17 ms·

A small number of companies are colluding to cheat H1B visa lottery, US says

290 points by erehweb 3y ago

nico 3y ago
Just hire people from Chile and Singapore using the much easier to get, and underutilized, H1B1.
- no_wizard 3y ago
  or they could just hire people in the US, there's plenty of good US labor to go around. The point of these programs was to augment labor markets in times of shortage (H1B isn't just used by tech FWIW), IE, the internal US labor pool wasn't big enough to sustain hiring in the US for N job(s) due to requirements and you could demonstrate that some form of training would be sufficiently work in a timely manner Its been pretty clear this isn't really true for decades yet H1B hasn't been curtailed meaningfully to uphold its intended goals
  - wbl 3y ago
    Why shouldn't the US attract highly skilled workers from abroad?
    - no_wizard 3y ago
      I distinctively didn't say the US shouldn't. I said the H1B program is not working as intended and pointed out its faltering its mission, and has been for decades. Whether we should have better immigration policies is a separate discussion, and I think we most definitely should. Path to citizenship would be for the best. It historically has worked out in the favor the nation, after all. The H1B program isn't this at all though
    - afavour 3y ago
      Not really the question here. The H1B visa is intended to specifically target industries with a shortage of workers. Even as someone who arrived in the country on an H1B myself I question whether software engineering is experiencing a shortage these days given the mass layoffs we’ve seen lately. Whether we should prioritize local workers over foreign (and whether we have enough local workers) is a much broader political question.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - hu3 3y ago
      It's natural and healthy for countries to prioritize hiring their own citizens. H1B has been abused to hire workers of similar skillset for a lower salary. And I say that as a non-US citizen, interested in H1B program.
    - bdcravens 3y ago
      They should. However, that's not the point of the H1B - it's designed to bridge gaps in domestic skills, not increase competition.
    - sethd 3y ago
      The H1B program might have started out as a way to attract highly skilled workers, and that might still happen in some cases today, but by and large it's not resulting in the US pulling in top talent and it is used as a way to suppress wages in the US across the board. We need immigration policies that allow highly skilled workers to come to the US with no strings attached so these workers have the same job mobility as US citizens and permanent residents. The H1B program today resembles something closer to indentured servitude. So yes, the US should attract highly skilled workers, but no, the H1B program is not working that way.
      - pl90087 3y ago
        My company struggles to find the right people. Many that we find we can't hire because the risk is too high that they won't make the lottery, so positions keep unfilled. This is a serious problem limiting our growth.
        big_youth 3y ago
        Why not hire Americans? I went to a no name state school with a large CS class. Sure we're not MIT/Stanford quality (well many where) but plenty of talent to go around. Whether they want to work for your wages is the real issues.
        pl90087 3y ago
        > Why not hire Americans? If they pass the interview then we obviously gladly hire them. But competition is hard. We do have quite competitive wages. But we need more people than the American-only portion of the market has to offer. Competent foreigners make up a sizeable part of the applicants, and those who don't already have visa or green card we just can't hire. It's as simple as that.
        greenfield1 3y ago
        "Why not hire Americans?" in this context is like asking "Why not just vaccinate people?" in April 2020.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      Nation state policy should be aggressively seeking and rolling the carpet out for exceptional talent, not cheap talent to depress internal wages. This is pretty standard policy across developed nations (as someone who has looked into skilled worker visas outside the US from within and is not exceptional talent).
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      We should. That's what the E1/E2 categories are for; H1B was designed to address labor shortages, not necessarily/specifically for attracting highly skilled workers.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - commandlinefan 3y ago
      > highly skilled I'm sure there are many H1B visa holders who are actually highly skilled in something that's actually nearly impossible to find anywhere else. I know from experience that a lot of H1B visa holders are about the same as what you can find domestically (but they're a lot less likely to agitate for better working conditions).
    - geraldwhen 3y ago
      Where are these candidates? I’ve only ever been given barely-entry level Junior h1bs I’ve been expected to train from 0. One person I was forced to work with legitimately did not understand how to connect to wifi or know when he was connected to wifi. He kept calling me saying his computer was broken.
    - stcroixx 3y ago
      Without limits, it would destroy the market for domestic workers.
  - Swizec 3y ago
    I had to research this for my greencard a while back. Here’s a fun stat for ya: USA opens about 500,000 new software development positions per year. USA creates about 50,000 new comp sci graduates per year. There are an order of magnitude too few Americans every year for the jobs available. Whatever you think of the H1B (and it has many problems), I doubt it’s coming even close to bridging that gap. source with links to sources: https://swizec.com/blog/software-engineering-best-job/ https://swizec.com/blog/software-engineering-best-job/
    - smolder 3y ago
      You may have a point, but there at least a few degrees apart from Comp Sci that can lead to software development, nevermind mid-career direction changes and boot camps.
    - guessbest 3y ago
      Is the USA the only country which has 10x more positions than freshly graduated students? If so, then America is the only country in the world which adequately compensates software developers which would mean it is unusual for another country like India and China to even have software developers if they would be better employed in the United States. Maybe the point of computer science programs is to serve as future American immigrants.
      - toast0 3y ago
        > which would mean it is unusual for another country like India and China to even have software developers if they would be better employed in the United States. There's lots of reasons software developers in India and China would remain in India and China, but one big one is obtaining a visa and permanent residency to live and work in the US is hard in general, and more so for people in populous countries with many emigrants destined for the US; I think it's India, China, and Mexico that have the three longest queues for green cards where there's a limit per country of birth. There's certainly a path to immigration through a computer science degree. Especially advanced degrees, which give preferences to visa applications. If you can afford it, get a bachelor's in your country of origin, come to the US for a Masters, work on OPT visa after graduation, hope it converts to H1B, work on H1B until you get a green card, is a well worn path, but there are others.
  - riku_iki 3y ago
    > or they could just hire people in the US, there's plenty of good US labor to go around. the business of those companies is to bring some person, pay him $50/h while charge client $300/h. Good US labor wouldn't agree to work for $50/h.
    - no_wizard 3y ago
      Then they should either setup an international arm abroad, which is perfectly legal[0] or raise your wages. If you can afford the overhead of the H1B system (there's a bunch of ongoing legal costs to doing this) then setting up an international arm of the company isn't that much different. The H1B program is not and its stated goal is not, to be able to undercut the US labor market with foreign labor [0]: though as someone in the labor market, it does have negative consequences on me potentially
      - riku_iki 3y ago
        > Then they should either setup an international arm abroad they sell h1b employees as US on-site consultants. > there's a bunch of ongoing legal costs to doing this several thousands USD as to my knowledge.
  - SheinhardtWigCo 3y ago
    Exactly. H1B hires don't have the same freedom to look for another job, because a new employer has to hire a lawyer to transfer the H1B, and not many companies have the resources or are willing to do that. Even if a company offers market wages when hiring a H1B, it's arguably a better investment because they have far lower mobility. That isn't good for anyone except the big tech firms.
    - smabie 3y ago
      Clearly it's good for the H1B person?
      - WirelessGigabit 3y ago
        Yes, but that's why we have immigration laws. It's a very fine balance to walk. 2 people, same age, but one from USA and one from a country without student dept... And this person from another country WANTS to come to the USA. They will be able to live on a lower wage. And even if they're done with the low wage, the process or changing jobs is arduous. So you're stuck. This gets exacerbated by the fact that it's really hard to gauge the cost of living from abroad.
  - matheusmoreira 3y ago
    > or they could just hire people in the US, there's plenty of good US labor to go around At 50k USD per year? Doubt it. 50k is nothing to americans but it's a shitload of money to a lot of people, including south americans like me. Very few people here make more than that. In fact the value of such a salary will probably increase even further as our nations descend ever deeper into economy-destroying communism.
    - no_wizard 3y ago
      Sure, but you don't need an H1B visa to get hired in your own country. Yet suspiciously, companies don't just open international arms of a company to do business (its alot easier than it used to be and its only initial overhead anyway). I'm suspicious of anyone wanting to hire H1B workers for 50K, that sounds like undercutting the labor market with foreign labor which is not the actual stated goal of the H1B system and the legislation that created it
  - ams92 3y ago
    They need to update the minimum salary for H1B. There is no reason to bring in a QA engineer making 50k per year who tolerates poor working conditions due to lack of better options. I think that 100k would make more sense, and it arguably should be higher if the country wants to keep fulfilling the original goals of H1B.
- smcl 3y ago
  Cool option if you have found some candidates in Singapore or Chile but they’re two small-ish countries (relatively speaking - ~25 million combined, compared to the >7 billion in the rest of the world), that probably won’t move the needle much.
  - ulfw 3y ago
    or they could get Australians on an E3 visa (https://rjimmigrationlaw.com/resources/as-an-australian-how-do-i-work-in-the-usa/ https://rjimmigrationlaw.com/resources/as-an-australian-how-...) or Canadians on a TN visa. US Immigration is ridiculous in how arbitrary it is. Where you are born matters more than who you are.
    - e1g 3y ago
      I’m on E3, and my wife is on a TN - the company has to do nothing for a TN visa beyond what they already do for US citizens. Even that was too much friction for many places she interviewed at. The conversation was, "Are you authorized to work in the USA today?" No, but give me an offer letter, and I will be tomorrow morning. "Sorry, bye-bye". A simple process isn’t enough when most companies are terrified of dealing with immigration topics due to unknown (often non-existent) issues.
      - inconceivable 3y ago
        if it were that simple i would just say yes, write the letter myself, and ask the hiring manager to sign it.
        e1g 3y ago
        It is that simple, but the question comes up early from recruiters and first round interviewers, not the hiring manager. If you are honest, you get disqualified at the gate. If you say “yes” to these folks, and it works, the first thing you now have to say to your real manager will be “I lied about a legal matter and now need you to sign something to help me get out of it”. Helleva first impression.
- verst 3y ago
  My understanding is that H1B1 is not considered a dual intent visa, and so adjustment of status to lawful permanent resident isn't possible. Its history lies in a free trade agreement. There are also annual limits for H1B1 but they are less likely to be reached. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor/programs/h-1b https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor/programs/h-1b Whomever you hire on H1B1 just note you will almost certainly lose them after their visa extension completes.
  - Raidion 3y ago
    Pretty anecdotally but I have a friend on an H1B1, and he's actively going though the green card process now.
  - the_svd_doctor 3y ago
    Being dual-intent just means when you arrive (ie, when you cross the border, the first time or anytime after), you can't have immigrant intent at that time. Once you're in, if you eventually (genuinely) change your mind, that's fine, you can adjust to LPR.
  - nico 3y ago
    I personally know many people that have transitioned from H1B1 to green card. Some even to citizenship afterwards. I’m sure there is a legal way to do it. H1B1 can be extended for a long time and is cheap to get and renew. What do you mean about loosing them? I mean you want them to have freedom as well right? For employees, it’s relatively easy to transfer to another employee given how cheap and easy it is to get the visa, especially once you’ve gotten it for the first time.
- foobiekr 3y ago
  At one of the companies I’ve worked for the H1b and associated limits was getting significant enough that there were tons off meeting about what to do and so on. At one point a guy was getting pretty heated about it so I asked why we didn’t just hire in Poland, south and Central America and so on? At least the americas time zone would be a major improvement. The guy who I was responding to reacted like I was crazy. His reaction made no sense. We weren’t a body shop and high tech isn’t somehow exclusive to India. After the meeting, basically, a few of the other participants pointed out the flaw in my argument: the problem was that I was crazy, obviously, as there aren’t Indians in those places to hire. The point here isn’t india bad or whatever it’s that there is more going on at the hiring manager level than simply filling area under the curve with solid talent. Personal preferences, clannishness and racism of all varieties distorts the outcome and that by and large H1b has been hijacked to serve other goals.
  - tristor 3y ago
    > Personal preferences, clannishness and racism of all varieties distorts the outcome and that by and large H1b has been hijacked to serve other goals. It isn't lost on casual observers either. It's not just that there's an expectation that these roles will be filled with Indians, but Indians of a particular caste from a particular region of India. It seems largely, in my opinion, to be the result of promoting Indians to executive leadership roles in engineering departments. When that happens, there becomes a clear driving factor towards growing the number of Indians from their origin region in that engineering department completely divorced from other goals. It's normal executive empire-building behavior, but recast through the lens of national and regional origin and ethnicity/caste. One thing I like about the BU I work in is that we have a lot of staff around the world from many different places and have helped people immigrate to the US from many different places, but when I look around my company more broadly it's very heavily dominated by Indians in engineering, beyond any reasonable expectations. There are many talented people in Central and Eastern Europe, in Central America, and in South America that are completely ignored in favor of trying to hire more Indians particularly in many companies, including mine. I've even been told before it's due to "cultural fit", which used to be a phrase used to discriminate against anyone that wasn't a straight white bro, and is now being used to discriminate against anyone that isn't an Indian from the same ethnic, caste, and regional origin as the rest of the team/hiring manager. It seems absurd to me that we're in a situation where someone can say that with a straight face for a team that's based in an office in a major US city, and truly expect that the only possible answer is to hire more Indians without considering anyone else.
- dangus 3y ago
  I wonder how many people from Singapore actually want to move to the United States.
  - nico 3y ago
    Not sure. But can tell you that most h1b1 spots got unused every year.
- peoplearepeople 3y ago
  Australians via an E3 visa is also really easy
afavour 3y ago
Note the article says: > several dozen small technology companies So this isn’t the FAANGs of the world. I’m curious if these smaller companies all have an immigration/legal consultancy in common or something like that.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- gautamdivgi 3y ago
  Calling them technology companies is a stretch. They should really be labelled as staffing companies.
- RajT88 3y ago
  FAANGs are complicit in a few ways, one being they grab what H1B visas they can, another being they hire contractors who are here under H1B from firms that grab even more of the pool of visas. Contracting companies grab a disproportionate number of H1B visas for their relative size, and then these employees go work for big tech companies. https://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2021-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx https://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2021-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.asp... Out of the top 10 companies, you've got the usual suspects like Google, Microsoft, Amazon. But the total number from consulting companies makes up the lion's share by count, with cognizant being by far the biggest. You can look at the average salaries and tell who's being used for cheap grunt work at scale (spoiler: it's the big consulting companies!). So what does big tech do with all those contractors? They use them to get work done at bargain basement prices. When they don't need the engineers anymore, they just don't renew the contract. Engineers as a commodity - sort of like the scalability and fungibility of cloud resources brought to staffing.
  - 908B64B197 3y ago
    > Out of the top 10 companies, you've got the usual suspects like Google, Microsoft, Amazon. One of the reason for that is, from experience, they don't really ask for immigration status (at least not long ago they didn't seem to care). If candidate received the greenlight from engineering, it was the legal department's job to get them a visa. What's a 10k of legal fees when the employee's signing bonus is 3x that?
scaredginger 3y ago
https://archive.ph/MY5Dv https://archive.ph/MY5Dv
boredumb 3y ago
Puerto Rico is a resource of developers that are within US jurisdiction.
- chickenpotpie 3y ago
  [citation needed]
  - boredumb 3y ago
    it came to me in a dream
commandlinefan 3y ago
There's a recession, and massive layoffs in tech... why are we bringing in more foreign workers when even US citizens are unable to find work?
- ta988 3y ago
  Skills and willingness to work for shitty companies. And they don't leave after 6 months even under abuse.
  - jimsimmons 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - the-grump 3y ago
      Breaking news: HN is a forum, not a person.
      - nbhusal 3y ago
        That's disingenuous. You could still map the general opinion and value system of the forum majority and hold them to what they purport to care about. As someone who's just beginning to form their judgement of the forum populace, your tone immediately comes across as defensive and deflecting.
        the-grump 3y ago
        [flagged]
  - princevegeta89 3y ago
    >>> willingness to work for shitty companies Don't agree with that part. When the market is tough, anyone is willing to work for shitty companies. You missed out the main point that people on h1b have hard time leaving companies generally because not everyone sponsors h1bs, and the general process around applying for PERM and GC forces candidates to stick around for >1 year at least.It is a resource-protection mechanism for employers. Adding to that the general incompetence by USCIS in handling h1b applications - where they take even 6 months to approve a h1b transfer.
vsskanth 3y ago
Typically HN seems to down weight any discussions on visas or immigration to keep it off the front page, but for what it's worth it's important to point out that this lottery system was designed by USCIS and recently changed post 2016 in a way that aids staffing companies and IT consultants. Previously you have to file a full petition with a serious job offer which costs thousands of dollars but now you just pay some entry fee and you're in. Obviously this was ripe to be gamed by shady staffing companies taking money from applicants for filing a petition and THEN finding a job later based on whichever staffing agency gets picked. It's not even illegal for multiple companies to submit a petition for the same person. USCIS can fix this by just selecting the lottery based on passport numbers and making sure the full paperwork is filed before the lottery like a few years ago, but of course they'll just lazily blame others for taking advantage of something that is so easily gamed. The real losers here are the students who studied in the US, worked hard to find a job and only submit a single petition through their employers. It's now way less likely they will get picked in the lottery. My opinion - USCIS can't legally reduce H1B visas so they intentionally wreck the lottery system to invite bogus applications, who they can later reject, or they simply won't file a full petition, and they don't have to issue all the 85K H1B visas Congress has allowed.
- medellin 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - granshaw 3y ago
    Wait what do you have more info/links on that method of entry?
    - codyb 3y ago
      Might be talking about asylum seekers? Who I believe are allowed to stay until their asylum hearings? I mean... they talk about the hell of the legal immigration process without mentioning the hell people who're coming to our Southern boarder seeking asylum are going through. I do agree the legal H1B process is brutal though.
vivegi 3y ago
From the article: > That practice, according to the agency, is in large part responsible for inflating demand for the visas to a record high this year, with 781,000 entries into the lottery for 85,000 visa slots. > About 350,000 applicants for H-1B visas submitted one entry into the lottery this year, compared with about 307,000 last year. > Some 96,000 people submitted multiple visa entries, for a total of about 408,000 entries. > About 478,000 people competed for visas last year, a record at the time. So, 350,000 (single entry submission applicants) + 96,000 (multiple entry submission applicants) = 446,000 unique applicants compared to 478,000 unique applicants last year. That's 6.7% fewer unique applicants.
- toast0 3y ago
  In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, H1B applications went down so far that there was no lottery for fiscal years 2010-2013; the applications spread over several months. This drop in applicants could be a sign of economic downturn.
  - hungrigekatze 3y ago
    This page is pretty jank-tastic but it has some charts on it in addition to serving up H1B lottery numbers, the # of days in which the lottery cap was reached, etc. Has some interesting data points around the GFC plus or minus a few years: https://redbus2us.com/h1b-visa-cap-reach-dates-history-graphs-uscis-data/ https://redbus2us.com/h1b-visa-cap-reach-dates-history-graph... 2007, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013 saw no H1B lottery. 2007 took 55 days to reach the cap; 2010 took 264 days; 2011 took 300 days; and 2012 took 235 days; and 2013 took 71 days to reach the H1B visa cap. I haven't averaged out the 'days to reach the cap' during the other years shown on that chart but the decade or so of "5 days" mixed in with a few 10 and 20 days tells me that the cap is usually reached in about a week or so. I'm sure that there are sites with prettier bar charts. What surprised me the most was that in the early-to-mid-2010s you were looking at ~85k H1B applications, with that number increasing into the high 100ks, low 200ks by the late 2010s. 2022 saw ~300k applicants with 2023 seeing half a million.
charliea0 3y ago
Our immigration system seems like such an incredible squandering of human talent. So many people struggling to through complex bureaucracy just to winnow down the number of immigrants. I really wish we could fallback on the free market here. If someone wants to live, work, and pay taxes in the US, they should be free to come. Immigration is the US‘s main sources of national strength, yet we waste it.
- hello_moto 3y ago
  > If someone wants to live, work, and pay taxes in the US, they should be free to come. Make sure your infrastructure can handle it. Make sure there's enough housing and regulations to handle it.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    We did fine for a century without any of that.
    - vlovich123 3y ago
      Did we? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooverville https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooverville > Hoovervilles served as a common ground for many different nationalities and ethnicities. Economic disparity in the United States during the 1930s was not limited to American born individuals. Migrant workers and immigrants greatly suffered from the lack of work and made up a large portion of the Hoovervilles across the country
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        Hoovervilles aren't a story of a lack of infrastructure, housing or regulation. They're the outcome of an economic depression. You're not going to anti-immigrate out of recessions or depressions. Modern immigration controls grew out of racist impulse. That's not all they are today. But many of them fail the Chesterton's fence test.
1024core 3y ago
> Though some of the duplicate entries might have been picked in the lottery, . ... officials hope to disqualify visa applicants if they committed fraud to boost their chances Why blame the applicants? Why not prosecute the companies doing this? It's not like the applicant has much choice in the matter.
shagie 3y ago
Unlocked gift article link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-says-some-companies-cheat-h-1b-lottery-driving-record-applications-1a3e4fd?st=p6e2c9n1pwmy8cs&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-says-some-companies-cheat-h...
anuptalwalkar 3y ago
Ugh , wait till you hear about green card process for Indians. Despite living here legally for past 15 years, I might have to wait for another 10 to just get permenant residency. And if it is going to be this hard, why do I have to pay social security and medicare taxes? I call it a donation/yearly fees at this point, working with such a shady system.
- esotericimpl 3y ago
  I'm all for making it easier for my indian friends to become a citizen of the USA. However, it seems strange to complain about the US naturalization process, when its not easy for me being a US citizen to become a citizen of india. https://indiancitizenshiponline.nic.in/Ic_GeneralInstruction.pdf https://indiancitizenshiponline.nic.in/Ic_GeneralInstruction... Citizenship of India by naturalization can be acquired by a foreigner (not being an illegal migrant) who is ordinarily resident in India for twelve years (throughout the period of twelve months immediately preceding the date of application and for eleven years in the aggregate in the fourteen years preceding the twelve months) and fulfils other qualifications as specified in third schedule to the act, 1955. In addition: 1) A copy of valid Foreign Passport 2) A copy of Residential Permit/LTV 3) A copy of Bank Challan in original amounting to Rs.1500/- deposited in the State Bank of India. 4) One affidavit from self (applicant) and two affidavits from two Indians testifying to the character of the applicant in the prescribed language available in the application form. Affidavit to be allotted by Notary/Oath Commissioner/ DM. 5) Two language certificates certifying the applicant’s knowledge in any one of the Indian languages specified in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution. (A language certificate from a recognized educational institution or from a recognised organisation or from two Indian citizens of the district of the applicant). 6) Two newspaper (circulating in the district in which the applicant resides) cuttings of different dates or of different newspapers notifying his/ her intention to apply for citizenship in the prescribed language available in the application form.
  - sa1 3y ago
    He's talking about residency, and you're talking about citizenship.
  - 3y ago
mkl95 3y ago
If these visas are supposed to be granted to workers whose American counterparts are not available for whatever company wants to hire them, why make it so difficult? If this lottery thing is supposed to prevent American companies from exploiting foreign workers, you could simply force those companies to pay American grade salaries, instead of implementing some Kafkaesque workaround.
- shiftpgdn 3y ago
  Because if everyone were honest with themselves they'd see H1B is just a tool to depress american IT/developer salaries. There is no shortage of Americans looking to fill these roles.
mahastore 3y ago
The US immigration system is a system that calls the incoming immigrants "alien" and their right to visit their home countries in certain stages of the visa process as "parole". This is true even in 2023. It is a dehumanizing system where immigrants have to pay a very heavy price in return for the privilege of calling this free country their home.
- georgeburdell 3y ago
  This thread is about H1B visa, which is not an immigration visa
  - bubblethink 3y ago
    It's a dual intent visa.
jmyeet 3y ago
This is a frustrating situation because these low-value staffing companies (eg Infosys) are flooding the system and denying actual good jobs. And yes, USCIS is allowing this to happen by just allowing an application with a filing fee. I'm not sure requiring a full application when the odds of success are so low is the right idea but clearly we have problems and no real interest in solving them. People of certain countries (India in particular) who want a green card are so backlogged that they will be on a work visa for decades. This allows these companies to depress their wages and it's essentially indentured servitude. There have been efforts to fix the green card backlog but those solutions haven't been great either for various reasons. I'm also curious how this works with all the recent layoffs. Why do employers even need H1B applications when they've so recently laid off so many, some of whom are already H1B holders and have been put in a precarious position of having to find a new job or leave the country (within 60 days)? Layoffs seem to impact your ability to sponsor for residency since part of that process is to "prove" you can't fill a position with a US resident or citizen. I don't think that's the case with H1B visas. But I honestly think an employer should be unable to file an H1B application for 2 years for a given position where they laid off similar employees in any large layoff. Anyway, given the cheap cost of buying a "ticket" in the visa lottery, it's unsurprising to me that people are filing applications through multiple employers like this. It's really hard to get people or the government to care about immigration issues however.
- 908B64B197 3y ago
  > I'm also curious how this works with all the recent layoffs. Why do employers even need H1B applications when they've so recently laid off so many, some of whom are already H1B holders and have been put in a precarious position of having to find a new job or leave the country (within 60 days)? Except the (very public) meltdowns at Twitter and Meta, layoffs were by far dominated by "tech adjacent" roles (like DEI advocates, recruiters, HR, "Solution Managers" whatever that means).
  - jmyeet 3y ago
    I know some people who were laid off at Meta, Google and Amazon. They may not have been proportionately affected but these positions weren't unaffected. Lay off any SWEs, PMs, data engineers or whatever should invalidate you from filing visa petitions for those or similar roles for 2 years. You can hire back those people.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
Where do they say it? Is there an official source from DoJ?
renewiltord 3y ago
These threads are always important to read, if you're an immigrant. Remember what the majority of comments here espouse. If you join a tech union and/or help it succeed in some way, these will be the majority of the people there. Maybe to start with they'll lure you in with pro-immigrant rhetoric but once critical mass is achieved the group will baseline to what you see here. Don't forget that the AFL pushed for anti-immigration law originally.
- commandlinefan 3y ago
  Pretty sure that a big reason tech employers push for increasing the H1B visa cap is because they know there's no way tech workers will ever unionize if the majority of them are on "complain and you're fired" visas.
  - renewiltord 3y ago
    Pro-union folks are anti-immigration for this stated reason. It's why it's important for immigrants to know who their opponents and allies are.
steve76 3y ago
[dead]
jl2718 3y ago
Auction > lottery.
SecurityMinded 3y ago
Those are not tech companies who are colluding. They are scummy Indian sweatshops and t is time that they are put out to the pasture and not let play games on US immigration. The candidates they bring in are generally nothing more than seat warmers.

290 points by erehweb 3y ago

nico 3y ago

Just hire people from Chile and Singapore using the much easier to get, and underutilized, H1B1.

no_wizard 3y ago
or they could just hire people in the US, there's plenty of good US labor to go around. The point of these programs was to augment labor markets in times of shortage (H1B isn't just used by tech FWIW), IE, the internal US labor pool wasn't big enough to sustain hiring in the US for N job(s) due to requirements and you could demonstrate that some form of training would be sufficiently work in a timely manner Its been pretty clear this isn't really true for decades yet H1B hasn't been curtailed meaningfully to uphold its intended goals
- wbl 3y ago
  Why shouldn't the US attract highly skilled workers from abroad?
  - no_wizard 3y ago
    I distinctively didn't say the US shouldn't. I said the H1B program is not working as intended and pointed out its faltering its mission, and has been for decades. Whether we should have better immigration policies is a separate discussion, and I think we most definitely should. Path to citizenship would be for the best. It historically has worked out in the favor the nation, after all. The H1B program isn't this at all though
  - afavour 3y ago
    Not really the question here. The H1B visa is intended to specifically target industries with a shortage of workers. Even as someone who arrived in the country on an H1B myself I question whether software engineering is experiencing a shortage these days given the mass layoffs we’ve seen lately. Whether we should prioritize local workers over foreign (and whether we have enough local workers) is a much broader political question.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - hu3 3y ago
    It's natural and healthy for countries to prioritize hiring their own citizens. H1B has been abused to hire workers of similar skillset for a lower salary. And I say that as a non-US citizen, interested in H1B program.
  - bdcravens 3y ago
    They should. However, that's not the point of the H1B - it's designed to bridge gaps in domestic skills, not increase competition.
  - sethd 3y ago
    The H1B program might have started out as a way to attract highly skilled workers, and that might still happen in some cases today, but by and large it's not resulting in the US pulling in top talent and it is used as a way to suppress wages in the US across the board. We need immigration policies that allow highly skilled workers to come to the US with no strings attached so these workers have the same job mobility as US citizens and permanent residents. The H1B program today resembles something closer to indentured servitude. So yes, the US should attract highly skilled workers, but no, the H1B program is not working that way.
    - pl90087 3y ago
      My company struggles to find the right people. Many that we find we can't hire because the risk is too high that they won't make the lottery, so positions keep unfilled. This is a serious problem limiting our growth.
      - big_youth 3y ago
        Why not hire Americans? I went to a no name state school with a large CS class. Sure we're not MIT/Stanford quality (well many where) but plenty of talent to go around. Whether they want to work for your wages is the real issues.
        pl90087 3y ago
        > Why not hire Americans? If they pass the interview then we obviously gladly hire them. But competition is hard. We do have quite competitive wages. But we need more people than the American-only portion of the market has to offer. Competent foreigners make up a sizeable part of the applicants, and those who don't already have visa or green card we just can't hire. It's as simple as that.
        greenfield1 3y ago
        "Why not hire Americans?" in this context is like asking "Why not just vaccinate people?" in April 2020.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Nation state policy should be aggressively seeking and rolling the carpet out for exceptional talent, not cheap talent to depress internal wages. This is pretty standard policy across developed nations (as someone who has looked into skilled worker visas outside the US from within and is not exceptional talent).
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    We should. That's what the E1/E2 categories are for; H1B was designed to address labor shortages, not necessarily/specifically for attracting highly skilled workers.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - commandlinefan 3y ago
    > highly skilled I'm sure there are many H1B visa holders who are actually highly skilled in something that's actually nearly impossible to find anywhere else. I know from experience that a lot of H1B visa holders are about the same as what you can find domestically (but they're a lot less likely to agitate for better working conditions).
  - geraldwhen 3y ago
    Where are these candidates? I’ve only ever been given barely-entry level Junior h1bs I’ve been expected to train from 0. One person I was forced to work with legitimately did not understand how to connect to wifi or know when he was connected to wifi. He kept calling me saying his computer was broken.
  - stcroixx 3y ago
    Without limits, it would destroy the market for domestic workers.
- Swizec 3y ago
  I had to research this for my greencard a while back. Here’s a fun stat for ya: USA opens about 500,000 new software development positions per year. USA creates about 50,000 new comp sci graduates per year. There are an order of magnitude too few Americans every year for the jobs available. Whatever you think of the H1B (and it has many problems), I doubt it’s coming even close to bridging that gap. source with links to sources: https://swizec.com/blog/software-engineering-best-job/ https://swizec.com/blog/software-engineering-best-job/
  - smolder 3y ago
    You may have a point, but there at least a few degrees apart from Comp Sci that can lead to software development, nevermind mid-career direction changes and boot camps.
  - guessbest 3y ago
    Is the USA the only country which has 10x more positions than freshly graduated students? If so, then America is the only country in the world which adequately compensates software developers which would mean it is unusual for another country like India and China to even have software developers if they would be better employed in the United States. Maybe the point of computer science programs is to serve as future American immigrants.
    - toast0 3y ago
      > which would mean it is unusual for another country like India and China to even have software developers if they would be better employed in the United States. There's lots of reasons software developers in India and China would remain in India and China, but one big one is obtaining a visa and permanent residency to live and work in the US is hard in general, and more so for people in populous countries with many emigrants destined for the US; I think it's India, China, and Mexico that have the three longest queues for green cards where there's a limit per country of birth. There's certainly a path to immigration through a computer science degree. Especially advanced degrees, which give preferences to visa applications. If you can afford it, get a bachelor's in your country of origin, come to the US for a Masters, work on OPT visa after graduation, hope it converts to H1B, work on H1B until you get a green card, is a well worn path, but there are others.
- riku_iki 3y ago
  > or they could just hire people in the US, there's plenty of good US labor to go around. the business of those companies is to bring some person, pay him $50/h while charge client $300/h. Good US labor wouldn't agree to work for $50/h.
  - no_wizard 3y ago
    Then they should either setup an international arm abroad, which is perfectly legal[0] or raise your wages. If you can afford the overhead of the H1B system (there's a bunch of ongoing legal costs to doing this) then setting up an international arm of the company isn't that much different. The H1B program is not and its stated goal is not, to be able to undercut the US labor market with foreign labor [0]: though as someone in the labor market, it does have negative consequences on me potentially
    - riku_iki 3y ago
      > Then they should either setup an international arm abroad they sell h1b employees as US on-site consultants. > there's a bunch of ongoing legal costs to doing this several thousands USD as to my knowledge.
- SheinhardtWigCo 3y ago
  Exactly. H1B hires don't have the same freedom to look for another job, because a new employer has to hire a lawyer to transfer the H1B, and not many companies have the resources or are willing to do that. Even if a company offers market wages when hiring a H1B, it's arguably a better investment because they have far lower mobility. That isn't good for anyone except the big tech firms.
  - smabie 3y ago
    Clearly it's good for the H1B person?
    - WirelessGigabit 3y ago
      Yes, but that's why we have immigration laws. It's a very fine balance to walk. 2 people, same age, but one from USA and one from a country without student dept... And this person from another country WANTS to come to the USA. They will be able to live on a lower wage. And even if they're done with the low wage, the process or changing jobs is arduous. So you're stuck. This gets exacerbated by the fact that it's really hard to gauge the cost of living from abroad.
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  > or they could just hire people in the US, there's plenty of good US labor to go around At 50k USD per year? Doubt it. 50k is nothing to americans but it's a shitload of money to a lot of people, including south americans like me. Very few people here make more than that. In fact the value of such a salary will probably increase even further as our nations descend ever deeper into economy-destroying communism.
  - no_wizard 3y ago
    Sure, but you don't need an H1B visa to get hired in your own country. Yet suspiciously, companies don't just open international arms of a company to do business (its alot easier than it used to be and its only initial overhead anyway). I'm suspicious of anyone wanting to hire H1B workers for 50K, that sounds like undercutting the labor market with foreign labor which is not the actual stated goal of the H1B system and the legislation that created it
- ams92 3y ago
  They need to update the minimum salary for H1B. There is no reason to bring in a QA engineer making 50k per year who tolerates poor working conditions due to lack of better options. I think that 100k would make more sense, and it arguably should be higher if the country wants to keep fulfilling the original goals of H1B.
smcl 3y ago
Cool option if you have found some candidates in Singapore or Chile but they’re two small-ish countries (relatively speaking - ~25 million combined, compared to the >7 billion in the rest of the world), that probably won’t move the needle much.
- ulfw 3y ago
  or they could get Australians on an E3 visa (https://rjimmigrationlaw.com/resources/as-an-australian-how-do-i-work-in-the-usa/ https://rjimmigrationlaw.com/resources/as-an-australian-how-...) or Canadians on a TN visa. US Immigration is ridiculous in how arbitrary it is. Where you are born matters more than who you are.
  - e1g 3y ago
    I’m on E3, and my wife is on a TN - the company has to do nothing for a TN visa beyond what they already do for US citizens. Even that was too much friction for many places she interviewed at. The conversation was, "Are you authorized to work in the USA today?" No, but give me an offer letter, and I will be tomorrow morning. "Sorry, bye-bye". A simple process isn’t enough when most companies are terrified of dealing with immigration topics due to unknown (often non-existent) issues.
    - inconceivable 3y ago
      if it were that simple i would just say yes, write the letter myself, and ask the hiring manager to sign it.
      - e1g 3y ago
        It is that simple, but the question comes up early from recruiters and first round interviewers, not the hiring manager. If you are honest, you get disqualified at the gate. If you say “yes” to these folks, and it works, the first thing you now have to say to your real manager will be “I lied about a legal matter and now need you to sign something to help me get out of it”. Helleva first impression.
verst 3y ago
My understanding is that H1B1 is not considered a dual intent visa, and so adjustment of status to lawful permanent resident isn't possible. Its history lies in a free trade agreement. There are also annual limits for H1B1 but they are less likely to be reached. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor/programs/h-1b https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor/programs/h-1b Whomever you hire on H1B1 just note you will almost certainly lose them after their visa extension completes.
- Raidion 3y ago
  Pretty anecdotally but I have a friend on an H1B1, and he's actively going though the green card process now.
- the_svd_doctor 3y ago
  Being dual-intent just means when you arrive (ie, when you cross the border, the first time or anytime after), you can't have immigrant intent at that time. Once you're in, if you eventually (genuinely) change your mind, that's fine, you can adjust to LPR.
- nico 3y ago
  I personally know many people that have transitioned from H1B1 to green card. Some even to citizenship afterwards. I’m sure there is a legal way to do it. H1B1 can be extended for a long time and is cheap to get and renew. What do you mean about loosing them? I mean you want them to have freedom as well right? For employees, it’s relatively easy to transfer to another employee given how cheap and easy it is to get the visa, especially once you’ve gotten it for the first time.
foobiekr 3y ago
At one of the companies I’ve worked for the H1b and associated limits was getting significant enough that there were tons off meeting about what to do and so on. At one point a guy was getting pretty heated about it so I asked why we didn’t just hire in Poland, south and Central America and so on? At least the americas time zone would be a major improvement. The guy who I was responding to reacted like I was crazy. His reaction made no sense. We weren’t a body shop and high tech isn’t somehow exclusive to India. After the meeting, basically, a few of the other participants pointed out the flaw in my argument: the problem was that I was crazy, obviously, as there aren’t Indians in those places to hire. The point here isn’t india bad or whatever it’s that there is more going on at the hiring manager level than simply filling area under the curve with solid talent. Personal preferences, clannishness and racism of all varieties distorts the outcome and that by and large H1b has been hijacked to serve other goals.
- tristor 3y ago
  > Personal preferences, clannishness and racism of all varieties distorts the outcome and that by and large H1b has been hijacked to serve other goals. It isn't lost on casual observers either. It's not just that there's an expectation that these roles will be filled with Indians, but Indians of a particular caste from a particular region of India. It seems largely, in my opinion, to be the result of promoting Indians to executive leadership roles in engineering departments. When that happens, there becomes a clear driving factor towards growing the number of Indians from their origin region in that engineering department completely divorced from other goals. It's normal executive empire-building behavior, but recast through the lens of national and regional origin and ethnicity/caste. One thing I like about the BU I work in is that we have a lot of staff around the world from many different places and have helped people immigrate to the US from many different places, but when I look around my company more broadly it's very heavily dominated by Indians in engineering, beyond any reasonable expectations. There are many talented people in Central and Eastern Europe, in Central America, and in South America that are completely ignored in favor of trying to hire more Indians particularly in many companies, including mine. I've even been told before it's due to "cultural fit", which used to be a phrase used to discriminate against anyone that wasn't a straight white bro, and is now being used to discriminate against anyone that isn't an Indian from the same ethnic, caste, and regional origin as the rest of the team/hiring manager. It seems absurd to me that we're in a situation where someone can say that with a straight face for a team that's based in an office in a major US city, and truly expect that the only possible answer is to hire more Indians without considering anyone else.
dangus 3y ago
I wonder how many people from Singapore actually want to move to the United States.
- nico 3y ago
  Not sure. But can tell you that most h1b1 spots got unused every year.
peoplearepeople 3y ago
Australians via an E3 visa is also really easy

afavour 3y ago

Note the article says: > several dozen small technology companies So this isn’t the FAANGs of the world. I’m curious if these smaller companies all have an immigration/legal consultancy in common or something like that.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
gautamdivgi 3y ago
Calling them technology companies is a stretch. They should really be labelled as staffing companies.
RajT88 3y ago
FAANGs are complicit in a few ways, one being they grab what H1B visas they can, another being they hire contractors who are here under H1B from firms that grab even more of the pool of visas. Contracting companies grab a disproportionate number of H1B visas for their relative size, and then these employees go work for big tech companies. https://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2021-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx https://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2021-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.asp... Out of the top 10 companies, you've got the usual suspects like Google, Microsoft, Amazon. But the total number from consulting companies makes up the lion's share by count, with cognizant being by far the biggest. You can look at the average salaries and tell who's being used for cheap grunt work at scale (spoiler: it's the big consulting companies!). So what does big tech do with all those contractors? They use them to get work done at bargain basement prices. When they don't need the engineers anymore, they just don't renew the contract. Engineers as a commodity - sort of like the scalability and fungibility of cloud resources brought to staffing.
- 908B64B197 3y ago
  > Out of the top 10 companies, you've got the usual suspects like Google, Microsoft, Amazon. One of the reason for that is, from experience, they don't really ask for immigration status (at least not long ago they didn't seem to care). If candidate received the greenlight from engineering, it was the legal department's job to get them a visa. What's a 10k of legal fees when the employee's signing bonus is 3x that?

scaredginger 3y ago

https://archive.ph/MY5Dv https://archive.ph/MY5Dv

boredumb 3y ago

Puerto Rico is a resource of developers that are within US jurisdiction.

chickenpotpie 3y ago
[citation needed]
- boredumb 3y ago
  it came to me in a dream

commandlinefan 3y ago

There's a recession, and massive layoffs in tech... why are we bringing in more foreign workers when even US citizens are unable to find work?

ta988 3y ago
Skills and willingness to work for shitty companies. And they don't leave after 6 months even under abuse.
- jimsimmons 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - the-grump 3y ago
    Breaking news: HN is a forum, not a person.
    - nbhusal 3y ago
      That's disingenuous. You could still map the general opinion and value system of the forum majority and hold them to what they purport to care about. As someone who's just beginning to form their judgement of the forum populace, your tone immediately comes across as defensive and deflecting.
      - the-grump 3y ago
        [flagged]
- princevegeta89 3y ago
  >>> willingness to work for shitty companies Don't agree with that part. When the market is tough, anyone is willing to work for shitty companies. You missed out the main point that people on h1b have hard time leaving companies generally because not everyone sponsors h1bs, and the general process around applying for PERM and GC forces candidates to stick around for >1 year at least.It is a resource-protection mechanism for employers. Adding to that the general incompetence by USCIS in handling h1b applications - where they take even 6 months to approve a h1b transfer.

vsskanth 3y ago

Typically HN seems to down weight any discussions on visas or immigration to keep it off the front page, but for what it's worth it's important to point out that this lottery system was designed by USCIS and recently changed post 2016 in a way that aids staffing companies and IT consultants. Previously you have to file a full petition with a serious job offer which costs thousands of dollars but now you just pay some entry fee and you're in. Obviously this was ripe to be gamed by shady staffing companies taking money from applicants for filing a petition and THEN finding a job later based on whichever staffing agency gets picked. It's not even illegal for multiple companies to submit a petition for the same person. USCIS can fix this by just selecting the lottery based on passport numbers and making sure the full paperwork is filed before the lottery like a few years ago, but of course they'll just lazily blame others for taking advantage of something that is so easily gamed. The real losers here are the students who studied in the US, worked hard to find a job and only submit a single petition through their employers. It's now way less likely they will get picked in the lottery. My opinion - USCIS can't legally reduce H1B visas so they intentionally wreck the lottery system to invite bogus applications, who they can later reject, or they simply won't file a full petition, and they don't have to issue all the 85K H1B visas Congress has allowed.

medellin 3y ago
[flagged]
- granshaw 3y ago
  Wait what do you have more info/links on that method of entry?
  - codyb 3y ago
    Might be talking about asylum seekers? Who I believe are allowed to stay until their asylum hearings? I mean... they talk about the hell of the legal immigration process without mentioning the hell people who're coming to our Southern boarder seeking asylum are going through. I do agree the legal H1B process is brutal though.

vivegi 3y ago

From the article: > That practice, according to the agency, is in large part responsible for inflating demand for the visas to a record high this year, with 781,000 entries into the lottery for 85,000 visa slots. > About 350,000 applicants for H-1B visas submitted one entry into the lottery this year, compared with about 307,000 last year. > Some 96,000 people submitted multiple visa entries, for a total of about 408,000 entries. > About 478,000 people competed for visas last year, a record at the time. So, 350,000 (single entry submission applicants) + 96,000 (multiple entry submission applicants) = 446,000 unique applicants compared to 478,000 unique applicants last year. That's 6.7% fewer unique applicants.

toast0 3y ago
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, H1B applications went down so far that there was no lottery for fiscal years 2010-2013; the applications spread over several months. This drop in applicants could be a sign of economic downturn.
- hungrigekatze 3y ago
  This page is pretty jank-tastic but it has some charts on it in addition to serving up H1B lottery numbers, the # of days in which the lottery cap was reached, etc. Has some interesting data points around the GFC plus or minus a few years: https://redbus2us.com/h1b-visa-cap-reach-dates-history-graphs-uscis-data/ https://redbus2us.com/h1b-visa-cap-reach-dates-history-graph... 2007, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013 saw no H1B lottery. 2007 took 55 days to reach the cap; 2010 took 264 days; 2011 took 300 days; and 2012 took 235 days; and 2013 took 71 days to reach the H1B visa cap. I haven't averaged out the 'days to reach the cap' during the other years shown on that chart but the decade or so of "5 days" mixed in with a few 10 and 20 days tells me that the cap is usually reached in about a week or so. I'm sure that there are sites with prettier bar charts. What surprised me the most was that in the early-to-mid-2010s you were looking at ~85k H1B applications, with that number increasing into the high 100ks, low 200ks by the late 2010s. 2022 saw ~300k applicants with 2023 seeing half a million.

charliea0 3y ago

Our immigration system seems like such an incredible squandering of human talent. So many people struggling to through complex bureaucracy just to winnow down the number of immigrants. I really wish we could fallback on the free market here. If someone wants to live, work, and pay taxes in the US, they should be free to come. Immigration is the US‘s main sources of national strength, yet we waste it.

hello_moto 3y ago
> If someone wants to live, work, and pay taxes in the US, they should be free to come. Make sure your infrastructure can handle it. Make sure there's enough housing and regulations to handle it.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  We did fine for a century without any of that.
  - vlovich123 3y ago
    Did we? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooverville https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooverville > Hoovervilles served as a common ground for many different nationalities and ethnicities. Economic disparity in the United States during the 1930s was not limited to American born individuals. Migrant workers and immigrants greatly suffered from the lack of work and made up a large portion of the Hoovervilles across the country
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      Hoovervilles aren't a story of a lack of infrastructure, housing or regulation. They're the outcome of an economic depression. You're not going to anti-immigrate out of recessions or depressions. Modern immigration controls grew out of racist impulse. That's not all they are today. But many of them fail the Chesterton's fence test.

1024core 3y ago

> Though some of the duplicate entries might have been picked in the lottery, . ... officials hope to disqualify visa applicants if they committed fraud to boost their chances Why blame the applicants? Why not prosecute the companies doing this? It's not like the applicant has much choice in the matter.

shagie 3y ago

Unlocked gift article link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-says-some-companies-cheat-h-1b-lottery-driving-record-applications-1a3e4fd?st=p6e2c9n1pwmy8cs&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-says-some-companies-cheat-h...

anuptalwalkar 3y ago

Ugh , wait till you hear about green card process for Indians. Despite living here legally for past 15 years, I might have to wait for another 10 to just get permenant residency. And if it is going to be this hard, why do I have to pay social security and medicare taxes? I call it a donation/yearly fees at this point, working with such a shady system.

esotericimpl 3y ago
I'm all for making it easier for my indian friends to become a citizen of the USA. However, it seems strange to complain about the US naturalization process, when its not easy for me being a US citizen to become a citizen of india. https://indiancitizenshiponline.nic.in/Ic_GeneralInstruction.pdf https://indiancitizenshiponline.nic.in/Ic_GeneralInstruction... Citizenship of India by naturalization can be acquired by a foreigner (not being an illegal migrant) who is ordinarily resident in India for twelve years (throughout the period of twelve months immediately preceding the date of application and for eleven years in the aggregate in the fourteen years preceding the twelve months) and fulfils other qualifications as specified in third schedule to the act, 1955. In addition: 1) A copy of valid Foreign Passport 2) A copy of Residential Permit/LTV 3) A copy of Bank Challan in original amounting to Rs.1500/- deposited in the State Bank of India. 4) One affidavit from self (applicant) and two affidavits from two Indians testifying to the character of the applicant in the prescribed language available in the application form. Affidavit to be allotted by Notary/Oath Commissioner/ DM. 5) Two language certificates certifying the applicant’s knowledge in any one of the Indian languages specified in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution. (A language certificate from a recognized educational institution or from a recognised organisation or from two Indian citizens of the district of the applicant). 6) Two newspaper (circulating in the district in which the applicant resides) cuttings of different dates or of different newspapers notifying his/ her intention to apply for citizenship in the prescribed language available in the application form.
- sa1 3y ago
  He's talking about residency, and you're talking about citizenship.
- 3y ago

mkl95 3y ago

If these visas are supposed to be granted to workers whose American counterparts are not available for whatever company wants to hire them, why make it so difficult? If this lottery thing is supposed to prevent American companies from exploiting foreign workers, you could simply force those companies to pay American grade salaries, instead of implementing some Kafkaesque workaround.

shiftpgdn 3y ago
Because if everyone were honest with themselves they'd see H1B is just a tool to depress american IT/developer salaries. There is no shortage of Americans looking to fill these roles.

mahastore 3y ago

The US immigration system is a system that calls the incoming immigrants "alien" and their right to visit their home countries in certain stages of the visa process as "parole". This is true even in 2023. It is a dehumanizing system where immigrants have to pay a very heavy price in return for the privilege of calling this free country their home.

georgeburdell 3y ago
This thread is about H1B visa, which is not an immigration visa
- bubblethink 3y ago
  It's a dual intent visa.

jmyeet 3y ago

This is a frustrating situation because these low-value staffing companies (eg Infosys) are flooding the system and denying actual good jobs. And yes, USCIS is allowing this to happen by just allowing an application with a filing fee. I'm not sure requiring a full application when the odds of success are so low is the right idea but clearly we have problems and no real interest in solving them. People of certain countries (India in particular) who want a green card are so backlogged that they will be on a work visa for decades. This allows these companies to depress their wages and it's essentially indentured servitude. There have been efforts to fix the green card backlog but those solutions haven't been great either for various reasons. I'm also curious how this works with all the recent layoffs. Why do employers even need H1B applications when they've so recently laid off so many, some of whom are already H1B holders and have been put in a precarious position of having to find a new job or leave the country (within 60 days)? Layoffs seem to impact your ability to sponsor for residency since part of that process is to "prove" you can't fill a position with a US resident or citizen. I don't think that's the case with H1B visas. But I honestly think an employer should be unable to file an H1B application for 2 years for a given position where they laid off similar employees in any large layoff. Anyway, given the cheap cost of buying a "ticket" in the visa lottery, it's unsurprising to me that people are filing applications through multiple employers like this. It's really hard to get people or the government to care about immigration issues however.

908B64B197 3y ago
> I'm also curious how this works with all the recent layoffs. Why do employers even need H1B applications when they've so recently laid off so many, some of whom are already H1B holders and have been put in a precarious position of having to find a new job or leave the country (within 60 days)? Except the (very public) meltdowns at Twitter and Meta, layoffs were by far dominated by "tech adjacent" roles (like DEI advocates, recruiters, HR, "Solution Managers" whatever that means).
- jmyeet 3y ago
  I know some people who were laid off at Meta, Google and Amazon. They may not have been proportionately affected but these positions weren't unaffected. Lay off any SWEs, PMs, data engineers or whatever should invalidate you from filing visa petitions for those or similar roles for 2 years. You can hire back those people.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

Where do they say it? Is there an official source from DoJ?

renewiltord 3y ago

These threads are always important to read, if you're an immigrant. Remember what the majority of comments here espouse. If you join a tech union and/or help it succeed in some way, these will be the majority of the people there. Maybe to start with they'll lure you in with pro-immigrant rhetoric but once critical mass is achieved the group will baseline to what you see here. Don't forget that the AFL pushed for anti-immigration law originally.

commandlinefan 3y ago
Pretty sure that a big reason tech employers push for increasing the H1B visa cap is because they know there's no way tech workers will ever unionize if the majority of them are on "complain and you're fired" visas.
- renewiltord 3y ago
  Pro-union folks are anti-immigration for this stated reason. It's why it's important for immigrants to know who their opponents and allies are.

steve76 3y ago

[dead]

jl2718 3y ago

Auction > lottery.

SecurityMinded 3y ago

Those are not tech companies who are colluding. They are scummy Indian sweatshops and t is time that they are put out to the pasture and not let play games on US immigration. The candidates they bring in are generally nothing more than seat warmers.