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Ugh, these cases give H1B's a bad name. I do wish there was crackdown on crap like this. Where I work the H1B applicants (who don't get selected) have masters

Ugh, these cases give H1B's a bad name. I do wish there was crackdown on crap like this. Where I work the H1B applicants (who don't get selected) have masters, from a US university, for a degree that applies specifically to their job. These folks should be on the red carpet to US citizenship. They have checked every box. Instead they get treated like crap. They should SHUT DOWN these other players who clog up the process. a) outsourcing firms that are just numbers game body shop mills. b) set a minimum comp for the jobs that is reasonable (but include retirement and other benefits in calc). c) allow all employers one applicant before awarding more slots, so the body shop mills have to compete with small business who have real jobs for real people and are not just playing percentage games (100K applications with 5k actual jobs available). I'm a HUGE fan of lots of immigration - but saying H1B is highly specialized for real jobs, then having the body shop mills apply for 100K slots (they don't have those jobs), so they can dominate the selections and then profit off the salary / visa arbitrage is disgusting for all involved. And yes, I sign real applications that never get selected (and am willing to pay well over Level 1 and Level 2 wages).

Old_Thrashbarg 7y ago
> They should SHUT DOWN these other players who clog up the process. Or we could focus on making the process uncloggable and work towards the free movement of labor which could add $78T to the global GDP. https://www.economist.com/the-world-if/2017/07/13/a-world-of-free-movement-would-be-78-trillion-richer https://www.economist.com/the-world-if/2017/07/13/a-world-of...
- Mountain_Skies 7y ago
  How evenly would that $78 billion be distributed. Would some countries or groups end up as net losers?
  - conanbatt 7y ago
    Countries all around the world make policies to prevent their brighest and entrepreneurial minds from leaving to another countries. Immigration restriction is the process by the which you refuse the gift from another country. It is doing to yourself what your competitors are trying to inflict on you.
trustfundbaby 7y ago
The simple solution is to give every h1b worker a temporary green card or somehow allow them free mobility of work within the United states. Being allowed to move jobs at will, vs being beholden to the hiring companies for sponsorship, will quickly kill these body shops and also let us know if tech firms really are being honest about a shortage of skilled engineers.
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
  Would never happen. Too many people benefit from having a slave that can't leave their job without getting deported. > shortage of skilled engineers ...at peanut pricing.
  - trustfundbaby 7y ago
    exactly. It makes too much sense. Which is why it needs to happen, Canada has a skilled worker program and they give you a green card when you arrive. America doesn't need a visa designation in my opinion, just copy the skilled worker designation from Canada and you're there.
- opportune 7y ago
  I think that you would still want some restrictions like they have to work in the same industry for at least e.g. 80% of the total comp of their first job in the US until they get a real green card. Otherwise there are different abuse patterns that could happen.
- yazan94 7y ago
  I don't think this solution makes sense. I agree that , from an ethical standpoint, there should to be better protections for H1B holders. But giving everyone free reign to change jobs is also ripe for abusing the system and possibly flooding the market without a general way to gauge need for that particular H1B applicant's skillset. Currently, the process is that you need to find a company that is willing to sponsor you, then that company needs to file paperwork with the government to explain the wages, job description, etc. And then this application is either accepted or rejected based on whatever guidelines they use[1]. If we keep this situation and start allow workers to move around wherever they want, the company just ate the paperwork legal costs and the role they hired for might not even stay filled for long, prompting them to redo the process. [1] https://www.immi-usa.com/h1b-application-process-step-by-step-guide/ https://www.immi-usa.com/h1b-application-process-step-by-ste...
dllthomas 7y ago
> c) allow all employers one applicant before awarding more slots, so the body shop mills have to compete with small business who have real jobs for real people and are not just playing percentage games (100K applications with 5k actual jobs available). Won't that just mean the body shops create 100K subsidiaries?
- repiret 7y ago
  Probably. Another approach would be to cap the percentage of H1B employees you have.
  - dllthomas 7y ago
    That sounds effective. Would probably impact more legitimate attempts, though (single-owner business really needs someone with a really obscure skill, etc).
alecco 7y ago
> b) set a minimum comp for the jobs that is reasonable. Indeed. What the H1-B program should look is for workers paying taxes. I'd grant them from top to bottom until equilibrium. Except for a very small set of specific professions needed and still not making it (perhaps healthcare or education). US doesn't need QA analysts or consultants. Note: I'm not from US.
camelNotation 7y ago
The less developed and unsafe the applicant's home country is, the less just the H1B model is. H1B employees are worked like animals under the threat of being sent back or replaced and losing their visa. It's an awful system in general. If we want skilled workers, they should be given a green card and the ability to find work wherever they want and quit whenever they want. Holding their visa over their head via their job is evil.
yholio 7y ago
There should be only one parameter that governs the eligibility to specialist visas: the ability to earn a high wage. Companies should bid directly with the salary, and the top X offers get a Visa; the candidate is free to change jobs but is required to maintain within that wage band for the duration of the visa, outside exceptional situations. Any other mechanism affords the opportunity for arbitrage, bureaucracy, legal leeches specialized in exploiting the process etc.
- koolba 7y ago
  What's awesome about this approach is that it naturally leads to max revenue for the government as well. The only counter I've heard to it is that Joe's Tech Corp in Podunk, USA cannot compete with big city salaries and would never be able to get any filled. Though I see that as a feature not a bug.
  - yazan94 7y ago
    Why would that be a feature not a bug? The Amazons, Googles, and Goldman Sachs of the US aren't the only companies that need talent.
    - Mountain_Skies 7y ago
      And even if they were, Google and Amazon (maybe Goldman Sachs too) have talent spread out across the country, even in what is dismissively called flyover country. Certainly these locations aren't their main wells of talent but they're still important to the companies.
  - Mountain_Skies 7y ago
    Not all tech workers are created equal and not all companies need tech rock stars. Joe's Tech Corp would be priced out of the H1B market but could still compete for talent in the citizen pool. Different talent levels come with different compensation requirements. I'm trying to come up with the most charitable interpretation of your last sentence but am failing. Was it meant as a "let them eat cake" statement for not being a coastal dweller? Given the many negative effects tech centers are having on local populations, deconcentrating tech across the country seems like it would have positive benefits for many not in the tech industry, which is most people.
sampo 7y ago
> outsourcing firms that are just numbers game body shop mills. When there is a 6+ months wait from applying for H1-B for getting it approved or rejected, the very top candidates nor the fastest growing companies may not want to wait that long. So H1-B is by nature more appealing to companies who can play the numbers game.
nerdponx 7y ago
Ugh, these cases give H1B's a bad name. I do wish there was crackdown on crap like this. Unless I misread the article, this looks like a crackdown to me. It's a BA level QA analyst job at an outsourcing shop.
ergothus 7y ago
As a baseline, I'm in favor of a lot of immigration and think people have way too many hoops to jump through in general, but the H1B crowd in particular is a group that matches even what most of those opposed to mass immigration claim to desire in immigrants. That said, i've noticed different "worlds" of H1B worlds, with different impacts upon other workers. I did a govt job on the US East Coast (Richmond, VA) that had a lot of H1B contract workers, likely from one of these body shops. They were good people, and adequate if unimpressive coders. They were earning decent US wages and were painfully aware that losing or leaving a job left them no guarantee there'd be another for them in the US soon. Management abused the heck out of these people, establishing practices, expectations, and treatment of coders that were terrible. They put up with it, but but it lowered the quality of the workplace for everyone, and the employees and US citizens (naturalized or born) working there also suffered, and tended to leave when they could. I was one of them, which put me in Seattle on the West Coast... ...Where I found an entirely different world of H1B workers. These were not contractors, not through a body shop, and were definitely impressive in their fields (devs, architects, and QA/Test eng, along with a handful of PMs and Team Leads). Here there was no reduction of workplace quality - these workers had lots of extra annoyances I didn't have to worry about (example: apparently changing your job title during one period of time when applying for a green card restarts the multi-year process, so I knew of people that declined or postponed promotions!) but they could definitely find work elsewhere easily enough - should workplace be unbearable they'd bounce like the rest of us could. Whenever the H1-B debate comes up, I reflect on the different impact the workers had on these offices, and the impact the H1-B rules had on those workers. Everytime one of my friends debated if it was worth pursuing a green card or naturalization, I saw the seeming idiotic result of the US chasing away workers that it said it needed, that had proven themselves, and that american companies had spent time and money in training and getting experience to.
- davidw 7y ago
  The 'root cause' problem in the 1st case is the leverage the employee has over the person. The workers are just trying to better their lot in life, like many of our own ancestors who came to the US. I don't hold any illusions that whoever it was that came over from Ireland in my family was some kind of exceptional talent. Probably just an ordinary person willing to take some risks and work hard.
ineedasername 7y ago
But are there US citizens or permanent residents who are interested in the jobs your H1B's are vying for? It is a tight labor market, so it's possible there aren't many other candidates, depending on the job. However I recently saw an opening where I work go to an H1B where there were other qualified candidates, which I don't like to see. I would rather see the H1B's have a more stable/easier path to permanent residency. Not only does it confer a longer term economic benefit to the US to have more skilled workers, it would (probably) make the worker feel more secure and stable in their life, and less beholden to stay somewhere working because their H1B status is being held over their head and preventing easy mobility.
- paxys 7y ago
  It isn't about interest, but who is best for the job. That's the point of classifying a specialty occupation. Candidates aren't interchangeable. A PhD grad from India with a specialized degree could add a TON of more value to the business and economy than a US citizen, so why not hire them?
damnyou 7y ago
You're not a huge fan of mass immigration if you're not a huge fan of mediocre immigrants. I'm not just saying this to be facetious. There's a huge pressure on members of any marginalized group (women, immigrants, LGBTQ) to either be extraordinary or not matter at all. You have to make space for the people that aren't extraordinary. I'm speaking as someone from a marginalized group. I've dealt with this pressure myself.
Bhilai 7y ago
There is no doubt that H1B gets abused by these small contracting shops and Indian giants like Infosys. I am all for stricter criteria for H1B but at the same time if it comes without a path for permanent residency then its not lucrative enough for an immigrant. Most H1B people I know are genuine hard working tax paying good people. They like it here and want to make it their home while contributing to the economy so why not remove the hoops they jump through.
brighter2morrow 7y ago
>Where I work the H1B applicants (who don't get selected) have masters, from a US university, for a degree that applies specifically to their job. These folks should be on the red carpet to US citizenship. They have checked every box. Job specific degrees are always a boon-doggle and they really shouldn't be getting the jobs their degrees proclaim. School is the time for theory, but these Job-specific degree programs these days are just glorified bootcamps

Old_Thrashbarg 7y ago

> They should SHUT DOWN these other players who clog up the process. Or we could focus on making the process uncloggable and work towards the free movement of labor which could add $78T to the global GDP. https://www.economist.com/the-world-if/2017/07/13/a-world-of-free-movement-would-be-78-trillion-richer https://www.economist.com/the-world-if/2017/07/13/a-world-of...

Mountain_Skies 7y ago
How evenly would that $78 billion be distributed. Would some countries or groups end up as net losers?
- conanbatt 7y ago
  Countries all around the world make policies to prevent their brighest and entrepreneurial minds from leaving to another countries. Immigration restriction is the process by the which you refuse the gift from another country. It is doing to yourself what your competitors are trying to inflict on you.

trustfundbaby 7y ago

The simple solution is to give every h1b worker a temporary green card or somehow allow them free mobility of work within the United states. Being allowed to move jobs at will, vs being beholden to the hiring companies for sponsorship, will quickly kill these body shops and also let us know if tech firms really are being honest about a shortage of skilled engineers.

WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
Would never happen. Too many people benefit from having a slave that can't leave their job without getting deported. > shortage of skilled engineers ...at peanut pricing.
- trustfundbaby 7y ago
  exactly. It makes too much sense. Which is why it needs to happen, Canada has a skilled worker program and they give you a green card when you arrive. America doesn't need a visa designation in my opinion, just copy the skilled worker designation from Canada and you're there.
opportune 7y ago
I think that you would still want some restrictions like they have to work in the same industry for at least e.g. 80% of the total comp of their first job in the US until they get a real green card. Otherwise there are different abuse patterns that could happen.
yazan94 7y ago
I don't think this solution makes sense. I agree that , from an ethical standpoint, there should to be better protections for H1B holders. But giving everyone free reign to change jobs is also ripe for abusing the system and possibly flooding the market without a general way to gauge need for that particular H1B applicant's skillset. Currently, the process is that you need to find a company that is willing to sponsor you, then that company needs to file paperwork with the government to explain the wages, job description, etc. And then this application is either accepted or rejected based on whatever guidelines they use[1]. If we keep this situation and start allow workers to move around wherever they want, the company just ate the paperwork legal costs and the role they hired for might not even stay filled for long, prompting them to redo the process. [1] https://www.immi-usa.com/h1b-application-process-step-by-step-guide/ https://www.immi-usa.com/h1b-application-process-step-by-ste...

dllthomas 7y ago

> c) allow all employers one applicant before awarding more slots, so the body shop mills have to compete with small business who have real jobs for real people and are not just playing percentage games (100K applications with 5k actual jobs available). Won't that just mean the body shops create 100K subsidiaries?

repiret 7y ago
Probably. Another approach would be to cap the percentage of H1B employees you have.
- dllthomas 7y ago
  That sounds effective. Would probably impact more legitimate attempts, though (single-owner business really needs someone with a really obscure skill, etc).

alecco 7y ago

> b) set a minimum comp for the jobs that is reasonable. Indeed. What the H1-B program should look is for workers paying taxes. I'd grant them from top to bottom until equilibrium. Except for a very small set of specific professions needed and still not making it (perhaps healthcare or education). US doesn't need QA analysts or consultants. Note: I'm not from US.

camelNotation 7y ago

The less developed and unsafe the applicant's home country is, the less just the H1B model is. H1B employees are worked like animals under the threat of being sent back or replaced and losing their visa. It's an awful system in general. If we want skilled workers, they should be given a green card and the ability to find work wherever they want and quit whenever they want. Holding their visa over their head via their job is evil.

yholio 7y ago

There should be only one parameter that governs the eligibility to specialist visas: the ability to earn a high wage. Companies should bid directly with the salary, and the top X offers get a Visa; the candidate is free to change jobs but is required to maintain within that wage band for the duration of the visa, outside exceptional situations. Any other mechanism affords the opportunity for arbitrage, bureaucracy, legal leeches specialized in exploiting the process etc.

koolba 7y ago
What's awesome about this approach is that it naturally leads to max revenue for the government as well. The only counter I've heard to it is that Joe's Tech Corp in Podunk, USA cannot compete with big city salaries and would never be able to get any filled. Though I see that as a feature not a bug.
- yazan94 7y ago
  Why would that be a feature not a bug? The Amazons, Googles, and Goldman Sachs of the US aren't the only companies that need talent.
  - Mountain_Skies 7y ago
    And even if they were, Google and Amazon (maybe Goldman Sachs too) have talent spread out across the country, even in what is dismissively called flyover country. Certainly these locations aren't their main wells of talent but they're still important to the companies.
- Mountain_Skies 7y ago
  Not all tech workers are created equal and not all companies need tech rock stars. Joe's Tech Corp would be priced out of the H1B market but could still compete for talent in the citizen pool. Different talent levels come with different compensation requirements. I'm trying to come up with the most charitable interpretation of your last sentence but am failing. Was it meant as a "let them eat cake" statement for not being a coastal dweller? Given the many negative effects tech centers are having on local populations, deconcentrating tech across the country seems like it would have positive benefits for many not in the tech industry, which is most people.

sampo 7y ago

> outsourcing firms that are just numbers game body shop mills. When there is a 6+ months wait from applying for H1-B for getting it approved or rejected, the very top candidates nor the fastest growing companies may not want to wait that long. So H1-B is by nature more appealing to companies who can play the numbers game.

nerdponx 7y ago

Ugh, these cases give H1B's a bad name. I do wish there was crackdown on crap like this. Unless I misread the article, this looks like a crackdown to me. It's a BA level QA analyst job at an outsourcing shop.

ergothus 7y ago

As a baseline, I'm in favor of a lot of immigration and think people have way too many hoops to jump through in general, but the H1B crowd in particular is a group that matches even what most of those opposed to mass immigration claim to desire in immigrants. That said, i've noticed different "worlds" of H1B worlds, with different impacts upon other workers. I did a govt job on the US East Coast (Richmond, VA) that had a lot of H1B contract workers, likely from one of these body shops. They were good people, and adequate if unimpressive coders. They were earning decent US wages and were painfully aware that losing or leaving a job left them no guarantee there'd be another for them in the US soon. Management abused the heck out of these people, establishing practices, expectations, and treatment of coders that were terrible. They put up with it, but but it lowered the quality of the workplace for everyone, and the employees and US citizens (naturalized or born) working there also suffered, and tended to leave when they could. I was one of them, which put me in Seattle on the West Coast... ...Where I found an entirely different world of H1B workers. These were not contractors, not through a body shop, and were definitely impressive in their fields (devs, architects, and QA/Test eng, along with a handful of PMs and Team Leads). Here there was no reduction of workplace quality - these workers had lots of extra annoyances I didn't have to worry about (example: apparently changing your job title during one period of time when applying for a green card restarts the multi-year process, so I knew of people that declined or postponed promotions!) but they could definitely find work elsewhere easily enough - should workplace be unbearable they'd bounce like the rest of us could. Whenever the H1-B debate comes up, I reflect on the different impact the workers had on these offices, and the impact the H1-B rules had on those workers. Everytime one of my friends debated if it was worth pursuing a green card or naturalization, I saw the seeming idiotic result of the US chasing away workers that it said it needed, that had proven themselves, and that american companies had spent time and money in training and getting experience to.

davidw 7y ago
The 'root cause' problem in the 1st case is the leverage the employee has over the person. The workers are just trying to better their lot in life, like many of our own ancestors who came to the US. I don't hold any illusions that whoever it was that came over from Ireland in my family was some kind of exceptional talent. Probably just an ordinary person willing to take some risks and work hard.

ineedasername 7y ago

But are there US citizens or permanent residents who are interested in the jobs your H1B's are vying for? It is a tight labor market, so it's possible there aren't many other candidates, depending on the job. However I recently saw an opening where I work go to an H1B where there were other qualified candidates, which I don't like to see. I would rather see the H1B's have a more stable/easier path to permanent residency. Not only does it confer a longer term economic benefit to the US to have more skilled workers, it would (probably) make the worker feel more secure and stable in their life, and less beholden to stay somewhere working because their H1B status is being held over their head and preventing easy mobility.

paxys 7y ago
It isn't about interest, but who is best for the job. That's the point of classifying a specialty occupation. Candidates aren't interchangeable. A PhD grad from India with a specialized degree could add a TON of more value to the business and economy than a US citizen, so why not hire them?

damnyou 7y ago

You're not a huge fan of mass immigration if you're not a huge fan of mediocre immigrants. I'm not just saying this to be facetious. There's a huge pressure on members of any marginalized group (women, immigrants, LGBTQ) to either be extraordinary or not matter at all. You have to make space for the people that aren't extraordinary. I'm speaking as someone from a marginalized group. I've dealt with this pressure myself.

Bhilai 7y ago

There is no doubt that H1B gets abused by these small contracting shops and Indian giants like Infosys. I am all for stricter criteria for H1B but at the same time if it comes without a path for permanent residency then its not lucrative enough for an immigrant. Most H1B people I know are genuine hard working tax paying good people. They like it here and want to make it their home while contributing to the economy so why not remove the hoops they jump through.

brighter2morrow 7y ago

>Where I work the H1B applicants (who don't get selected) have masters, from a US university, for a degree that applies specifically to their job. These folks should be on the red carpet to US citizenship. They have checked every box. Job specific degrees are always a boon-doggle and they really shouldn't be getting the jobs their degrees proclaim. School is the time for theory, but these Job-specific degree programs these days are just glorified bootcamps