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H1-B was intended for highly skilled workers that the US had a real shortage of. But now it's just being abused to bring in captive workers that are willing to

H1-B was intended for highly skilled workers that the US had a real shortage of. But now it's just being abused to bring in captive workers that are willing to accept lower wages and worse working conditions than otherwise while crowding out US workers. What if, instead of bowing to corporate greed which cares not a bit for our country or our people, we actually invested in our own population and trained them to do the jobs H1-B workers currently do. Scaling back H1-B in this way is the common sense approach. And it benefits other countries too by reducing brain drain. It's a win-win.

samfisher83 6y ago
You can look at the data, SV companies aren't paying H1B people low wages. Unless you think 200-300k is low wages.
- noobermin 6y ago
  Is this true? The argument I've seen is that H1B's are liked by SV because they can be paid less.
  - rantwasp 6y ago
    technically it’s illegal to pay H1B workers less than what you pay your workers.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - samfisher83 6y ago
    https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Facebook+Inc&job=&city=&year=2020 https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Facebook+Inc&job=&city=&ye... This doesn't include stock so maybe double that number for TC.
    - pstrateman 6y ago
      On the other hand. https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=STRATEGIC+STAFFING+IT+INC&job=&city=&year=All+Years https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=STRATEGIC+STAFFING+IT+INC&...
  - lukeschlather 6y ago
    All H1B salaries are public: https://h1bdata.info/ https://h1bdata.info/ It's possible (maybe even likely) that title deflation is happening, but based on my experience the salaries are definitely in line with the pay ranges for each job title (I worked at Amazon for 3 and a half years, so I have some first and second hand information on pay.) If nothing else it's a great resource to see the unfiltered payscale at SV companies.
    - noobermin 6y ago
      Thanks for the data. I see comments across threads on HN that say that H1-B hires are common. What is the incentive to hire them then? Are professionals in the US really that ill-equipped? I guess there is a bit of cognitive dissonance with FAANG complaining about no qualified workers but then FAANG only hired people who went to Stanford or Harvard and such.
      - umanwizard 6y ago
        I worked at two FAANG companies and my degree is from the University of Arizona. I only met a few people there whose degrees were from elite schools. Where do you get the impression that they only hire people from Stanford and Harvard?
      - paulgb 6y ago
        > Are professionals in the US really that ill-equipped? Americans are plenty smart, but they are only 4% of the world population. American companies compete on an international stage and not having access to the other 96% of talent would be a competitive disadvantage.
      - on_and_off 6y ago
        I can maybe help here. Many SV companies are in constant need of more skilled engineers. Since the H1B visa can be transferred, when I arrived in the USA, nothing would have prevented me from going door to door and find a better paying job. Especially in the SV where there are tons of companies hiring. So companies have a good incentive to give you a fair salary. This is not true for all visas. In particular there is one visa (sorry can't remember its name off the top of my head) that is an "international transfer visa" : you work for one year for the company in a foreign country and then you can move to the USA while continuing to work for that company. It is pretty easy to get that visa but it is also very hard to transfer it to another company afaik. Hiring is also a bit broken in our industry. The thing is, it is often pretty hard to distinguish what makes a good or a bad engineer. This being said, there are just not enough skilled engineers in the USA. It would absolutely be possible to hire more local engineers and train them on the job but that would cost a lot of time for uncertain results. Companies prefer to hire engineers that can already be pretty productive from day 1.
  - roskilli 6y ago
    There are plenty of >200k H1B workers in SV, and I do believe these engineers and specialists will wonder how they can do their work elsewhere if they can't reasonably plan a few years into the future: https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=netflix&year=2020 https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=netflix&year=2020 https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=apple&year=2020 https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=apple&year=2020 https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=linkedin&year=2020 https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=linkedin&year=2020 https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=uber&year=2020 https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=uber&year=2020
  - jaaron 6y ago
    My anecdotal experience as a hiring manager in tech firms for over a decade: it’s not about money, it’s about quickly finding qualified employees. Unemployment has been (until recently) low. There wasn’t some large supply of unemployed, qualified engineers sitting around. Nearly everyone I hired already had a job. Expanding the search globally just gave me a better chance of finding someone.
    - goostavos 6y ago
      >Expanding the search globally just gave me a better chance of finding someone At the price point you wanted. A pool of eager H1Bs reduces the need for companies on the same block to be competitive on wages.
  - goostavos 6y ago
    I think it's more that they're fairly indentured. Their visa is tied to a specific _kind_ of work, they're legally prevented from making money in any other way other than their current job, and while they can change jobs, my understanding is it is generally viewed as risky (for instance, if the new place doesn't work out, you've got a few short months to find employment or your visa is no good and you have to uproot your life) It'd be really interesting to see data on how often H1B's change jobs compared to the rest of the population.
  - umanwizard 6y ago
    That argument is wrong. H1Bs are liked by Silicon Valley because they want to be able to hire the best people from anywhere, and not restrict their talent pool to 5% of the world population. All reputable Silicon Valley companies pay people exactly the same whether they are on a visa, have a green card, or are a US citizen.
- retortio 6y ago
  One thing to remember is that in many cases H1-B workers are brought over by sponsoring companies which take a huge cut (I know cases of 40% or more) out of their salaries for the service of securing them the Visa. So those salaries might appear to be a certain number but the workers themselves may actually receive significantly less while some rent seeking company stashes the differences. I know for a fact that in my industry (not in SV) H1-B wages are lower, going off both public data and conversations I've had with H1-B coworkers, many who I consider my friends. As a side note, I don't blame H1-B workers at all for coming here. They're generally great developers and great people.
  - fredfoobar 6y ago
    I'm sorry to break it to you, if your company isn't paying prevailing wages, they're doing something illegal. They need to be shut-down, not the whole fucking program.
    - beervirus 6y ago
      Why would that be illegal?
      - fredfoobar 6y ago
        See my other response in this thread.
    - tracer4201 6y ago
      There’s nothing illegal going on here. I posted earlier that I was at an oil and gas company in Houston, a Fortune 10 company at the time. We had IT contractors from Larsen and Toubro. As an example, one guy who reported to me was paid < $20 an hour after L&TI and another contracting company in the middle took their cut. He wasn’t thrilled with that situation but his other option was to quit and go back to India. The worst part was I couldn’t hire him directly because of his contract. He wasn’t allowed to quit and directly work for us. Kind of live slavery.
      - 6y ago
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  Honestly it's not the SV companies. It's the body shop consulting firms.
  - fredfoobar 6y ago
    Exactly, shut them down, American interests will be protected. Most of the folks getting on the H1-B have a masters degree in an American university, if they are in SV, it's usually a top-tier one. I've personally made some of the best hires on-campus.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- damnyou 6y ago
  I know people on H1s who make 500k to a million dollars per year at FAANG.
- tracer4201 6y ago
  I’d love to see comprehensive data on this. I worked at a fortune 10 oil and gas company in Houston. We had onshore contractors across a range, but I know a few of them made less than $18 an hour. The rest that we paid went to two different contracting companies.
- tinyhouse 6y ago
  Salary is not even the issue. The main issue is the employment restrictions. Instead of making H1-B a visa that lets an individual full freedom (like green card), it's tied to an employer and moving jobs is not that easy, and many employers also sponsor for green card, which is another process that can take years and make it harder to move. During this time the employee has little leverage asking for promo or raises. (promo and raises usually appear after the green card..) Once you let employees freedom, the market will take care of the salary. I also understand that employers invest in the visa application and relocation of people, so it should be fair to them as well. This can solved by having a period (1-year is pretty reasonable) that prohibits new visa holders from moving companies.
  - OzzyB 6y ago
    Funny how ppl don't like to mention this and just focus on H1Bs getting paid "market rates". It's almost like the SV's previous gentleman agreement of non-poaching got replaced with "hey, let's use H1Bs, sure we might have to pay near market rates, but at least we can tie them down for at least 3/5 years without any option of leaving".
  - triceratops 6y ago
    H-1B holders can change jobs even without a green card. It's more of a hassle (takes 4-6 weeks) and has been made worse by this administration's repeated suspension of premium processing of applications. But visa holders aren't "tied" to their employers or "indentured servants".
    - tinyhouse 6y ago
      I said it's not that easy, not that it's impossible. Also, H1-B transfer cost some money and involves lawyers, so some companies, like many startups, don't want to deal with that. The bottom line is that H1-B employees are at a disadvantage.
      - triceratops 6y ago
        Agreed.
- hourislate 6y ago
  SV isn't the only place you find H1B's. Everyone from Toyota, AA, Sabre, etc in the DFW area has hired what seems like 1000's. There is hardly anyone but H1B's at Toyota in Plano from what I understand. I have heard some companies are laying of permanent staff and keeping H1B's because they're less expensive. Personal experience in my part of the world seems to suggest that it is cost. Permanent employees are expensive and H1B's are so terrified of losing employment they are willing to work around the clock and for less. I would like to see the whole program gone. I don't believe it is being used as it was intended.
  - ojbyrne 6y ago
    As pointed out in other threads, H1B data is public. There's precisely 1 H1B in Plano, TX: https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=&city=PLANO.TX&year=All+Years https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=&city=PLANO.TX&year=A...
    - hourislate 6y ago
      I know of at least a few just from my office that are not on that site. Could it be that they are hidden through a contracting company and not hired directly?
- saradhi 6y ago
  Your presumption is either (if you not a h1 candidate) far away from the fact or don't want to accept the truth. You are looking at the top 100 companies and their full-time employees but not at the 1000s of vendor-employer ponzi scheme/scams that happen every day in the form of contractors who apply with fake resumes, take proxy interviews and outsource the assigned work to someone in India. Doesn't stop there, the dependents of those do a unlicensed food selling, baby sitting, work in local stores, what not. The hard to digest fact is the student who comes on F1 visa, succumbs to the pressure of 90 days period to get into a job to maintain the visa status joins a consultancy company, which starts the game. These consultancies market the candidate with high experience fake resume, arranges proxy candidate to take interviews, even Falsify the requirement of GC/citizenship candidate requirement - all these to charge the client a 100$/hr and pay a mere 40$/hr to the candidate through their sister companies acting as layers. A honest try from USCIS to do a quick scan in containing these will drop at least 50% of H1B lottery applications, void 30% of the consulting company licenses and also help the right talent to get an opportunity. If you are a gov/USCIS rep, drop me an email I'll be more than happy to provide more details, and possible ways of catching the wrong ones.
- throwh1b111 6y ago
  I think you have to separate H1Bers into at least 2 categories, {Indian+maybe Chinese, everyone else}. Source: am H1B bro myself. I'm from a shithole European country full of white people. The experience in the US has been very positive. People treat me nicely, both in SV and in rural Ohio. SV companies pay me equivalently to Americans as far as I can tell by asking around (for reference, depending on bonus/stocks my total comp is 200k+, which is not FAANG but above average for my position). Sometimes more for the same job. If I were kicked off my H1B, I'd just go back to one of the richest countries in the world and be fine. There's a smooth path to the Green Card for me, like for any H1B holder except Indians and Chinese. That's kind of where the crux is. As part of my job I've traveled to quite a few large enterprises that were not in SV, and often they have entire buildings full of 90% Indian H1B bros. I think 50%+ of all H1Bs are awarded to Indian citizens. There is a absolute cap on the number of Green Cards that can be awarded to citizens of any one country per year. In addition, India has about 10000 billion times the population of my shithole EU country. Subsequently, the wait for my Indian H1B bros to get their Green Card is now several decades (it is "none" or "a few months" for most others except I believe Chinese). So the indentured servitude is not due to H1B per se, but because of its interaction with the Green Card program for my Indian H1B bros and maybe Chinese H1Bers as well. As a shithole European I can switch jobs pretty easily. At worst, I have to wait a few years to finish the Green Card process, so the "indentured servitude" is limited to 2-3 years. It is up to individual companies to decide if they want to sponsor your Green Card, but all companies I'm familiar with in SV will do so for any of their H1B employees with no exceptions. This might not be the case for other companies. My Indian H1B bro co-workers are paid just as well and treated fairly. Of course, the SV companies can't get around the Green Card cap for them, so that's still problematic. But the companies I've seen do not abuse that fact. But the SV H1B experience is probably the exception if you look at the statistics. My Indian H1B bros at Certain Major American Companies You Almost Certainly Do Business With All The Time aren't treated nearly as well. They get thrown specs across the wall by managers (often Indians themselves), any response is silenced. They are often in physically different buildings or on different floors from the other workers. The work I did in SV felt creative, challenging, and I was always empowered to do my job as well as my American co-workers. But those H1B-with-no-path-to-residency farms seemed like authoritarian sweatshops. During one consulting gig with Bank You Most Likely Use Daily, we saw a guy get fired for accidentally pushing a private key to Github. The AC wouldn't get fixed in the H1B-building, so we worked in a sweltering 85 degrees all day. The restrooms were in despicable condition, getting cleaned maybe 2-3 times per week. For a remote call, I was offered a used pair of in-ear headphones with somebody else's ear wax still smeared onto them. I politely declined and bought my own pair. I would've quit this company after a few months. But none of the H1Bers there can do that, because of their legal limbo. To say that these folks are not empowered is a vast understatement. And I do think some companies are abusing this fact. It's a hard hole to dig out of now. I've seen estimates that if you were to remove the per-country-cap for Green Cards, the next 5 years worth of Green Cards would go entirely to Indian citizens. Is it "fair" that one country gets 50-70% of all work (not family) based Green Cards? Is it "fair" that an Indian H1B worker has to stay in legal limbo for 25 years just because other people from his country also want to immigrate? It certainly feels to me like the current setup of the H1B-Green Card pipeline has created pretty terrible conditions for a large percentage, maybe the majority, of Indian H1B holders, which is most H1B holders. Btw: I'm calling them my H1B bros because Indian developers are always super surprised to learn that I, a white guy, am on the same visa. We literally bond over our immigration status, which can be very helpful in consulting work. Maybe my first hint that the Indian H1B experience is different should've come earlier: when I first landed in SFO and went through immigration, the officer looked at my H1B and said "Oh, I thought that visa was only for Indians." And this is in SV.
SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
I was very surprised to learn 70% of Apple engineers are H1B hires - but i don’t know if this is the case currently. Agree that domestic training should be invested. Edit: sorry, clarified Apple not SV as a whole - and it was a Vice Or Vox article, so I should probably know better.
- carapace 6y ago
  70%? Do you have a citation for that? (I'm not pro/con just want to nail down the number.)
- bbatha 6y ago
  Source?
- conanbatt 6y ago
  I recommend the opposite: educating is very expensive in the US. When a foreigner comes to the US, the US gets the value of that education for free. Who doesn't like free things?
  - zo1 6y ago
    It's not like the country is paying for said education. And if they were, it's not like the money is "lost" in any way, as it goes back into local businesses which "stimulates" the economy and creates local jobs. I personally wouldn't use this argument.
    - conanbatt 6y ago
      If by a country we mean states, college is at least partially publicly funded in the US and outside generally. If by a country we mean expenditures by the citizenry, definitely true that college is an investment of time and money by the students. A doctor leaves college maybe with 500k dollars in debt in the US, doctors in most other countries graduate with little or no debt at all: you could import thousands if not 100's of thousands of doctors willing to work a fraction of the current doctor's rate, thus making it cheaper for patients. > And if they were, it's not like the money is "lost" in any way, as it goes back into local businesses which "stimulates" the economy and creates local jobs Which money? I fear this is the broken window fallacy Bastiat liked to talk about.
ckaygusu 6y ago
You can easily achieve this by raising wage requirements, instead of essentially having nothing changed and making the whole US a big open air prison for foreign skilled workers.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  Make it easier for H1B's to transfer to another, better-paying job without losing their privilege of staying and working in the country. Then it's a real win-win, for both guest workers and citizens. The only actors who would lose are those seeking to abuse the system in the first place.
- masklinn 6y ago
  > You can easily achieve this by raising wage requirements, instead of essentially having nothing changed and making the whole US a big open air for foreign skilled workers. Also stronger labor laws instead of gutting them, actually enforcing them instead of shanking the agencies responsible for them, and actually hitting guilty corporations where it hurts instead of handing out "cost of doing business" jokes. And prosecuting guilty management as well. Middle manager 8374 might be less eager to ask for bullshit job requirements designed to only fit a specific H1B if their n+1 to 6 have just gotten years in the slammer for labor fraud.
- idrios 6y ago
  Raising wage requirements just means companies will pay whatever the new minimum is for H-1B workers. Once employed, those workers are still locked into their job without freedom to jump to anther with better working conditions or a better salary (which makes them more appealing hires for companies than US workers). If you want to see a more fair and competitive workforce, give H1-B visa holders more freedom to switch jobs without risk of losing their visa.
jeremiahhs 6y ago
Yes. I've seen first hand abuse of the visas to import cheap labor in academia to avoid paying citizen-level wages.
deleted 6y ago
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belltaco 6y ago
Unemployment in tech is down from Jan to May this year. https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2020/06/11/unemployment-rate-for-computer-occupations-fell-in-may/#1920885216ad https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2020/06/11/unemp...
- drocer88 6y ago
  Unemployment is up from 3% to 11% YOY in information sector: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t14.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t14.htm These number are said to underestimate the true unemployment numbers. U.S. should focus on American unemployment numbers.
oneplane 6y ago
Instead of fighting the symptom you can also fight the cause. If you make the abuse not legal, and detect and enforce that, you solve the problem either way. You'll still need to educate the native citizens of course, otherwise nothing really changes. But you'll need to do both. I don't know what local laws would apply, but I imagine that the same laws that have to do with equal pay can be made generic so that it applies to everyone for a position. In the end you should be paid for your value, not for your gender, color of your skin or the place you were born.
rconti 6y ago
What's the mechanism you suggest for funding education and training in our country? It doesn't seem to be popular.
pmoriarty 6y ago
"What if, instead of bowing to corporate greed which cares not a bit for our country or our people, we actually invested in our own population and trained them to do the jobs H1-B workers currently do." Who's this "our people" you're talking about? As a US citizen, I consider every person in the world as part of my people, and I don't begrudge any individual coming and working or training in the US. The more people, from whichever country, have access to good education and good jobs, the better. Good education and jobs should not be reserved for people who happen to live or be born in a particular place, be descended from particular people, nor just those who managed to get certain bureaucratic paperwork.
- KingTen 6y ago
  Oh you’re one of those open borders people. It’s idealistic but unfeasible now. Countries need to take care of their own people first and foremost.
  - amanaplanacanal 6y ago
    Oh you're one of those closed borders people. I don't think we should discriminate against people because of something they were born with. Just as we don't discriminate against people because of their skin color, I don't think we should discriminate because of their ancestry or place of birth either.
    - KingTen 6y ago
      There’s plenty of people living in poverty in America, along with the multitude of other major problems right now. I’m not a closed border person, we need immigrants. But we don’t have the resources to help every single person who wants to come here. It’s not discrimination, that’s a terrible argument. It’s a government helping its people.
  - WanderPanda 6y ago
    This the opposite of what I believe has made the us great. Look at all the Elon Musks. High skilled immigration can never harm your country. It can give competition to some people who feel entitled to their high salary, though.
on_and_off 6y ago
I came to the USA on an H1B visa 2 years ago. On a high salary and with the promise of being sponsored for a green card. I got my green card just before covid impacted the USA and still have a pretty high salary (in the same range of my US born colleagues). I already had a great job in my home country, I was not going to come to the USA to be paid a pittance. Yeah, there is abuse of the green card system but it is in place because there aren't enough skilled workers in the USA.
- vbtemp 6y ago
  Couple important points: 1. SV/FAANGs, like elite colleges, only hire some very small percentage of people who apply. Many people who are perfectly well qualified and have successful careers otherwise get denied employment. 2. The market cap of these FAANGs is in the trillions. Between talent and capital, there's literally no problem they can't solve (they can solve problems about cyber bullying, trolling, etc but their business relies on it.. so it's not really a "problem" per se). 3. There are SO MANY underprivileged and/or poor kids in SV, LA, Pittsburgh, all the places where tech companies reside. Saying there aren't enough skilled workers in the US is kind of dishonestly true, as they have tons of applications from many qualified people.. many of whom with some training and support may very well become highly qualified.... 4. ...They could literally invest some of those trillions to build a pipeline from these areas, develop talent locally - or at least domestically. So much of tech is about solving problems with the resources you have. Opening up broadly to a global labor supply removes the constraint on that resource, and therefore don't need to innovate or find clever ways to make it work. Now, they are companies that have only one duty - deliver profit to shareholders - and that's fine and how companies should be run. But public policy needs to exist to serve the interest of the people, and for the most part - not entirely - H1B has been to serve the interest of executives in Big Tech. Also, finally, Trump is absolutely awful, horrid, all that. A broken clock is right twice a day though, and this is one of the few possibly accidental things he's done that isn't a complete self-shot to the head.
  - on_and_off 6y ago
    1 - I am the first one to complain about our broken hiring practices, but just because you get a first interview does not mean you are qualified for the job. 2/3/4 -> FAANG have a ton of money but no incentive at all to spend it on philanthropy. I wish it was not the case, but their only job is to make their investors happy. 3 - is it dishonest ? For sure there are some kids in SV, LA,etc that could work in tech if they got the education but the thing is, they didn't. Also, local talent is never going to compare to the global one. I would love to see laws pushing FAANG and co to invest in philanthropic causes. Heck, I would not even mind if this was based on taxation. But cutting H1B is not going to solve any of these problems.
vsskanth 6y ago
Reposting my response from a different thread: Every time you file an H1B Visa, you pay something called a ACWIA Fee (“American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998”). For employers who have between 1-25 full-time workers, the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act fee is $750. For employers with 26 or more full-time employees, the fee is $1,500. [1] This fee was established to fund training and education programs administered by the Department of Labor. As of 2018, there were 420K active H1B visas in the USA. These people need to renew their visas every 3 years (most are Indians and they can never become PR in their lifetime). So that means 300-630 million USD is being added to this fund on a recurring basis over a 3 year period. I wonder where all that money went. [1] https://www.immi-usa.com/h1b-visa-processing-fees-2016/ https://www.immi-usa.com/h1b-visa-processing-fees-2016/
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  Free college I guess. Oh wait... That’s a very interesting thing, I had no idea. So a sensible thing to do would be to increase that fee substantially and have it go straight to subsidizing degree programs that aren’t creating enough home grown talent. In other words, the company should expect to pay close to market rate per H1B plus the fee. We remove the incentives to abuse the program for cost reduction, and straight up use the fees to fund college. That brings me to some weird job posts that I keep seeing for some large bank. The role was for ‘Specialist’ developer, and I wonder if it really is some specialist role that they can’t fill in a major city (seemed like typical web developer stuff). Shrugs, say it ain’t so, would hate to know that’s how it’s being gamed.
  - OzzyB 6y ago
    That's a good idea, but alas I fear such a proposal would be deemed too... umm nationalistic or something... better to have local talent pay through the nose for their qualifications so that they can then compete on the global market with folks that don't have such debt.
    - triceratops 6y ago
asdjlkadsjklads 6y ago
> What if, instead of bowing to corporate greed which cares not a bit for our country or our people, we actually invested in our own population and trained them to do the jobs H1-B workers currently do. Wishful thinking under the current administration.
deleted 6y ago
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buttersbrian 6y ago
Yes, chop shops out there abuse the system, and have become substantial factor in some industries. Much of the H1B candidates out there are graduates of american universities that are trying to take the next step to be in America. We should be embracing these people where possible, not villanizing them. Make it so the chop shops can be weeded out, not the good people that are forced to work under them due to a broken system. Also, many jobs require base salaries that are VERY in line with the market, if not higher, as a financial check to the Employer to make sure they want said (H1B) candidate. We had trouble finding a JR DevOps person, basically forced to go H1B, and a JR in the midwest was going to cost us 95K with little experience. That was widly out of line for a JR devops candidate
conanbatt 6y ago
As solid reasoning as using tariffs to promote American industry.
xtreme 6y ago
> It's a win-win. Except for the individuals. US educated students who want to remain in the US, work, and raise a family are now basically being told to go back. Or people who prefer the US for non-monetary reasons (crazy thought, I know). But what I find interesting is that programs like the diversity visa (DV) lottery with even more relaxed requirements or even illegal immigration don't get scrutinized as much as H1-B. I wonder if it's because H1-B workers primarily compete for well-paying white collar jobs while most DV winners and illegal immigrants go for blue-collar jobs.
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weyland108 6y ago
I came to USA for education in 2008-09. Payed for my own education thanks to my parents and their sacrifice of lifetime savings. Did not take any govt funds for education. I graduated with a masters degree with Perfect 4.0 gpa . I worked my way up from financial crisis to working SV today. I have family, kids going to public school and also own a home. I don’t remember anytime taking a pay cut to stay in the country. It’s been more than 10years that I was legally here and always followed the law and I am still 5 years out at minimum from getting a green card. I rely on h1b renewals to keep going.... so it’s not exactly easy for me to pickup and go back to my home country where I haven’t stayed for 10+ years now to “fix” this problem. There huge nuance which is missed when talking about H1bs ... there are body shops which do cut wages and should be stopped. However the immigration system in USA needs significant reform as well. It’s hard already to build a life for your family with a normal 3 year lease ( h1b duration) for this kind of misinformed political rhetoric to have unintended consequences.
- downvoteme1 6y ago
  Unless your priority date is earlier than 2012, you are a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 30 years away from your green card. The backlog between 2009 and 2012 is around 40k people or 80k green cars so around 15 to 30 years

samfisher83 6y ago

You can look at the data, SV companies aren't paying H1B people low wages. Unless you think 200-300k is low wages.

noobermin 6y ago
Is this true? The argument I've seen is that H1B's are liked by SV because they can be paid less.
- rantwasp 6y ago
  technically it’s illegal to pay H1B workers less than what you pay your workers.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- samfisher83 6y ago
  https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Facebook+Inc&job=&city=&year=2020 https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Facebook+Inc&job=&city=&ye... This doesn't include stock so maybe double that number for TC.
  - pstrateman 6y ago
    On the other hand. https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=STRATEGIC+STAFFING+IT+INC&job=&city=&year=All+Years https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=STRATEGIC+STAFFING+IT+INC&...
- lukeschlather 6y ago
  All H1B salaries are public: https://h1bdata.info/ https://h1bdata.info/ It's possible (maybe even likely) that title deflation is happening, but based on my experience the salaries are definitely in line with the pay ranges for each job title (I worked at Amazon for 3 and a half years, so I have some first and second hand information on pay.) If nothing else it's a great resource to see the unfiltered payscale at SV companies.
  - noobermin 6y ago
    Thanks for the data. I see comments across threads on HN that say that H1-B hires are common. What is the incentive to hire them then? Are professionals in the US really that ill-equipped? I guess there is a bit of cognitive dissonance with FAANG complaining about no qualified workers but then FAANG only hired people who went to Stanford or Harvard and such.
    - umanwizard 6y ago
      I worked at two FAANG companies and my degree is from the University of Arizona. I only met a few people there whose degrees were from elite schools. Where do you get the impression that they only hire people from Stanford and Harvard?
    - paulgb 6y ago
      > Are professionals in the US really that ill-equipped? Americans are plenty smart, but they are only 4% of the world population. American companies compete on an international stage and not having access to the other 96% of talent would be a competitive disadvantage.
    - on_and_off 6y ago
      I can maybe help here. Many SV companies are in constant need of more skilled engineers. Since the H1B visa can be transferred, when I arrived in the USA, nothing would have prevented me from going door to door and find a better paying job. Especially in the SV where there are tons of companies hiring. So companies have a good incentive to give you a fair salary. This is not true for all visas. In particular there is one visa (sorry can't remember its name off the top of my head) that is an "international transfer visa" : you work for one year for the company in a foreign country and then you can move to the USA while continuing to work for that company. It is pretty easy to get that visa but it is also very hard to transfer it to another company afaik. Hiring is also a bit broken in our industry. The thing is, it is often pretty hard to distinguish what makes a good or a bad engineer. This being said, there are just not enough skilled engineers in the USA. It would absolutely be possible to hire more local engineers and train them on the job but that would cost a lot of time for uncertain results. Companies prefer to hire engineers that can already be pretty productive from day 1.
- roskilli 6y ago
  There are plenty of >200k H1B workers in SV, and I do believe these engineers and specialists will wonder how they can do their work elsewhere if they can't reasonably plan a few years into the future: https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=netflix&year=2020 https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=netflix&year=2020 https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=apple&year=2020 https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=apple&year=2020 https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=linkedin&year=2020 https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=linkedin&year=2020 https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=uber&year=2020 https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=uber&year=2020
- jaaron 6y ago
  My anecdotal experience as a hiring manager in tech firms for over a decade: it’s not about money, it’s about quickly finding qualified employees. Unemployment has been (until recently) low. There wasn’t some large supply of unemployed, qualified engineers sitting around. Nearly everyone I hired already had a job. Expanding the search globally just gave me a better chance of finding someone.
  - goostavos 6y ago
    >Expanding the search globally just gave me a better chance of finding someone At the price point you wanted. A pool of eager H1Bs reduces the need for companies on the same block to be competitive on wages.
- goostavos 6y ago
  I think it's more that they're fairly indentured. Their visa is tied to a specific _kind_ of work, they're legally prevented from making money in any other way other than their current job, and while they can change jobs, my understanding is it is generally viewed as risky (for instance, if the new place doesn't work out, you've got a few short months to find employment or your visa is no good and you have to uproot your life) It'd be really interesting to see data on how often H1B's change jobs compared to the rest of the population.
- umanwizard 6y ago
  That argument is wrong. H1Bs are liked by Silicon Valley because they want to be able to hire the best people from anywhere, and not restrict their talent pool to 5% of the world population. All reputable Silicon Valley companies pay people exactly the same whether they are on a visa, have a green card, or are a US citizen.
retortio 6y ago
One thing to remember is that in many cases H1-B workers are brought over by sponsoring companies which take a huge cut (I know cases of 40% or more) out of their salaries for the service of securing them the Visa. So those salaries might appear to be a certain number but the workers themselves may actually receive significantly less while some rent seeking company stashes the differences. I know for a fact that in my industry (not in SV) H1-B wages are lower, going off both public data and conversations I've had with H1-B coworkers, many who I consider my friends. As a side note, I don't blame H1-B workers at all for coming here. They're generally great developers and great people.
- fredfoobar 6y ago
  I'm sorry to break it to you, if your company isn't paying prevailing wages, they're doing something illegal. They need to be shut-down, not the whole fucking program.
  - beervirus 6y ago
    Why would that be illegal?
    - fredfoobar 6y ago
      See my other response in this thread.
  - tracer4201 6y ago
    There’s nothing illegal going on here. I posted earlier that I was at an oil and gas company in Houston, a Fortune 10 company at the time. We had IT contractors from Larsen and Toubro. As an example, one guy who reported to me was paid < $20 an hour after L&TI and another contracting company in the middle took their cut. He wasn’t thrilled with that situation but his other option was to quit and go back to India. The worst part was I couldn’t hire him directly because of his contract. He wasn’t allowed to quit and directly work for us. Kind of live slavery.
    - 6y ago
ntsplnkv2 6y ago
Honestly it's not the SV companies. It's the body shop consulting firms.
- fredfoobar 6y ago
  Exactly, shut them down, American interests will be protected. Most of the folks getting on the H1-B have a masters degree in an American university, if they are in SV, it's usually a top-tier one. I've personally made some of the best hires on-campus.
deleted 6y ago
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damnyou 6y ago
I know people on H1s who make 500k to a million dollars per year at FAANG.
tracer4201 6y ago
I’d love to see comprehensive data on this. I worked at a fortune 10 oil and gas company in Houston. We had onshore contractors across a range, but I know a few of them made less than $18 an hour. The rest that we paid went to two different contracting companies.
tinyhouse 6y ago
Salary is not even the issue. The main issue is the employment restrictions. Instead of making H1-B a visa that lets an individual full freedom (like green card), it's tied to an employer and moving jobs is not that easy, and many employers also sponsor for green card, which is another process that can take years and make it harder to move. During this time the employee has little leverage asking for promo or raises. (promo and raises usually appear after the green card..) Once you let employees freedom, the market will take care of the salary. I also understand that employers invest in the visa application and relocation of people, so it should be fair to them as well. This can solved by having a period (1-year is pretty reasonable) that prohibits new visa holders from moving companies.
- OzzyB 6y ago
  Funny how ppl don't like to mention this and just focus on H1Bs getting paid "market rates". It's almost like the SV's previous gentleman agreement of non-poaching got replaced with "hey, let's use H1Bs, sure we might have to pay near market rates, but at least we can tie them down for at least 3/5 years without any option of leaving".
- triceratops 6y ago
  H-1B holders can change jobs even without a green card. It's more of a hassle (takes 4-6 weeks) and has been made worse by this administration's repeated suspension of premium processing of applications. But visa holders aren't "tied" to their employers or "indentured servants".
  - tinyhouse 6y ago
    I said it's not that easy, not that it's impossible. Also, H1-B transfer cost some money and involves lawyers, so some companies, like many startups, don't want to deal with that. The bottom line is that H1-B employees are at a disadvantage.
    - triceratops 6y ago
      Agreed.
hourislate 6y ago
SV isn't the only place you find H1B's. Everyone from Toyota, AA, Sabre, etc in the DFW area has hired what seems like 1000's. There is hardly anyone but H1B's at Toyota in Plano from what I understand. I have heard some companies are laying of permanent staff and keeping H1B's because they're less expensive. Personal experience in my part of the world seems to suggest that it is cost. Permanent employees are expensive and H1B's are so terrified of losing employment they are willing to work around the clock and for less. I would like to see the whole program gone. I don't believe it is being used as it was intended.
- ojbyrne 6y ago
  As pointed out in other threads, H1B data is public. There's precisely 1 H1B in Plano, TX: https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=&city=PLANO.TX&year=All+Years https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=&city=PLANO.TX&year=A...
  - hourislate 6y ago
    I know of at least a few just from my office that are not on that site. Could it be that they are hidden through a contracting company and not hired directly?
saradhi 6y ago
Your presumption is either (if you not a h1 candidate) far away from the fact or don't want to accept the truth. You are looking at the top 100 companies and their full-time employees but not at the 1000s of vendor-employer ponzi scheme/scams that happen every day in the form of contractors who apply with fake resumes, take proxy interviews and outsource the assigned work to someone in India. Doesn't stop there, the dependents of those do a unlicensed food selling, baby sitting, work in local stores, what not. The hard to digest fact is the student who comes on F1 visa, succumbs to the pressure of 90 days period to get into a job to maintain the visa status joins a consultancy company, which starts the game. These consultancies market the candidate with high experience fake resume, arranges proxy candidate to take interviews, even Falsify the requirement of GC/citizenship candidate requirement - all these to charge the client a 100$/hr and pay a mere 40$/hr to the candidate through their sister companies acting as layers. A honest try from USCIS to do a quick scan in containing these will drop at least 50% of H1B lottery applications, void 30% of the consulting company licenses and also help the right talent to get an opportunity. If you are a gov/USCIS rep, drop me an email I'll be more than happy to provide more details, and possible ways of catching the wrong ones.
throwh1b111 6y ago
I think you have to separate H1Bers into at least 2 categories, {Indian+maybe Chinese, everyone else}. Source: am H1B bro myself. I'm from a shithole European country full of white people. The experience in the US has been very positive. People treat me nicely, both in SV and in rural Ohio. SV companies pay me equivalently to Americans as far as I can tell by asking around (for reference, depending on bonus/stocks my total comp is 200k+, which is not FAANG but above average for my position). Sometimes more for the same job. If I were kicked off my H1B, I'd just go back to one of the richest countries in the world and be fine. There's a smooth path to the Green Card for me, like for any H1B holder except Indians and Chinese. That's kind of where the crux is. As part of my job I've traveled to quite a few large enterprises that were not in SV, and often they have entire buildings full of 90% Indian H1B bros. I think 50%+ of all H1Bs are awarded to Indian citizens. There is a absolute cap on the number of Green Cards that can be awarded to citizens of any one country per year. In addition, India has about 10000 billion times the population of my shithole EU country. Subsequently, the wait for my Indian H1B bros to get their Green Card is now several decades (it is "none" or "a few months" for most others except I believe Chinese). So the indentured servitude is not due to H1B per se, but because of its interaction with the Green Card program for my Indian H1B bros and maybe Chinese H1Bers as well. As a shithole European I can switch jobs pretty easily. At worst, I have to wait a few years to finish the Green Card process, so the "indentured servitude" is limited to 2-3 years. It is up to individual companies to decide if they want to sponsor your Green Card, but all companies I'm familiar with in SV will do so for any of their H1B employees with no exceptions. This might not be the case for other companies. My Indian H1B bro co-workers are paid just as well and treated fairly. Of course, the SV companies can't get around the Green Card cap for them, so that's still problematic. But the companies I've seen do not abuse that fact. But the SV H1B experience is probably the exception if you look at the statistics. My Indian H1B bros at Certain Major American Companies You Almost Certainly Do Business With All The Time aren't treated nearly as well. They get thrown specs across the wall by managers (often Indians themselves), any response is silenced. They are often in physically different buildings or on different floors from the other workers. The work I did in SV felt creative, challenging, and I was always empowered to do my job as well as my American co-workers. But those H1B-with-no-path-to-residency farms seemed like authoritarian sweatshops. During one consulting gig with Bank You Most Likely Use Daily, we saw a guy get fired for accidentally pushing a private key to Github. The AC wouldn't get fixed in the H1B-building, so we worked in a sweltering 85 degrees all day. The restrooms were in despicable condition, getting cleaned maybe 2-3 times per week. For a remote call, I was offered a used pair of in-ear headphones with somebody else's ear wax still smeared onto them. I politely declined and bought my own pair. I would've quit this company after a few months. But none of the H1Bers there can do that, because of their legal limbo. To say that these folks are not empowered is a vast understatement. And I do think some companies are abusing this fact. It's a hard hole to dig out of now. I've seen estimates that if you were to remove the per-country-cap for Green Cards, the next 5 years worth of Green Cards would go entirely to Indian citizens. Is it "fair" that one country gets 50-70% of all work (not family) based Green Cards? Is it "fair" that an Indian H1B worker has to stay in legal limbo for 25 years just because other people from his country also want to immigrate? It certainly feels to me like the current setup of the H1B-Green Card pipeline has created pretty terrible conditions for a large percentage, maybe the majority, of Indian H1B holders, which is most H1B holders. Btw: I'm calling them my H1B bros because Indian developers are always super surprised to learn that I, a white guy, am on the same visa. We literally bond over our immigration status, which can be very helpful in consulting work. Maybe my first hint that the Indian H1B experience is different should've come earlier: when I first landed in SFO and went through immigration, the officer looked at my H1B and said "Oh, I thought that visa was only for Indians." And this is in SV.

SV_BubbleTime 6y ago

I was very surprised to learn 70% of Apple engineers are H1B hires - but i don’t know if this is the case currently. Agree that domestic training should be invested. Edit: sorry, clarified Apple not SV as a whole - and it was a Vice Or Vox article, so I should probably know better.

carapace 6y ago
70%? Do you have a citation for that? (I'm not pro/con just want to nail down the number.)
bbatha 6y ago
Source?
conanbatt 6y ago
I recommend the opposite: educating is very expensive in the US. When a foreigner comes to the US, the US gets the value of that education for free. Who doesn't like free things?
- zo1 6y ago
  It's not like the country is paying for said education. And if they were, it's not like the money is "lost" in any way, as it goes back into local businesses which "stimulates" the economy and creates local jobs. I personally wouldn't use this argument.
  - conanbatt 6y ago
    If by a country we mean states, college is at least partially publicly funded in the US and outside generally. If by a country we mean expenditures by the citizenry, definitely true that college is an investment of time and money by the students. A doctor leaves college maybe with 500k dollars in debt in the US, doctors in most other countries graduate with little or no debt at all: you could import thousands if not 100's of thousands of doctors willing to work a fraction of the current doctor's rate, thus making it cheaper for patients. > And if they were, it's not like the money is "lost" in any way, as it goes back into local businesses which "stimulates" the economy and creates local jobs Which money? I fear this is the broken window fallacy Bastiat liked to talk about.

ckaygusu 6y ago

You can easily achieve this by raising wage requirements, instead of essentially having nothing changed and making the whole US a big open air prison for foreign skilled workers.

zozbot234 6y ago
Make it easier for H1B's to transfer to another, better-paying job without losing their privilege of staying and working in the country. Then it's a real win-win, for both guest workers and citizens. The only actors who would lose are those seeking to abuse the system in the first place.
masklinn 6y ago
> You can easily achieve this by raising wage requirements, instead of essentially having nothing changed and making the whole US a big open air for foreign skilled workers. Also stronger labor laws instead of gutting them, actually enforcing them instead of shanking the agencies responsible for them, and actually hitting guilty corporations where it hurts instead of handing out "cost of doing business" jokes. And prosecuting guilty management as well. Middle manager 8374 might be less eager to ask for bullshit job requirements designed to only fit a specific H1B if their n+1 to 6 have just gotten years in the slammer for labor fraud.
idrios 6y ago
Raising wage requirements just means companies will pay whatever the new minimum is for H-1B workers. Once employed, those workers are still locked into their job without freedom to jump to anther with better working conditions or a better salary (which makes them more appealing hires for companies than US workers). If you want to see a more fair and competitive workforce, give H1-B visa holders more freedom to switch jobs without risk of losing their visa.

jeremiahhs 6y ago

Yes. I've seen first hand abuse of the visas to import cheap labor in academia to avoid paying citizen-level wages.

deleted 6y ago

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belltaco 6y ago

Unemployment in tech is down from Jan to May this year. https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2020/06/11/unemployment-rate-for-computer-occupations-fell-in-may/#1920885216ad https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2020/06/11/unemp...

drocer88 6y ago
Unemployment is up from 3% to 11% YOY in information sector: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t14.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t14.htm These number are said to underestimate the true unemployment numbers. U.S. should focus on American unemployment numbers.

oneplane 6y ago

Instead of fighting the symptom you can also fight the cause. If you make the abuse not legal, and detect and enforce that, you solve the problem either way. You'll still need to educate the native citizens of course, otherwise nothing really changes. But you'll need to do both. I don't know what local laws would apply, but I imagine that the same laws that have to do with equal pay can be made generic so that it applies to everyone for a position. In the end you should be paid for your value, not for your gender, color of your skin or the place you were born.

rconti 6y ago

What's the mechanism you suggest for funding education and training in our country? It doesn't seem to be popular.

pmoriarty 6y ago

"What if, instead of bowing to corporate greed which cares not a bit for our country or our people, we actually invested in our own population and trained them to do the jobs H1-B workers currently do." Who's this "our people" you're talking about? As a US citizen, I consider every person in the world as part of my people, and I don't begrudge any individual coming and working or training in the US. The more people, from whichever country, have access to good education and good jobs, the better. Good education and jobs should not be reserved for people who happen to live or be born in a particular place, be descended from particular people, nor just those who managed to get certain bureaucratic paperwork.

KingTen 6y ago
Oh you’re one of those open borders people. It’s idealistic but unfeasible now. Countries need to take care of their own people first and foremost.
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  Oh you're one of those closed borders people. I don't think we should discriminate against people because of something they were born with. Just as we don't discriminate against people because of their skin color, I don't think we should discriminate because of their ancestry or place of birth either.
  - KingTen 6y ago
    There’s plenty of people living in poverty in America, along with the multitude of other major problems right now. I’m not a closed border person, we need immigrants. But we don’t have the resources to help every single person who wants to come here. It’s not discrimination, that’s a terrible argument. It’s a government helping its people.
- WanderPanda 6y ago
  This the opposite of what I believe has made the us great. Look at all the Elon Musks. High skilled immigration can never harm your country. It can give competition to some people who feel entitled to their high salary, though.

on_and_off 6y ago

I came to the USA on an H1B visa 2 years ago. On a high salary and with the promise of being sponsored for a green card. I got my green card just before covid impacted the USA and still have a pretty high salary (in the same range of my US born colleagues). I already had a great job in my home country, I was not going to come to the USA to be paid a pittance. Yeah, there is abuse of the green card system but it is in place because there aren't enough skilled workers in the USA.

vbtemp 6y ago
Couple important points: 1. SV/FAANGs, like elite colleges, only hire some very small percentage of people who apply. Many people who are perfectly well qualified and have successful careers otherwise get denied employment. 2. The market cap of these FAANGs is in the trillions. Between talent and capital, there's literally no problem they can't solve (they can solve problems about cyber bullying, trolling, etc but their business relies on it.. so it's not really a "problem" per se). 3. There are SO MANY underprivileged and/or poor kids in SV, LA, Pittsburgh, all the places where tech companies reside. Saying there aren't enough skilled workers in the US is kind of dishonestly true, as they have tons of applications from many qualified people.. many of whom with some training and support may very well become highly qualified.... 4. ...They could literally invest some of those trillions to build a pipeline from these areas, develop talent locally - or at least domestically. So much of tech is about solving problems with the resources you have. Opening up broadly to a global labor supply removes the constraint on that resource, and therefore don't need to innovate or find clever ways to make it work. Now, they are companies that have only one duty - deliver profit to shareholders - and that's fine and how companies should be run. But public policy needs to exist to serve the interest of the people, and for the most part - not entirely - H1B has been to serve the interest of executives in Big Tech. Also, finally, Trump is absolutely awful, horrid, all that. A broken clock is right twice a day though, and this is one of the few possibly accidental things he's done that isn't a complete self-shot to the head.
- on_and_off 6y ago
  1 - I am the first one to complain about our broken hiring practices, but just because you get a first interview does not mean you are qualified for the job. 2/3/4 -> FAANG have a ton of money but no incentive at all to spend it on philanthropy. I wish it was not the case, but their only job is to make their investors happy. 3 - is it dishonest ? For sure there are some kids in SV, LA,etc that could work in tech if they got the education but the thing is, they didn't. Also, local talent is never going to compare to the global one. I would love to see laws pushing FAANG and co to invest in philanthropic causes. Heck, I would not even mind if this was based on taxation. But cutting H1B is not going to solve any of these problems.

vsskanth 6y ago

Reposting my response from a different thread: Every time you file an H1B Visa, you pay something called a ACWIA Fee (“American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998”). For employers who have between 1-25 full-time workers, the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act fee is $750. For employers with 26 or more full-time employees, the fee is $1,500. [1] This fee was established to fund training and education programs administered by the Department of Labor. As of 2018, there were 420K active H1B visas in the USA. These people need to renew their visas every 3 years (most are Indians and they can never become PR in their lifetime). So that means 300-630 million USD is being added to this fund on a recurring basis over a 3 year period. I wonder where all that money went. [1] https://www.immi-usa.com/h1b-visa-processing-fees-2016/ https://www.immi-usa.com/h1b-visa-processing-fees-2016/

runawaybottle 6y ago
Free college I guess. Oh wait... That’s a very interesting thing, I had no idea. So a sensible thing to do would be to increase that fee substantially and have it go straight to subsidizing degree programs that aren’t creating enough home grown talent. In other words, the company should expect to pay close to market rate per H1B plus the fee. We remove the incentives to abuse the program for cost reduction, and straight up use the fees to fund college. That brings me to some weird job posts that I keep seeing for some large bank. The role was for ‘Specialist’ developer, and I wonder if it really is some specialist role that they can’t fill in a major city (seemed like typical web developer stuff). Shrugs, say it ain’t so, would hate to know that’s how it’s being gamed.
- OzzyB 6y ago
  That's a good idea, but alas I fear such a proposal would be deemed too... umm nationalistic or something... better to have local talent pay through the nose for their qualifications so that they can then compete on the global market with folks that don't have such debt.
  - triceratops 6y ago

asdjlkadsjklads 6y ago

> What if, instead of bowing to corporate greed which cares not a bit for our country or our people, we actually invested in our own population and trained them to do the jobs H1-B workers currently do. Wishful thinking under the current administration.

deleted 6y ago

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buttersbrian 6y ago

Yes, chop shops out there abuse the system, and have become substantial factor in some industries. Much of the H1B candidates out there are graduates of american universities that are trying to take the next step to be in America. We should be embracing these people where possible, not villanizing them. Make it so the chop shops can be weeded out, not the good people that are forced to work under them due to a broken system. Also, many jobs require base salaries that are VERY in line with the market, if not higher, as a financial check to the Employer to make sure they want said (H1B) candidate. We had trouble finding a JR DevOps person, basically forced to go H1B, and a JR in the midwest was going to cost us 95K with little experience. That was widly out of line for a JR devops candidate

conanbatt 6y ago

As solid reasoning as using tariffs to promote American industry.

xtreme 6y ago

> It's a win-win. Except for the individuals. US educated students who want to remain in the US, work, and raise a family are now basically being told to go back. Or people who prefer the US for non-monetary reasons (crazy thought, I know). But what I find interesting is that programs like the diversity visa (DV) lottery with even more relaxed requirements or even illegal immigration don't get scrutinized as much as H1-B. I wonder if it's because H1-B workers primarily compete for well-paying white collar jobs while most DV winners and illegal immigrants go for blue-collar jobs.

deleted 6y ago

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weyland108 6y ago

I came to USA for education in 2008-09. Payed for my own education thanks to my parents and their sacrifice of lifetime savings. Did not take any govt funds for education. I graduated with a masters degree with Perfect 4.0 gpa . I worked my way up from financial crisis to working SV today. I have family, kids going to public school and also own a home. I don’t remember anytime taking a pay cut to stay in the country. It’s been more than 10years that I was legally here and always followed the law and I am still 5 years out at minimum from getting a green card. I rely on h1b renewals to keep going.... so it’s not exactly easy for me to pickup and go back to my home country where I haven’t stayed for 10+ years now to “fix” this problem. There huge nuance which is missed when talking about H1bs ... there are body shops which do cut wages and should be stopped. However the immigration system in USA needs significant reform as well. It’s hard already to build a life for your family with a normal 3 year lease ( h1b duration) for this kind of misinformed political rhetoric to have unintended consequences.

downvoteme1 6y ago
Unless your priority date is earlier than 2012, you are a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 30 years away from your green card. The backlog between 2009 and 2012 is around 40k people or 80k green cars so around 15 to 30 years