9 ms·

US plans to strip H1B immigrants' spouses of work permits

116 points by networkimprov 8y ago

MR4D 8y ago
To the moderators: the article title here is incorrect. The title on the linked page is actually: “Trump administration begins effort to strip work permits for immigrant spouses“
KorematsuFred 8y ago
High chance this will get and injunction in courts as soon as the rule is published.
- networkimprov 8y ago
  But serious damage to the overseas perception of US employers would result regardless.
  - walshemj 8y ago
    People don't want to work in the US because they perceive employers as liberal.
    - jdhn 8y ago
      What do you mean by liberal?
      - walshemj 8y ago
        The normal way its used
  - johan_larson 8y ago
    It doesn't matter. Are the Indians and Chinese going to stop pounding on the doors because the American government makes the rules marginally more strict? No, probably not.
    - sprashanth 8y ago
      In the last 4 months, I've already seen more than 5 friends in my circle who've left the US for good. They do not plan on returning to the US until the pathway to a green card is sorted out. They work at companies like Microsoft, FAANG, etc. Over the next year, another 10-15% of my friend circle is moving out of the US - most of them cite the green card issue as the primary cause of returning back. They've already worked at good tech companies here, most of which have offices around the world. Their choices directly cause the shift of their jobs from US to outside. Couple this with the fact that many of my juniors at the best universities in India (harder to get into than Stan/MIT here) now no longer consider moving to the US because of these cases, there is already an effect of really good talent not arriving here. The effect is not obvious in a year or two, but surely over time you will notice the secondary effects: a lot of engineers coming from India/China would not be the countries'best - the best do not want to put up with this, more employees leaving earlier/not settling, the expansion of India/China offices for these tech companies, or China/India companies doing better than the US counterparts (in cases where this is already happening, a lot of the HN crowd blames Chinese protectionism rather than acknowledging the talent that already exists in those countries).
    - shalmanese 8y ago
      https://qz.com/1342525/chinese-students-increasingly-return-home-after-studying-abroad/ https://qz.com/1342525/chinese-students-increasingly-return-...
    - KorematsuFred 8y ago
      USA is the new frontier for Indians and Chinese. If the laws get idiotic mostly idiots from these countries will flock to American shores. The brightest ones will go elsewhere. In last 2 years we laid off entire QA department of my employer to move all those jobs to India. We then later moved half the engineering team in India and opened an office in Singapore to by pass US visa restrictions. US laws will not matter much to Indians or Chinese seeking better life, it is just that US society will waste a lot of wealth and opportunities to comply with them.
  - ilrwbwrkhv 8y ago
    the overseas perception of US has been quite poor in asia and europe for a while now. dont think it can be further damaged.
- ars 8y ago
  See the article, it's the other way around. Courts are forcing the Trump administration to publish the rule instead of delaying.
  - KorematsuFred 8y ago
    Which is actually a good thing, because the constant delay meant we could not obtain an injunction nor sure if EAD would exist. Also some of the recent changes by USCIS means that time to get H4+EAD is now around 12 months. Effectively as good as killing EAD. Courts have forced them to publish the rule on which we can then obtain an injunction.
martin1975 8y ago
I was an H1-B for a couple of years many years ago, I don't remember spouses (H-4) having the ability to work back then. If this passes, it would be reverting to how it was for the longest time.
- perfmode 8y ago
  That doesn’t make it okay.
- jsnk 8y ago
  You are correct. This was only introduced in 2015. From the article, it reads, "In 2015, the Obama administration created the H-4 employment authorization document, known as H-4 EAD, to allow those spouses to work until the family can get green cards."
  - martin1975 8y ago
    Thanks for filling me in. I got my perm residence (a.k.a. 'green card') in 2000 and citizenship in 2006 so I've washed my hands of all things immigration since that time... quite a lot has changed in the law since then. I voted for Obama too :). Although I can see with Trump's administration wanting to go back to how it was because it's supposed to protect jobs for Americans and others who are green card holder or otherwise authorized to work here.... although to be honest, I don't think they should restrict H1-B spouses (H-4's) from work. My wife basically learned all the movie dialogues and commercials by heart when she was unemployed and just sitting at home, watching TV or playing on the computer... :) Good thing is, we were able to claim her 'residence status' after one year on H1B/H4 so we could dodge paying out of state tuition in college for her accounting degree... which would not have been possible if she wasn't an H-4... E.g. F-1, J-1 and similar student visas always end up paying out of state tuition, which is at least 4x-8x more than in state, depending on the state you live in. On one hand I like being able to say we can get by on a single income... on the other hand, not every wife (or husband) fancies herself or himself as a stay at home entity while the spouse is working... people are designed to work and be productive, thus, this reverting to pre-Obama regulations, IMHO, is not wise. Not wrong.. just unwise. Then again.. it's Trump :)
- 8y ago
prudhvis 8y ago
Even with the best estimates for people born in India, the Green Card wait times are at least 10+ years to 120 years. What are the spouses of such people ought to do?. There seems to be no interest in fixing the root cause of the problem. The only partial fix for the problem is to let the spouses of approved GC petitioners work. But, this administration is bent on removing those provisions, without providing a fix for the problem in the first place.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Even with the best estimates for people born in India, the Green Card wait times are at least 10+ years to 120 years. 10 years is the length of the current backlog for Employment 2nd, 3rd, and “Other Workers" preference visa from India, but only two years for Employment 1st Preference,.and Employment 4th preference is current. > What are the spouses of such people ought to do? In principal: (1) Come to the US but not work, or (2) Remain in India, to which the H-1B recipient, as a nonimmigrant, will return. > There seems to be no interest in fixing the root cause of the problem. Do you mean the existence of the H-1B in the first place, or some other “root cause”.
  - KorematsuFred 8y ago
    Sorry it does not work that way. If not allowed to work legally for such racist reasons they will work for cash on various jobs screwing up poorest of poor American citizens.
  - theshadowmonkey 8y ago
    > 10 years is the length of the current backlog for Employment 2nd, 3rd, and “Other Workers" preference visa from India, but only two years for Employment 1st Preference,.and Employment 4th preference is current. Have you looked at what's required to get a first preference greencard? 99% probably dont qualify unless you abuse it with companies like CTS or Accenture. > (1) Come to the US but not work, or What do spouses with advanced degrees and prior work experience do? With H1B lottery, this was a decent outlet when you have stayed here already for a few years. > (2) Remain in India, to which the H-1B recipient, as a nonimmigrant, will return. You suggest stay away from your wife and family when you're just married or have young kids?
mmmeff 8y ago
As a US citizen, I both agree with returning to a more explicit work-permit system yet apologize for our terrible immigration system.
- mysterydip 8y ago
  unfortunately there's vested interests, corporate and political, to keep it sucky.
belltaco 8y ago
According to the current queue times, many of these people will die of old age before being able to legally work and their spouse getting a green card. This rule only applied after waiting six years in the green card queue. Is 90k folks in the entire US really that high when fields like Computer Security have 0% unemployment? This might end up encouraging offshoring. Country based discrimination at it's finest. Born in the wrong countries(China/India) = 70 years waiting for a green card and dying before your spouse can legally work. Born in the right countries = Green card in 7 months and being able to work instantly.
- davidf18 8y ago
  It has nothing to do with being born in "the right" countries, rather, the volume of people that live in India and China. Tired of the complaining. Those that are in queues for a long while should consider working in their home countries just like Americans do.
- briandear 8y ago
  The key thing however is that the H1B is a non-immigrant, temporary worker visa. Expecting wine from water doesn't engender much sympathy. Using H1B as a pathway to a green card is not any different than expecting to convert an EU tourist visa into a work permit. The long waiting times for a green card are a symptom of expecting an immigrant outcome for a non-immigrant visa. If people want to immigrate, then isn't the correct choice to obtain an immigrant visa?[1] An H1B is a non immigrant visa[2]: "Temporary worker visas are for persons who want to enter the United States for employment lasting a fixed period of time, and are not considered permanent or indefinite." So I'm confused. How is it some kind of tragedy when the visa under which you are working doesn't provide a quick path to a green card? Isn't the visa doing exactly as advertised? Furthermore, providing the H1B spouse with a work permit -- doesn't that mean that the spouse can work in a non-shortage occupation without restriction? Doesn't that necessarily mean that the spouse is able to compete with Americans and permanent residents for jobs that are not hard-to-fill? Basically 1 work visa provides 2 jobs? That doesn't seem like the intent of the H1B program which is to provide temporary workers of high ability to fill specialized jobs for which there are verifiable shortages. It certainly isn't designed to be a recruiting tool for big tech: "Come work for us and your spouse can get a job too! The salary is lower than an equally qualified American, but since your spouse gets to work too, you'll have enough money to live in San Jose and maybe one day, you might even get a green card!" That seems to be the promise the H1B crowd is expecting. I'm not opposed to immigration -- but H1B isn't about immigration; it's about filling otherwise unfilled jobs in specialty occupations for which there aren't enough qualified Americans. If the sole purpose is to fill shortages, then providing the spouse with a free-riding right to work in any occupation (not shortage areas) is not consistent with the purpose. If H1Bs can't afford to have a non-working spouse, then they ought not accept the jobs at the salaries offered. What's happening now is that the working spouse's job is actually a subsidy to compensate for an H1B wage that is lower than it should be. That lower H1B wage is then being used to displace American workers.[3] [1] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/immigrate/employment-based-immigrant-visas.html https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/immigrat... [2] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/employment/temporary-worker-visas.html https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/employme... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff-at-disney-train-foreign-replacements.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff...
duxup 8y ago
I wish they'd just limit H1B's to a salary of say 100k or more or something so that the whole concept of "can't find enough people here" might actually apply. That way we'd see less abuse as far as some really low level work just being imported for cheaper. At one point you could search active H1B jobs on a government site somewhere, I found what looked like basic customer service positions being filled for pretty low wages. I really doubt they couldn't find someone to do the job, just they didn't find them willing to work for cheap / tethered to the company via an H1B...
- sgrove 8y ago
  H1B visas must be paid market wage. In SF for example, it'd be surprising to see even a junior-ish dev (with some specialization somewhere else) under $100k. Customer service may be lower if that's what the market bears, but the individual should probably be able to speak e.g. Japanese (at a professional corporate level) and the company can't find that individual locally. The $100k minimum would hurt those companies here (and cost Americans lost tax revenue and jobs). It's an interesting system.
  - duxup 8y ago
    "must be paid market wage" I'm not sure if that is the always the case. If everything was equal I'm not sure anyone would bother with the system. I don't think a minimum would work as you say. The jobs I found were surprisingly common. I think the system is being heavily gamed. We've already seen evidence of companies choosing to do the minimum amount to claim they tried to find local talent with the explicit intent of using H1Bs. I think you're describing the intent of the systems, and in your area it might actually work, but there's a lot of evidence that it is used in other ways.
  - diogenescynic 8y ago
    I've seen statistics that show 50-85% of H-1Bs are underpaid. There are so many ways to abuse and game the system it's not even worth saving. Make the minimum $150k and give visas to the highest paid applicants. It shouldn't be a lottery...
- 8y ago
lbacaj 8y ago
No matter where you are on the politics of all this our immigration system is incredibly broken. There are so many “work arounds” or “hacks”, if you prefer, placed precisely because the system is so badly broken. Whether it’s DACA, or this, or the many other things put in place and intended to help families these are all hacks around a fundamentally broken law system. No one seems to have the courage to fix it and the politics are now so devisive that the state things are in is incredibly sad and frankly inhuman in many cases.
- davidf18 8y ago
  The H1-B Visa was abused, intended only for cases where there are absolutely no Americans with the qualifications that can fill that job. A number of politicians are effectively "bribed" by large firms to attempt to increase the H1-B Visa quota (see Gang of Eight Immigration). My own state sen Schumer, has a daughter that works for Facebook and it is no secret that Facebook wants to increase the number of H1-B Visas. Fixing immigration is comparatively easy. 1. Get rid of H1-B Visa abuse. The reality is that there should be few H1-B Visas given out because there are in fact Americans that can do most of the jobs. H1-B Visas should only be given out at salaries 1.5 times those of Americans, to incentivize the hiring of Americans and minimizing H1-B Visa abuse. 2. Force the implementation of eVerify with massive fines for employers that don't use it. 3. Obama broke the law by not having Congress pass the DACA legislation. It appears that Congress doesn't want to pass it so they should return to their native countries. Remember, in all of these programs of Visa abuse, or the hiring of illegal aliens, takes jobs (and in the case of DACA) university spots from US Citizens and those who are living here legally. Thus, the system is not broken. Just enforce existing laws such as eVerify with massive fines for abuse, get rid of H1-B Visa abuse, get rid of H4 Visas which Congress never passed in the first place, get rid of DACA, have them apply and wait in line like everyone else that wants to live here.
thrill 8y ago
Statements from the article such as "Rand pointed out that, only families already approved for green cards qualify for the work visa, meaning the government has already determined there are no Americans who could be working the high-skilled job" make me question the entire program. Really, "no Americans"?, What rocket science project are they working on? Or did they leave out "at the wages offered" part?
- siddarthd2919 8y ago
  The employer has to post the job requirement and try multiple recruitment channels for 30 days. Only if they cant find another candidate, can they file for Perm. So that specific "Rocket Science project" didnt have any qualified american apply for it. This is a good article to explain the whole process - https://www.usavisanow.com/perm/ https://www.usavisanow.com/perm/
  - tonym9428 8y ago
    I used to work at a H1B shop and the way we got around this was by posting the job for three or so months and only interviewing those candidates who did their undergrad at an Indian university.
  - wavefunction 8y ago
    When I stop getting South-Asian recruiters bombarding me on LinkedIn asking if I want to work a 1 month contract in Pittsburgh writing PHP for $16 an hour despite living in Texas then I will agree the situation has been straightened out. There are fast-food places offering $15 an hour. Until then the system is being abused and it's American labor that's losing out, followed by people being abused by the H1B racket. If they want to pay someone $x to do some job then hire them in their home country and outsource it. Or offer the visa to the worker. It's much more preferable for these firms to abuse the system and their "placements" until it's fixed though.
  - flukus 8y ago
    And employers will maliciously comply, they'll advertise their low salary so no one applies, then if people are desperate enough they'll find some reason to reject their resume.
interlocutor 8y ago
This is great news for Canada. https://www.canadim.com/h1b-riskier-canada-welcome-record-immigrants/ https://www.canadim.com/h1b-riskier-canada-welcome-record-im... Legal immigration is the reason silicon valley exists. Ask Mark Zuckerberg why he moved Facebook HQ to silicon valley. It is because that's where the engineers are. If legal immigration wasn't a thing Zuckerberg would have moved considerable number of jobs to places like Beijing, Bangalore and St. Petersburg, because that's where he would have found software engineers. Canada, already a major center for AI innovation, will be the new silicon valley. Edit: s/H-1B/immigration/g because the exact visa doesn't matter.
- zavi 8y ago
  Shenzhen area will be the new Silicon Valley most likely.
  - iceninenines 8y ago
    For hardware prototyping and manufacturing, it already is.
  - chaostheory 8y ago
    If China were to have continued its gradual openness before XJ, I would have agreed. Now, I have my doubts. Sure, innovation needs capital and it also needs an educated and skilled workforce, but it also needs freedom of speech to thrive and grow. Without freedom of speech, all you have is one giant copier. There's an intellectual cost to constantly having to determine whether you can say or write something without getting in trouble. imo A South Korean metro has a much better chance of replacing SV long term.
  - gotocake 8y ago
    Really? I’d be worried about doing R&D in China, given the track record of outright stealing anything that isn’t nailed down. You’d also have to wade through a Byzantine network of graft and family connections to get anything done, deal with the central government’s whims (imagine Apple in China telling their equivalent of the FBI to sit and spin), and hope that their opaque economic structure really is heading in a good direction. China gets the manufacturing business because of plentiful, desperate labor, but that’s just for manufacturing. Much of the other business there is a matter of gaining access to the Chinese market.
makecheck 8y ago
In a country where even citizen couples can need two jobs, each, just to survive, it is frustrating that immigrants are still expected to just somehow pull it together. Oh, and all the immigrant-heavy jobs seem to be in very expensive areas, at least for tech. Here’s a good yardstick for citizens: for any given immigrant policy X (or heck, any policy X on any subject), would you want to live that way? If “no”, the policy is Wrong. Period. These policies also keep trying to restrict immigrants without paying any attention to the benefits that companies receive, and indeed that citizens receive, when there are immigrants. First, the basic one: more people = more customers to buy stuff in your local economy, broader tax base, etc. Second, sometimes the entire presence of a site is based on filling a certain minimum number of jobs. A site with 1000 people that has 300 immigrants is not “300 stolen American jobs”, it’s +700 jobs that wouldn’t have otherwise existed for citizens; or, it’s a site that wouldn’t be able to do as much otherwise, possibly causing the entire company to fail in some way that ends up costing U.S. jobs all over the place, even at other sites. Policies should never be “death by 1000 cuts”, either. Politicians keep finding ways to make things that they don’t like unnecessarily hard, just because they haven’t found a way to kill them off entirely. Well, frankly, that kind of thing is crap.
- acchow 8y ago
  > Here’s a good yardstick for citizens: for any given immigrant policy X (or heck, any policy X on any subject), would you want to live that way? If “no”, the policy is Wrong. Period. We're a long way from thinking like this. First, let's get most of the country to stop treating immigrants as the enemy.
  - Eridrus 8y ago
    A good chunk of the country has had a backlash to Trump's rhetoric and is actually now more pro-immigrant than before the election.
- crowdpleaser 8y ago
  >it is frustrating that immigrants are still expected to just somehow pull it together But understandable, companies that use H1Bs tell us that the H1B holders are highly compensated and doing work that no available Americans can do. I live in the bay area and I hear (rightfully and often) about the ways that xenophobes make life harder for immigrants (H1b / illegal / otherwise), but I never hear people commit to making the changes they can make here or prioritize the election of officials who will do things like approve enough housing to make it possible to get a 1 bedroom apartment for less than two thousand dollars in SF / Palo Alto / San Jose.
Causality1 8y ago
I've had too many friends be forced to spend their last two weeks on the job training their H1B replacements. I'd be happy if the H1B program was done away with entirely. The idea you can't find enough employees in a country of 326 million people is a joke.
- dleslie 8y ago
  It's because companies rarely train. Few H1Bs would be needed if companies trained.
- dsl 8y ago
  Cisco is a really good example of this. They actually ran afoul of anti-discrimination laws for explicitly rejecting American born workers. https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/08/21/h-1b-visa-reliant-cisco-secured-visas-for-foreign-workers-instead-of-hiring-u-s-citizens-report/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/08/21/h-1b-visa-reliant-cis...
  - masonic 8y ago
    Same with IBM. And Disney. And UC.
- theshadowmonkey 8y ago
  Most H1Bs in high density areas are not this way. A lot of companies like Oracle, Google, Facebook etc.. have very few H1Bs even though you see a lot of them. Look at them as a % of all employees. And most H1Bs are highly paid, highly skilled, US educated graduates. Atleast, they ought to be given a chance to live and work here.
- riantogo 8y ago
  Do you know how many H1Bs are issued per year? Do you know how many jobs are lost per year? Do you know how many jobs are created by immigrants (and their kids) who started out on H1B? Do you know how much tax revenue comes in from H1Bs and how many social programs they support? Sorry about your friends, buy H1B here is just a boogeyman.
phil248 8y ago
This is an attack on families and, per the article, would impact women almost exclusively. And it would inevitably result in more under-the-table economic activity. Another lose-lose from the Trump administration.
- ars 8y ago
  Per the article, this is not an attack, rather the Obama administration changed this rule, and a court found that to be illegal. It then transitions to the Trump administration to rescind the rule, and they delayed, but the court said "no more waiting". The new rule was only in effect for a short time (from 2015), reverting a rule is not "an attack".
  - riantogo 8y ago
    Legal. Court found it to be legal. From the article: “A group of technology workers called Save Jobs USA who argue the program jeopardizes American jobs sued the Obama administration and, after losing in D.C. federal court, appealed the case.”
aussieguy1234 8y ago
Trump. Making Canada great again.
- ars 8y ago
  This isn't Trump, this lawsuit was filed during the Obama years.
davidw 8y ago
Yet another hurtful policy that puts paid to the notion of "oh, but we're perfectly ok with legal immigration".
- refurb 8y ago
  I don’t someone has to support open borders to be “ok with legal immigration”.
RhysU 8y ago
Some possible impacts: 1) Drives up wages to the point where an H1B couple can contain one non-working spouse. Not bad. 2) Causes H1B applicants to skew towards younger folks without families, reducing housing pressure. Not bad. 3) Causes H1B recipients to marry citizens at slightly higher rates and more quickly assimilate, especially in the second+ generation. Call it a wash.
- theshadowmonkey 8y ago
  1. Might not happen in the probably the next decade. Earning 200k+ in Bay Area is common and still hard to live on a single salary. What should an engineer do to make it go to 400k? 2. So, you want experienced, well trained experts in their respective fields to leave the country and go elsewhere after the companies spend so much on their younger selves? 3. This would be a small minority whatever happens. After growing up in a country with a completely different culture for ~25 years, a sudden shift in a small timeframe is not expected.
  - RhysU 8y ago
    1. "Hey boss, I need a raise." "How much?" "Enough to cover my spouse's income or I have to quit." Seems compelling. 2. I didn't say anything about current recipients. Just commented on how it may impact new applicants and the housing market. 3. Demographics change slowly.
  - ap3 8y ago
    Realistically how can 200k+ be hard to live on?
    - theshadowmonkey 8y ago
      It's not hard to live on. But, you mostly don't save anything or you might take a long time to buy a house.
TomMckenny 8y ago
Picking at the program by brutalizing people here and there is unconscionable. Put everyone out of their misery, stop trying to predict winners and losers and just end the program. The normal immigration processes served the country well for generations. The new policy of catering to particular industries by creating second class citizens is never going to be fair to anyone because it was never designed to be.
optymizer 8y ago
As a former H1B visa holder with a spouse, and friends in the same boat, I have experienced first-hand the effects of having a spouse that is not allowed to work. First, they get bored out of their mind. They're young, they want to grow, but they can't. While you're off to work, networking, learning, your spouse is at home, trying their best to chase away the feeling of stagnation. It's OK for the first few months - they go for walks, cook, read, go to the gym - anything to keep busy, but unless there's a child that takes up their entire time, they just get bored, then they get sad, and then they get depressed. It takes a hard toll on the relationship, which, ironically, is the primary reason why spouses agree to this in the first place. Most just want to live with their husbands or wives and have a normal life. Long distance isn't a realistic option when you're talking about a 6 year H1B visa. Being unable to work makes the relationship one-sided, because one person goes to work, provides for the family, and has various experiences which slowly add up and allows them to grow personally and professionally. In addition, if you come from a society where gender roles are heavily promoted culturally, it is especially hard when the roles get reversed when the couple is in the US. Typically, men lose confidence in their ability to provide for the family and get very depressed. Women from cultures where there's an expectation that they'll be a homemaker, have much less stigma associated with not working, especially if there's a child to take care of. They are also competing with other couples in various areas: social status, disposable income (that lets you go on vacations) or ability to buy a house, and they'll be losing ground simply because of the income level (less so for FAANG employees, but there are plenty of places hiring on an H1B visa that pay the minimum they can to meet the H1B criteria). There are only 2 realistic options most spouses end up taking: the spouse works illegally (clearly a risky move) or the spouse changes their legal status: divorces you and marries a citizen (risky and further damages the quality of your relationship), tries to go to school on an F1 status (which now requires even more income and puts more pressure on the H1B holder), or the relationship deteriorates to the point where the non-working spouse goes back to their home country because they are unhappy here. Finally, I will say that yes there are many real issues with the H1B visa, but disallowing the spouse to work is not a solution to any of them. It only manages to get these young couples behind in life. I am fortunate enough to have come out of this ordeal fairly unscathed, but others I know have not been so lucky.
- 8y ago
throwaway082729 8y ago
The system is fundamentally broken and it's partly my own countrymen to blame. I've lived here for 17 years (in 4 years, if I live here, I'd have lived here longer than in my home country), earn more than $500k per year and recently got an offer for $600+k/yr. I've probably paid at least three quarters of a million in taxes. I'm still on a H1, cannot change jobs easily, cannot do anything on the side like advise companies and though I get opportunities for VP roles, cannot take them up since companies usually don't want a VP that's on a H1. This news is devastating since my wife quit her job after my kid was born and only recently has used the EAD to work with autistic children which has been her passion all her life. If HR1044 does not pass, we've decided to move back. I'll take my $1.5M, which I could have invested here, with me and invest it in my home country instead (or I'll come back on a L-1 visa like so many of my lesser-qualified friends and get a green card in a couple of years).
- sundaeofshock 8y ago
  $500k/year? I’m supposed to feel sympathy towards you when there are H1b holders who are being horribly exploited? $500k/year is a lot of fucking money, even in the Bay Area.
  - throwaway082729 8y ago
    Sorry if it came off as asking for sympathy. I mentioned my compensation only to highlight the fact that I'm not cheap labor that's taking American jobs away. I happen to have some skills that top employers in the country deem enough to be worthy of half a million dollars per year.
  - jogjayr 8y ago
    H1B-holder: earns $80k/year "Cheap labor! Exploitation!" H1B-holder: earns $500k/year "You greedy bastard! You want a green card on top of that?!" H1B-holder: shocked Pikachu face Sorry for the Reddit-style comment :-). Also, I haven't downvoted you (in case someone has and you were wondering) because I don't believe you're posting in bad faith. But you do see the contradiction?
- refurb 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ribble 8y ago
citizens first!
stunt 8y ago
Just take look into EU countries and try to apply some of the same policies. They seem to have if not zero, less issues with high skilled workers. Otherwise you can blame H1B holders forever. They didn't wrote the policy or the law. You shouldn't punish them for what they had no influence. They should be able to plan for their living. They should be encouraged to contribute and integrate with society.

116 points by networkimprov 8y ago

MR4D 8y ago

To the moderators: the article title here is incorrect. The title on the linked page is actually: “Trump administration begins effort to strip work permits for immigrant spouses“

KorematsuFred 8y ago

High chance this will get and injunction in courts as soon as the rule is published.

networkimprov 8y ago
But serious damage to the overseas perception of US employers would result regardless.
- walshemj 8y ago
  People don't want to work in the US because they perceive employers as liberal.
  - jdhn 8y ago
    What do you mean by liberal?
    - walshemj 8y ago
      The normal way its used
- johan_larson 8y ago
  It doesn't matter. Are the Indians and Chinese going to stop pounding on the doors because the American government makes the rules marginally more strict? No, probably not.
  - sprashanth 8y ago
    In the last 4 months, I've already seen more than 5 friends in my circle who've left the US for good. They do not plan on returning to the US until the pathway to a green card is sorted out. They work at companies like Microsoft, FAANG, etc. Over the next year, another 10-15% of my friend circle is moving out of the US - most of them cite the green card issue as the primary cause of returning back. They've already worked at good tech companies here, most of which have offices around the world. Their choices directly cause the shift of their jobs from US to outside. Couple this with the fact that many of my juniors at the best universities in India (harder to get into than Stan/MIT here) now no longer consider moving to the US because of these cases, there is already an effect of really good talent not arriving here. The effect is not obvious in a year or two, but surely over time you will notice the secondary effects: a lot of engineers coming from India/China would not be the countries'best - the best do not want to put up with this, more employees leaving earlier/not settling, the expansion of India/China offices for these tech companies, or China/India companies doing better than the US counterparts (in cases where this is already happening, a lot of the HN crowd blames Chinese protectionism rather than acknowledging the talent that already exists in those countries).
  - shalmanese 8y ago
    https://qz.com/1342525/chinese-students-increasingly-return-home-after-studying-abroad/ https://qz.com/1342525/chinese-students-increasingly-return-...
  - KorematsuFred 8y ago
    USA is the new frontier for Indians and Chinese. If the laws get idiotic mostly idiots from these countries will flock to American shores. The brightest ones will go elsewhere. In last 2 years we laid off entire QA department of my employer to move all those jobs to India. We then later moved half the engineering team in India and opened an office in Singapore to by pass US visa restrictions. US laws will not matter much to Indians or Chinese seeking better life, it is just that US society will waste a lot of wealth and opportunities to comply with them.
- ilrwbwrkhv 8y ago
  the overseas perception of US has been quite poor in asia and europe for a while now. dont think it can be further damaged.
ars 8y ago
See the article, it's the other way around. Courts are forcing the Trump administration to publish the rule instead of delaying.
- KorematsuFred 8y ago
  Which is actually a good thing, because the constant delay meant we could not obtain an injunction nor sure if EAD would exist. Also some of the recent changes by USCIS means that time to get H4+EAD is now around 12 months. Effectively as good as killing EAD. Courts have forced them to publish the rule on which we can then obtain an injunction.

martin1975 8y ago

I was an H1-B for a couple of years many years ago, I don't remember spouses (H-4) having the ability to work back then. If this passes, it would be reverting to how it was for the longest time.

perfmode 8y ago
That doesn’t make it okay.
jsnk 8y ago
You are correct. This was only introduced in 2015. From the article, it reads, "In 2015, the Obama administration created the H-4 employment authorization document, known as H-4 EAD, to allow those spouses to work until the family can get green cards."
- martin1975 8y ago
  Thanks for filling me in. I got my perm residence (a.k.a. 'green card') in 2000 and citizenship in 2006 so I've washed my hands of all things immigration since that time... quite a lot has changed in the law since then. I voted for Obama too :). Although I can see with Trump's administration wanting to go back to how it was because it's supposed to protect jobs for Americans and others who are green card holder or otherwise authorized to work here.... although to be honest, I don't think they should restrict H1-B spouses (H-4's) from work. My wife basically learned all the movie dialogues and commercials by heart when she was unemployed and just sitting at home, watching TV or playing on the computer... :) Good thing is, we were able to claim her 'residence status' after one year on H1B/H4 so we could dodge paying out of state tuition in college for her accounting degree... which would not have been possible if she wasn't an H-4... E.g. F-1, J-1 and similar student visas always end up paying out of state tuition, which is at least 4x-8x more than in state, depending on the state you live in. On one hand I like being able to say we can get by on a single income... on the other hand, not every wife (or husband) fancies herself or himself as a stay at home entity while the spouse is working... people are designed to work and be productive, thus, this reverting to pre-Obama regulations, IMHO, is not wise. Not wrong.. just unwise. Then again.. it's Trump :)
8y ago

prudhvis 8y ago

Even with the best estimates for people born in India, the Green Card wait times are at least 10+ years to 120 years. What are the spouses of such people ought to do?. There seems to be no interest in fixing the root cause of the problem. The only partial fix for the problem is to let the spouses of approved GC petitioners work. But, this administration is bent on removing those provisions, without providing a fix for the problem in the first place.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> Even with the best estimates for people born in India, the Green Card wait times are at least 10+ years to 120 years. 10 years is the length of the current backlog for Employment 2nd, 3rd, and “Other Workers" preference visa from India, but only two years for Employment 1st Preference,.and Employment 4th preference is current. > What are the spouses of such people ought to do? In principal: (1) Come to the US but not work, or (2) Remain in India, to which the H-1B recipient, as a nonimmigrant, will return. > There seems to be no interest in fixing the root cause of the problem. Do you mean the existence of the H-1B in the first place, or some other “root cause”.
- KorematsuFred 8y ago
  Sorry it does not work that way. If not allowed to work legally for such racist reasons they will work for cash on various jobs screwing up poorest of poor American citizens.
- theshadowmonkey 8y ago
  > 10 years is the length of the current backlog for Employment 2nd, 3rd, and “Other Workers" preference visa from India, but only two years for Employment 1st Preference,.and Employment 4th preference is current. Have you looked at what's required to get a first preference greencard? 99% probably dont qualify unless you abuse it with companies like CTS or Accenture. > (1) Come to the US but not work, or What do spouses with advanced degrees and prior work experience do? With H1B lottery, this was a decent outlet when you have stayed here already for a few years. > (2) Remain in India, to which the H-1B recipient, as a nonimmigrant, will return. You suggest stay away from your wife and family when you're just married or have young kids?

mmmeff 8y ago

As a US citizen, I both agree with returning to a more explicit work-permit system yet apologize for our terrible immigration system.

mysterydip 8y ago
unfortunately there's vested interests, corporate and political, to keep it sucky.

belltaco 8y ago

According to the current queue times, many of these people will die of old age before being able to legally work and their spouse getting a green card. This rule only applied after waiting six years in the green card queue. Is 90k folks in the entire US really that high when fields like Computer Security have 0% unemployment? This might end up encouraging offshoring. Country based discrimination at it's finest. Born in the wrong countries(China/India) = 70 years waiting for a green card and dying before your spouse can legally work. Born in the right countries = Green card in 7 months and being able to work instantly.

davidf18 8y ago
It has nothing to do with being born in "the right" countries, rather, the volume of people that live in India and China. Tired of the complaining. Those that are in queues for a long while should consider working in their home countries just like Americans do.
briandear 8y ago
The key thing however is that the H1B is a non-immigrant, temporary worker visa. Expecting wine from water doesn't engender much sympathy. Using H1B as a pathway to a green card is not any different than expecting to convert an EU tourist visa into a work permit. The long waiting times for a green card are a symptom of expecting an immigrant outcome for a non-immigrant visa. If people want to immigrate, then isn't the correct choice to obtain an immigrant visa?[1] An H1B is a non immigrant visa[2]: "Temporary worker visas are for persons who want to enter the United States for employment lasting a fixed period of time, and are not considered permanent or indefinite." So I'm confused. How is it some kind of tragedy when the visa under which you are working doesn't provide a quick path to a green card? Isn't the visa doing exactly as advertised? Furthermore, providing the H1B spouse with a work permit -- doesn't that mean that the spouse can work in a non-shortage occupation without restriction? Doesn't that necessarily mean that the spouse is able to compete with Americans and permanent residents for jobs that are not hard-to-fill? Basically 1 work visa provides 2 jobs? That doesn't seem like the intent of the H1B program which is to provide temporary workers of high ability to fill specialized jobs for which there are verifiable shortages. It certainly isn't designed to be a recruiting tool for big tech: "Come work for us and your spouse can get a job too! The salary is lower than an equally qualified American, but since your spouse gets to work too, you'll have enough money to live in San Jose and maybe one day, you might even get a green card!" That seems to be the promise the H1B crowd is expecting. I'm not opposed to immigration -- but H1B isn't about immigration; it's about filling otherwise unfilled jobs in specialty occupations for which there aren't enough qualified Americans. If the sole purpose is to fill shortages, then providing the spouse with a free-riding right to work in any occupation (not shortage areas) is not consistent with the purpose. If H1Bs can't afford to have a non-working spouse, then they ought not accept the jobs at the salaries offered. What's happening now is that the working spouse's job is actually a subsidy to compensate for an H1B wage that is lower than it should be. That lower H1B wage is then being used to displace American workers.[3] [1] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/immigrate/employment-based-immigrant-visas.html https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/immigrat... [2] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/employment/temporary-worker-visas.html https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/employme... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff-at-disney-train-foreign-replacements.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff...

duxup 8y ago

I wish they'd just limit H1B's to a salary of say 100k or more or something so that the whole concept of "can't find enough people here" might actually apply. That way we'd see less abuse as far as some really low level work just being imported for cheaper. At one point you could search active H1B jobs on a government site somewhere, I found what looked like basic customer service positions being filled for pretty low wages. I really doubt they couldn't find someone to do the job, just they didn't find them willing to work for cheap / tethered to the company via an H1B...

sgrove 8y ago
H1B visas must be paid market wage. In SF for example, it'd be surprising to see even a junior-ish dev (with some specialization somewhere else) under $100k. Customer service may be lower if that's what the market bears, but the individual should probably be able to speak e.g. Japanese (at a professional corporate level) and the company can't find that individual locally. The $100k minimum would hurt those companies here (and cost Americans lost tax revenue and jobs). It's an interesting system.
- duxup 8y ago
  "must be paid market wage" I'm not sure if that is the always the case. If everything was equal I'm not sure anyone would bother with the system. I don't think a minimum would work as you say. The jobs I found were surprisingly common. I think the system is being heavily gamed. We've already seen evidence of companies choosing to do the minimum amount to claim they tried to find local talent with the explicit intent of using H1Bs. I think you're describing the intent of the systems, and in your area it might actually work, but there's a lot of evidence that it is used in other ways.
- diogenescynic 8y ago
  I've seen statistics that show 50-85% of H-1Bs are underpaid. There are so many ways to abuse and game the system it's not even worth saving. Make the minimum $150k and give visas to the highest paid applicants. It shouldn't be a lottery...
8y ago

lbacaj 8y ago

No matter where you are on the politics of all this our immigration system is incredibly broken. There are so many “work arounds” or “hacks”, if you prefer, placed precisely because the system is so badly broken. Whether it’s DACA, or this, or the many other things put in place and intended to help families these are all hacks around a fundamentally broken law system. No one seems to have the courage to fix it and the politics are now so devisive that the state things are in is incredibly sad and frankly inhuman in many cases.

davidf18 8y ago
The H1-B Visa was abused, intended only for cases where there are absolutely no Americans with the qualifications that can fill that job. A number of politicians are effectively "bribed" by large firms to attempt to increase the H1-B Visa quota (see Gang of Eight Immigration). My own state sen Schumer, has a daughter that works for Facebook and it is no secret that Facebook wants to increase the number of H1-B Visas. Fixing immigration is comparatively easy. 1. Get rid of H1-B Visa abuse. The reality is that there should be few H1-B Visas given out because there are in fact Americans that can do most of the jobs. H1-B Visas should only be given out at salaries 1.5 times those of Americans, to incentivize the hiring of Americans and minimizing H1-B Visa abuse. 2. Force the implementation of eVerify with massive fines for employers that don't use it. 3. Obama broke the law by not having Congress pass the DACA legislation. It appears that Congress doesn't want to pass it so they should return to their native countries. Remember, in all of these programs of Visa abuse, or the hiring of illegal aliens, takes jobs (and in the case of DACA) university spots from US Citizens and those who are living here legally. Thus, the system is not broken. Just enforce existing laws such as eVerify with massive fines for abuse, get rid of H1-B Visa abuse, get rid of H4 Visas which Congress never passed in the first place, get rid of DACA, have them apply and wait in line like everyone else that wants to live here.

thrill 8y ago

Statements from the article such as "Rand pointed out that, only families already approved for green cards qualify for the work visa, meaning the government has already determined there are no Americans who could be working the high-skilled job" make me question the entire program. Really, "no Americans"?, What rocket science project are they working on? Or did they leave out "at the wages offered" part?

siddarthd2919 8y ago
The employer has to post the job requirement and try multiple recruitment channels for 30 days. Only if they cant find another candidate, can they file for Perm. So that specific "Rocket Science project" didnt have any qualified american apply for it. This is a good article to explain the whole process - https://www.usavisanow.com/perm/ https://www.usavisanow.com/perm/
- tonym9428 8y ago
  I used to work at a H1B shop and the way we got around this was by posting the job for three or so months and only interviewing those candidates who did their undergrad at an Indian university.
- wavefunction 8y ago
  When I stop getting South-Asian recruiters bombarding me on LinkedIn asking if I want to work a 1 month contract in Pittsburgh writing PHP for $16 an hour despite living in Texas then I will agree the situation has been straightened out. There are fast-food places offering $15 an hour. Until then the system is being abused and it's American labor that's losing out, followed by people being abused by the H1B racket. If they want to pay someone $x to do some job then hire them in their home country and outsource it. Or offer the visa to the worker. It's much more preferable for these firms to abuse the system and their "placements" until it's fixed though.
- flukus 8y ago
  And employers will maliciously comply, they'll advertise their low salary so no one applies, then if people are desperate enough they'll find some reason to reject their resume.

interlocutor 8y ago

This is great news for Canada. https://www.canadim.com/h1b-riskier-canada-welcome-record-immigrants/ https://www.canadim.com/h1b-riskier-canada-welcome-record-im... Legal immigration is the reason silicon valley exists. Ask Mark Zuckerberg why he moved Facebook HQ to silicon valley. It is because that's where the engineers are. If legal immigration wasn't a thing Zuckerberg would have moved considerable number of jobs to places like Beijing, Bangalore and St. Petersburg, because that's where he would have found software engineers. Canada, already a major center for AI innovation, will be the new silicon valley. Edit: s/H-1B/immigration/g because the exact visa doesn't matter.

zavi 8y ago
Shenzhen area will be the new Silicon Valley most likely.
- iceninenines 8y ago
  For hardware prototyping and manufacturing, it already is.
- chaostheory 8y ago
  If China were to have continued its gradual openness before XJ, I would have agreed. Now, I have my doubts. Sure, innovation needs capital and it also needs an educated and skilled workforce, but it also needs freedom of speech to thrive and grow. Without freedom of speech, all you have is one giant copier. There's an intellectual cost to constantly having to determine whether you can say or write something without getting in trouble. imo A South Korean metro has a much better chance of replacing SV long term.
- gotocake 8y ago
  Really? I’d be worried about doing R&D in China, given the track record of outright stealing anything that isn’t nailed down. You’d also have to wade through a Byzantine network of graft and family connections to get anything done, deal with the central government’s whims (imagine Apple in China telling their equivalent of the FBI to sit and spin), and hope that their opaque economic structure really is heading in a good direction. China gets the manufacturing business because of plentiful, desperate labor, but that’s just for manufacturing. Much of the other business there is a matter of gaining access to the Chinese market.

makecheck 8y ago

In a country where even citizen couples can need two jobs, each, just to survive, it is frustrating that immigrants are still expected to just somehow pull it together. Oh, and all the immigrant-heavy jobs seem to be in very expensive areas, at least for tech. Here’s a good yardstick for citizens: for any given immigrant policy X (or heck, any policy X on any subject), would you want to live that way? If “no”, the policy is Wrong. Period. These policies also keep trying to restrict immigrants without paying any attention to the benefits that companies receive, and indeed that citizens receive, when there are immigrants. First, the basic one: more people = more customers to buy stuff in your local economy, broader tax base, etc. Second, sometimes the entire presence of a site is based on filling a certain minimum number of jobs. A site with 1000 people that has 300 immigrants is not “300 stolen American jobs”, it’s +700 jobs that wouldn’t have otherwise existed for citizens; or, it’s a site that wouldn’t be able to do as much otherwise, possibly causing the entire company to fail in some way that ends up costing U.S. jobs all over the place, even at other sites. Policies should never be “death by 1000 cuts”, either. Politicians keep finding ways to make things that they don’t like unnecessarily hard, just because they haven’t found a way to kill them off entirely. Well, frankly, that kind of thing is crap.

acchow 8y ago
> Here’s a good yardstick for citizens: for any given immigrant policy X (or heck, any policy X on any subject), would you want to live that way? If “no”, the policy is Wrong. Period. We're a long way from thinking like this. First, let's get most of the country to stop treating immigrants as the enemy.
- Eridrus 8y ago
  A good chunk of the country has had a backlash to Trump's rhetoric and is actually now more pro-immigrant than before the election.
crowdpleaser 8y ago
>it is frustrating that immigrants are still expected to just somehow pull it together But understandable, companies that use H1Bs tell us that the H1B holders are highly compensated and doing work that no available Americans can do. I live in the bay area and I hear (rightfully and often) about the ways that xenophobes make life harder for immigrants (H1b / illegal / otherwise), but I never hear people commit to making the changes they can make here or prioritize the election of officials who will do things like approve enough housing to make it possible to get a 1 bedroom apartment for less than two thousand dollars in SF / Palo Alto / San Jose.

Causality1 8y ago

I've had too many friends be forced to spend their last two weeks on the job training their H1B replacements. I'd be happy if the H1B program was done away with entirely. The idea you can't find enough employees in a country of 326 million people is a joke.

dleslie 8y ago
It's because companies rarely train. Few H1Bs would be needed if companies trained.
dsl 8y ago
Cisco is a really good example of this. They actually ran afoul of anti-discrimination laws for explicitly rejecting American born workers. https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/08/21/h-1b-visa-reliant-cisco-secured-visas-for-foreign-workers-instead-of-hiring-u-s-citizens-report/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/08/21/h-1b-visa-reliant-cis...
- masonic 8y ago
  Same with IBM. And Disney. And UC.
theshadowmonkey 8y ago
Most H1Bs in high density areas are not this way. A lot of companies like Oracle, Google, Facebook etc.. have very few H1Bs even though you see a lot of them. Look at them as a % of all employees. And most H1Bs are highly paid, highly skilled, US educated graduates. Atleast, they ought to be given a chance to live and work here.
riantogo 8y ago
Do you know how many H1Bs are issued per year? Do you know how many jobs are lost per year? Do you know how many jobs are created by immigrants (and their kids) who started out on H1B? Do you know how much tax revenue comes in from H1Bs and how many social programs they support? Sorry about your friends, buy H1B here is just a boogeyman.

phil248 8y ago

This is an attack on families and, per the article, would impact women almost exclusively. And it would inevitably result in more under-the-table economic activity. Another lose-lose from the Trump administration.

ars 8y ago
Per the article, this is not an attack, rather the Obama administration changed this rule, and a court found that to be illegal. It then transitions to the Trump administration to rescind the rule, and they delayed, but the court said "no more waiting". The new rule was only in effect for a short time (from 2015), reverting a rule is not "an attack".
- riantogo 8y ago
  Legal. Court found it to be legal. From the article: “A group of technology workers called Save Jobs USA who argue the program jeopardizes American jobs sued the Obama administration and, after losing in D.C. federal court, appealed the case.”

aussieguy1234 8y ago

Trump. Making Canada great again.

ars 8y ago
This isn't Trump, this lawsuit was filed during the Obama years.

davidw 8y ago

Yet another hurtful policy that puts paid to the notion of "oh, but we're perfectly ok with legal immigration".

refurb 8y ago
I don’t someone has to support open borders to be “ok with legal immigration”.

RhysU 8y ago

Some possible impacts: 1) Drives up wages to the point where an H1B couple can contain one non-working spouse. Not bad. 2) Causes H1B applicants to skew towards younger folks without families, reducing housing pressure. Not bad. 3) Causes H1B recipients to marry citizens at slightly higher rates and more quickly assimilate, especially in the second+ generation. Call it a wash.

theshadowmonkey 8y ago
1. Might not happen in the probably the next decade. Earning 200k+ in Bay Area is common and still hard to live on a single salary. What should an engineer do to make it go to 400k? 2. So, you want experienced, well trained experts in their respective fields to leave the country and go elsewhere after the companies spend so much on their younger selves? 3. This would be a small minority whatever happens. After growing up in a country with a completely different culture for ~25 years, a sudden shift in a small timeframe is not expected.
- RhysU 8y ago
  1. "Hey boss, I need a raise." "How much?" "Enough to cover my spouse's income or I have to quit." Seems compelling. 2. I didn't say anything about current recipients. Just commented on how it may impact new applicants and the housing market. 3. Demographics change slowly.
- ap3 8y ago
  Realistically how can 200k+ be hard to live on?
  - theshadowmonkey 8y ago
    It's not hard to live on. But, you mostly don't save anything or you might take a long time to buy a house.

TomMckenny 8y ago

Picking at the program by brutalizing people here and there is unconscionable. Put everyone out of their misery, stop trying to predict winners and losers and just end the program. The normal immigration processes served the country well for generations. The new policy of catering to particular industries by creating second class citizens is never going to be fair to anyone because it was never designed to be.

optymizer 8y ago

As a former H1B visa holder with a spouse, and friends in the same boat, I have experienced first-hand the effects of having a spouse that is not allowed to work. First, they get bored out of their mind. They're young, they want to grow, but they can't. While you're off to work, networking, learning, your spouse is at home, trying their best to chase away the feeling of stagnation. It's OK for the first few months - they go for walks, cook, read, go to the gym - anything to keep busy, but unless there's a child that takes up their entire time, they just get bored, then they get sad, and then they get depressed. It takes a hard toll on the relationship, which, ironically, is the primary reason why spouses agree to this in the first place. Most just want to live with their husbands or wives and have a normal life. Long distance isn't a realistic option when you're talking about a 6 year H1B visa. Being unable to work makes the relationship one-sided, because one person goes to work, provides for the family, and has various experiences which slowly add up and allows them to grow personally and professionally. In addition, if you come from a society where gender roles are heavily promoted culturally, it is especially hard when the roles get reversed when the couple is in the US. Typically, men lose confidence in their ability to provide for the family and get very depressed. Women from cultures where there's an expectation that they'll be a homemaker, have much less stigma associated with not working, especially if there's a child to take care of. They are also competing with other couples in various areas: social status, disposable income (that lets you go on vacations) or ability to buy a house, and they'll be losing ground simply because of the income level (less so for FAANG employees, but there are plenty of places hiring on an H1B visa that pay the minimum they can to meet the H1B criteria). There are only 2 realistic options most spouses end up taking: the spouse works illegally (clearly a risky move) or the spouse changes their legal status: divorces you and marries a citizen (risky and further damages the quality of your relationship), tries to go to school on an F1 status (which now requires even more income and puts more pressure on the H1B holder), or the relationship deteriorates to the point where the non-working spouse goes back to their home country because they are unhappy here. Finally, I will say that yes there are many real issues with the H1B visa, but disallowing the spouse to work is not a solution to any of them. It only manages to get these young couples behind in life. I am fortunate enough to have come out of this ordeal fairly unscathed, but others I know have not been so lucky.

8y ago

throwaway082729 8y ago

The system is fundamentally broken and it's partly my own countrymen to blame. I've lived here for 17 years (in 4 years, if I live here, I'd have lived here longer than in my home country), earn more than $500k per year and recently got an offer for $600+k/yr. I've probably paid at least three quarters of a million in taxes. I'm still on a H1, cannot change jobs easily, cannot do anything on the side like advise companies and though I get opportunities for VP roles, cannot take them up since companies usually don't want a VP that's on a H1. This news is devastating since my wife quit her job after my kid was born and only recently has used the EAD to work with autistic children which has been her passion all her life. If HR1044 does not pass, we've decided to move back. I'll take my $1.5M, which I could have invested here, with me and invest it in my home country instead (or I'll come back on a L-1 visa like so many of my lesser-qualified friends and get a green card in a couple of years).

sundaeofshock 8y ago
$500k/year? I’m supposed to feel sympathy towards you when there are H1b holders who are being horribly exploited? $500k/year is a lot of fucking money, even in the Bay Area.
- throwaway082729 8y ago
  Sorry if it came off as asking for sympathy. I mentioned my compensation only to highlight the fact that I'm not cheap labor that's taking American jobs away. I happen to have some skills that top employers in the country deem enough to be worthy of half a million dollars per year.
- jogjayr 8y ago
  H1B-holder: earns $80k/year "Cheap labor! Exploitation!" H1B-holder: earns $500k/year "You greedy bastard! You want a green card on top of that?!" H1B-holder: shocked Pikachu face Sorry for the Reddit-style comment :-). Also, I haven't downvoted you (in case someone has and you were wondering) because I don't believe you're posting in bad faith. But you do see the contradiction?
refurb 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

ribble 8y ago

citizens first!

stunt 8y ago

Just take look into EU countries and try to apply some of the same policies. They seem to have if not zero, less issues with high skilled workers. Otherwise you can blame H1B holders forever. They didn't wrote the policy or the law. You shouldn't punish them for what they had no influence. They should be able to plan for their living. They should be encouraged to contribute and integrate with society.