects spread across the country and setting a 150k min on the wage means that you won't be able to hire H1s at all in other parts of the country. Obviously this creates a lot of demand for American programmers and personal experience suggests that this will cause a labor shortage. [1] https://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2017-H1B-Visa-Category.aspx?T=WS https://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2017-H1B-Visa-Category.as...
conanbatt 8y ago
you could multiply the h1b quota by 10 and it would fill out.
blitmap 8y ago
I see 3 things here: 1) Qualified job candidates are scarce? Just... what? The only difference between here and there is when people lie and say they're qualified, the company is willing to pass this lie on to the government to say "the qualified candidates are over there". There are people who can do the work, and there are companies who want to pay less in total compensation. I feel like my entire generation was raised on a CS/SE pathway. How are there no qualified candidates? What decade will we be fit do to the work? Maybe I'll move to the third world and get rehired back. That's the entry-level job. 2) H-1B is not an loophole to get "loyal" employees. Again, you keep employees with competitive wages & benefits. 3) Companies should be shamed as much as the government for an exploitable process. The government must change for the people it serves. Companies can be dissolved if they're not supporting the area they base themselves out of (and benefit from).
- ip26 8y ago
  WRT #2 it's certainly not supposed to be that way. But if an H-1B worker quits, they have something like two weeks to find a new job or else be deported on the spot. In other news, mysteriously, H-1B workers tend not to quit even faced with low wages and poor conditions.
- austincheney 8y ago
  I love discussions about hiring and immigration. People always focus on their idea of what others should do while ignoring all the data and the reality at present. When you see otherwise rational people ignore data, focus on unqualified conclusions, and opinionated targets their bias is laid bare. Regardless of what you believe is the right answer what does the hiring data actually say?
toast0 8y ago
The process could (and probably should) be adjusted, but the intent of h-1b is clear that it is to fill positions that are not fillable with local talent at prevailing wages. If companies aren't really looking for local talent, or aren't really paying prevailing wages, they have been defrauding the government, and hurting the labor market. When large scale abusers of h-1b are prevented from getting future visas, it gives room for other companies to use the visas, and hopefully they follow the rules.
diogenescynic 8y ago
If you can’t find applicants, you’re just not paying enough. Pay more.
an_cap 8y ago
Why is it not okay to discriminate on the basis of your skin color at birth but okay to discriminate on the basis of which side of a border you were born in? Surely, there would a lot of outrage in HN if someone said - "Granted that H1-Black visas should ostensibly be filled only for positions where it is difficult to find qualified whites"?
- DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
  I suppose it depends on whether or not you consider it morally acceptable for a country to prioritize the prosperity of its own citizens over that of non-citizens. I.e., whom does a country's government serve?
  - an_cap 8y ago
    Why is it morally acceptable for a country to prioritize the prosperity of its own citizens, but not for whites to prioritize the prosperity of fellow whites?
    - addicted 8y ago
      The simple answer is that the US fought a war over the question of whether it can prioritize fellow whites and the pro side lost. Badly.
      - an_cap 8y ago
        Might makes right. Got it. Edit : Sorry addicted, I interpreted your comment as a justification, not as historical account. My bad.
        DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
        I don't think the GP was giving an argument that the current state of affairs is morally acceptable. I think GP was giving a causal explanation in terms of political history.
        8y ago
blahblahblogger 8y ago
> H1-B candidates are attractive for companies because it is harder for them to switch jobs. Companies can lock these employees for longer, and they can pay them less. This is ultimately what it's about. I work as a software engineer in the Bay Area and the number of H1Bs doing the same grunt work coding that I do is astounding. H1Bs were supposed to be for some sort of super specialized work no?
- Beldin 8y ago
  That's why a higher salary should be mandatory. Eg. 140% of a "normal" salary for that function. It would make companies be more serious about looking for talent elsewhere - such as in their own country.
pramttl 8y ago
A talented (foreign) friend of mine had the opportunity to switch to a better, higher paid role but due to the effort involved, the risk and the pause in H1B premium processing just hung on to his current role. The H1B program itself is not a problem and in-fact is a big positive contributor to the US economy; but it definitely has issues like the one you highlighted (e.g. harder for employees to switch jobs) that should be addressed by the government to make it more viable.
- baby 8y ago
  I tried to get the H1B twice, couldn't get it through the lottery, so I had to move out of the US for a year and a half while I was waiting for the green card. The process is so backward.
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  I can’t help but wonder if a lot of the indignities that we tolerate (open-plan offices, unpaid overtime) aren’t worse because there are so many people in our industry unable to fight against them.
austincheney 8y ago
> Granted that H-1B visas should ostensibly be filled only for positions where it is difficult to find qualified American citizens or permanent residents Sorry the be the bearer of bad news but American developers, on the average, must suck. Developers, on average across the country, make around twice the local average yearly income, so there is clearly not a shortage for a lack of financial compensation. In my experience there is no shortage of candidates for developer positions. When I last went through the hiring process I was first pick out of 79 candidates interviewed (9 candidates were ultimately selected) and that was only a fraction of the resumes that were considered. The problem is that in many cases developers and hiring managers are looking for different things. Hiring companies need people who can solve problems. Many junior developers want easy. Many companies have to settle for button pressers either because the available candidates have a high rate of incompetence or insecurity. This discrepancy is clear in most job postings where the company details what it wants in a paragraph and then follows up with a bullet list of requirements that don't match the language of what they just described. For example the paragraph might talk about solving new challenging problems in a team environment but then the bullet points only talk about tools, frameworks, and configurations. > Rather than going after the companies, shouldn't we be focusing on fixing the H-1B visa process instead? So long as companies distrust developer confidence they will continue to rely on immigrants as a candidate pool of greater potential. Changes to immigration policy does not address the core problem of hiring competent developers.
- googlemike 8y ago
  The best engineers I have ever worked with have been American.
  - austincheney 8y ago
    They are probably not representative of the average.
- acpetrov 8y ago
  There's a side-effect, however, that's being ignored. If US companies don't like/trust the talent coming out of US colleges, they should have a stake in improving those programs. But if their solution is just to hire immigrants, it cheats colleges out of feedback from industry. Colleges really need more practical courses, at least starting in upper years, that set developers up for success in the workforce. How many devs today come out of college needing 3-6 months of learning just the basics? That shouldn't be happening.
whack 8y ago
> "H1-B candidates are attractive for companies because it is harder for them to switch jobs" The extent to which this is true, is severely overestimated. Both by citizens and by the h1b holders themselves. I have a close friend who has switched companies 4 times while on a h1b, and it was a breeze. https://www.prideimmigration.com/can-you-change-jobs-h1b-visa/ https://www.prideimmigration.com/can-you-change-jobs-h1b-vis... The only complicating factors are Trump-era changes such as suspension of premium processing and greater risk of rejections. Combined, these do have a chilling effect on job transfers, which ironically leads to h1b abuses like mentioned in the article. But even then, these are easily surmountable hurdles.
3xblah 8y ago
How would you suggest they fix the process? The practice of hiring someone "because it is harder for them to switch jobs" so the company "can lock these employees for longer" and "can pay them less" sounds like unlawful wage discrimination. If the existence of a governmental program helps a company in pursuing an unlawful practice should that be relevant in determining the wrongfulness of the practice? That seems like a very weak argument. It seems reasonable that a company should see the program as intended to make H1-B candidates attractive because of their skills, not because it will be "harder for them to switch jobs" and the company can "lock" them for longer and "pay them less". If there are citizens or permanent residents that have the same skills then what legitimate reason exists why companies should be filling them with H1-B candidates instead?
geebee 8y ago
You did just discuss the difficulty of finding qualified workers without mentioning salary. Yes, talented software developers are scarce at 50k. They even appear to be scarce at 150k/yr. To me, that doesn't signify a shortage, it signifies that employers asked the market for engineers at a particular price point, and the market said no. This isn't a shortage, it's the market's answer, it's the rational decision of people who have freedom to choose their profession in response to market signals, personal preferences, and costs. The entire point of the H1B visa is to create a pool or workers who are not free to choose their professional path, but are allowed to live in the US only under the work conditions determined by their employer.

wuxb 8y ago

So an obvious solution would be allowing H1B holders to freely change jobs, even with gaps. Accordingly, the employers won't be able to lock the visa holders. Then there will be fair competition that makes sense. But anyway the big companies don't want to lose the "lock" so it would be hard to change.

untog 8y ago
Clarification in case any H1B holders are reading: you absolutely can transfer your H1B visa, though I think a break of more than 30 days would be a violation. The trick is when you H1B employer also offers to sponsor your green card. That isn't transferrable, and if you're from certain countries (like India) it can take up to ten years to get one.
- whack 8y ago
  > "The trick is when you H1B employer also offers to sponsor your green card. That isn't transferrable" Yes but the priority date itself is transferable. This allows you to job hop as many times as you want, without losing your place in line. If you have to wait 10 years for your green card, you might as well take advantage of this option and only worry about your green card 9 years down the road.
  - ksolanki 8y ago
    Unless you want a promotion (from what I understand). And most want a promotion or change in job responsibilities in 10 years.
    - whack 8y ago
      You don't lose your priority date if you get a promotion within the same job role. Eg, you can go from entry-level developer to senior-staff developer, without any issues. Google senior-staff developers make over half-a-million, so that's quite a high ceiling. I even know someone who made the switch from hardware-engineering to software, and kept his priority date.

yholio 8y ago

Seems like such a simple issue to fix: the only condition for getting a specialist visa should be to find an employer willing to pay a specialist salary, say above 150K. Doctors included, I see no reason to protect them from competition. Hop jobs at will but need to maintain within 85% of that level. If a company can't find workers, it should pay more up until a level that puts the competitiveness of the economy under question. Below that level, it's the citizen's right to a fair salary without labour dumping from a poor country. Above that level, it's everybody's right to fairly priced services without professional rents.

tejaswiy 8y ago
Needs to be adjusted for cost of living, salary changes over time by profession (Tech salaries are in a bubble rn. which makes 150k reasonable by bay area standards, but they may go significantly up / down in the future) which is complicated enough but there's edge cases like Universities / Non profits etc. that can't pay salaries to compete with the private sector but people work there anyway because of passion.
- yholio 8y ago
  I disagree, if you can find cheap programmers in Des Moines, Iowa, then by all means expand there, spread the love within the country before going for import labour. As for bubbles, that's the point, there shouldn't be any if labour is available and willing to come in.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - zeckalpha 8y ago
    Or pay people in Des Moines $150k+
  - tejaswiy 8y ago
    Most IT / h1 roles are not based out of the Bay Area [1]. Significant amounts of H1b population goes to doing cookie cutter consulting projects spread across the country and setting a 150k min on the wage means that you won't be able to hire H1s at all in other parts of the country. Obviously this creates a lot of demand for American programmers and personal experience suggests that this will cause a labor shortage. [1] https://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2017-H1B-Visa-Category.aspx?T=WS https://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2017-H1B-Visa-Category.as...

conanbatt 8y ago

you could multiply the h1b quota by 10 and it would fill out.

blitmap 8y ago

I see 3 things here: 1) Qualified job candidates are scarce? Just... what? The only difference between here and there is when people lie and say they're qualified, the company is willing to pass this lie on to the government to say "the qualified candidates are over there". There are people who can do the work, and there are companies who want to pay less in total compensation. I feel like my entire generation was raised on a CS/SE pathway. How are there no qualified candidates? What decade will we be fit do to the work? Maybe I'll move to the third world and get rehired back. That's the entry-level job. 2) H-1B is not an loophole to get "loyal" employees. Again, you keep employees with competitive wages & benefits. 3) Companies should be shamed as much as the government for an exploitable process. The government must change for the people it serves. Companies can be dissolved if they're not supporting the area they base themselves out of (and benefit from).

ip26 8y ago
WRT #2 it's certainly not supposed to be that way. But if an H-1B worker quits, they have something like two weeks to find a new job or else be deported on the spot. In other news, mysteriously, H-1B workers tend not to quit even faced with low wages and poor conditions.
austincheney 8y ago
I love discussions about hiring and immigration. People always focus on their idea of what others should do while ignoring all the data and the reality at present. When you see otherwise rational people ignore data, focus on unqualified conclusions, and opinionated targets their bias is laid bare. Regardless of what you believe is the right answer what does the hiring data actually say?

toast0 8y ago

The process could (and probably should) be adjusted, but the intent of h-1b is clear that it is to fill positions that are not fillable with local talent at prevailing wages. If companies aren't really looking for local talent, or aren't really paying prevailing wages, they have been defrauding the government, and hurting the labor market. When large scale abusers of h-1b are prevented from getting future visas, it gives room for other companies to use the visas, and hopefully they follow the rules.

diogenescynic 8y ago

If you can’t find applicants, you’re just not paying enough. Pay more.

an_cap 8y ago

Why is it not okay to discriminate on the basis of your skin color at birth but okay to discriminate on the basis of which side of a border you were born in? Surely, there would a lot of outrage in HN if someone said - "Granted that H1-Black visas should ostensibly be filled only for positions where it is difficult to find qualified whites"?

DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
I suppose it depends on whether or not you consider it morally acceptable for a country to prioritize the prosperity of its own citizens over that of non-citizens. I.e., whom does a country's government serve?
- an_cap 8y ago
  Why is it morally acceptable for a country to prioritize the prosperity of its own citizens, but not for whites to prioritize the prosperity of fellow whites?
  - addicted 8y ago
    The simple answer is that the US fought a war over the question of whether it can prioritize fellow whites and the pro side lost. Badly.
    - an_cap 8y ago
      Might makes right. Got it. Edit : Sorry addicted, I interpreted your comment as a justification, not as historical account. My bad.
      - DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
        I don't think the GP was giving an argument that the current state of affairs is morally acceptable. I think GP was giving a causal explanation in terms of political history.
      - 8y ago

blahblahblogger 8y ago

> H1-B candidates are attractive for companies because it is harder for them to switch jobs. Companies can lock these employees for longer, and they can pay them less. This is ultimately what it's about. I work as a software engineer in the Bay Area and the number of H1Bs doing the same grunt work coding that I do is astounding. H1Bs were supposed to be for some sort of super specialized work no?

Beldin 8y ago
That's why a higher salary should be mandatory. Eg. 140% of a "normal" salary for that function. It would make companies be more serious about looking for talent elsewhere - such as in their own country.

pramttl 8y ago

A talented (foreign) friend of mine had the opportunity to switch to a better, higher paid role but due to the effort involved, the risk and the pause in H1B premium processing just hung on to his current role. The H1B program itself is not a problem and in-fact is a big positive contributor to the US economy; but it definitely has issues like the one you highlighted (e.g. harder for employees to switch jobs) that should be addressed by the government to make it more viable.

baby 8y ago
I tried to get the H1B twice, couldn't get it through the lottery, so I had to move out of the US for a year and a half while I was waiting for the green card. The process is so backward.
commandlinefan 8y ago
I can’t help but wonder if a lot of the indignities that we tolerate (open-plan offices, unpaid overtime) aren’t worse because there are so many people in our industry unable to fight against them.

austincheney 8y ago

> Granted that H-1B visas should ostensibly be filled only for positions where it is difficult to find qualified American citizens or permanent residents Sorry the be the bearer of bad news but American developers, on the average, must suck. Developers, on average across the country, make around twice the local average yearly income, so there is clearly not a shortage for a lack of financial compensation. In my experience there is no shortage of candidates for developer positions. When I last went through the hiring process I was first pick out of 79 candidates interviewed (9 candidates were ultimately selected) and that was only a fraction of the resumes that were considered. The problem is that in many cases developers and hiring managers are looking for different things. Hiring companies need people who can solve problems. Many junior developers want easy. Many companies have to settle for button pressers either because the available candidates have a high rate of incompetence or insecurity. This discrepancy is clear in most job postings where the company details what it wants in a paragraph and then follows up with a bullet list of requirements that don't match the language of what they just described. For example the paragraph might talk about solving new challenging problems in a team environment but then the bullet points only talk about tools, frameworks, and configurations. > Rather than going after the companies, shouldn't we be focusing on fixing the H-1B visa process instead? So long as companies distrust developer confidence they will continue to rely on immigrants as a candidate pool of greater potential. Changes to immigration policy does not address the core problem of hiring competent developers.

googlemike 8y ago
The best engineers I have ever worked with have been American.
- austincheney 8y ago
  They are probably not representative of the average.
acpetrov 8y ago
There's a side-effect, however, that's being ignored. If US companies don't like/trust the talent coming out of US colleges, they should have a stake in improving those programs. But if their solution is just to hire immigrants, it cheats colleges out of feedback from industry. Colleges really need more practical courses, at least starting in upper years, that set developers up for success in the workforce. How many devs today come out of college needing 3-6 months of learning just the basics? That shouldn't be happening.

whack 8y ago

> "H1-B candidates are attractive for companies because it is harder for them to switch jobs" The extent to which this is true, is severely overestimated. Both by citizens and by the h1b holders themselves. I have a close friend who has switched companies 4 times while on a h1b, and it was a breeze. https://www.prideimmigration.com/can-you-change-jobs-h1b-visa/ https://www.prideimmigration.com/can-you-change-jobs-h1b-vis... The only complicating factors are Trump-era changes such as suspension of premium processing and greater risk of rejections. Combined, these do have a chilling effect on job transfers, which ironically leads to h1b abuses like mentioned in the article. But even then, these are easily surmountable hurdles.

3xblah 8y ago

How would you suggest they fix the process? The practice of hiring someone "because it is harder for them to switch jobs" so the company "can lock these employees for longer" and "can pay them less" sounds like unlawful wage discrimination. If the existence of a governmental program helps a company in pursuing an unlawful practice should that be relevant in determining the wrongfulness of the practice? That seems like a very weak argument. It seems reasonable that a company should see the program as intended to make H1-B candidates attractive because of their skills, not because it will be "harder for them to switch jobs" and the company can "lock" them for longer and "pay them less". If there are citizens or permanent residents that have the same skills then what legitimate reason exists why companies should be filling them with H1-B candidates instead?

geebee 8y ago

You did just discuss the difficulty of finding qualified workers without mentioning salary. Yes, talented software developers are scarce at 50k. They even appear to be scarce at 150k/yr. To me, that doesn't signify a shortage, it signifies that employers asked the market for engineers at a particular price point, and the market said no. This isn't a shortage, it's the market's answer, it's the rational decision of people who have freedom to choose their profession in response to market signals, personal preferences, and costs. The entire point of the H1B visa is to create a pool or workers who are not free to choose their professional path, but are allowed to live in the US only under the work conditions determined by their employer.