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If American government is serious about protecting the interests of American workforce; implement the following simple rule. 1. Let H1B be independent of the e

by tn13 13y ago

If American government is serious about protecting the interests of American workforce; implement the following simple rule. 1. Let H1B be independent of the employer. Current H1B rules are modern day equivalent of bonded labor. Let a person obtain H1B from the employer for the first time, after that make it independent of the employer. For example a person on H1B may resign on day 1 and simply join another American company. Remove all the nonsense about salary limits and so on.

dragonwriter 13y ago
Even simpler would just be eliminating most economic non-visitor, non-treaty-based visa categories in favor of a single, category for all non-prohibited entrants who either are not qualified for a family, political (refugee, victimization-based, etc.), etc. visa, or who are qualified for such a visa in a category for which there is a waiting list to enter and remain prior to moving to the head of the list, which carries a substantial basic annual fee and requires supplemental income tax on any wages income earned in the US during the period they are present on the visa.
- jacalata 13y ago
  I'm already paying you for social security and medicare that I will probably never be eligible to benefit from, and you want me to pay extra 'fuck you' taxes as well? Thanks but no thanks. Aside from that, this wouldn't be simple at all because changing the visas available would in many cases involve renegotiating the deals that they made with other countries that got those visas created in the first place. Sure, it would likely be possible to tell all the other countries to get stuffed, but good luck getting US citizens a visa to travel anywhere if you keep doing that.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > I'm already paying you for social security and medicare that I will probably never be eligible to benefit from, and you want me to pay extra 'fuck you' taxes as well? This was in response to a suggestion about what the government would do if it was interested in serving its citizens. If you would be paying the fees, serving you is very much not the point. Though I'll point out that, by moving from employee sponsorship and charges (and pay limits, etc.) on employers for things like H-1B to charges to the prospective entrant, it means that the entrant has substantially more freedom (and potentially greater net income after charges, too, since instead of the employer paying a fee and dealing with wage limits, the employee pays a flat fee and a share of income, but isn't burdened by salary limits.) > Aside from that, this wouldn't be simple at all because changing the visas available would in many cases involve renegotiating the deals that they made with other countries that got those visas created in the first place. By definition, changing the non-treaty visas, as I specified, would not require that, and many economic visas (including the H-1B) are not treaty-based. Obviously treaty-based econonmic visas like the H-1B1 (Singapore or Chile), TN/TD (NAFTA), E-1/E-2 (Treaty Trader/Treaty Investor) etc. are a separate issue, but at least in theory the government is serving citizens interests with those because of the reciprocal benefit US citizens have with regard to economic entry to the countries involved.
    - jacalata 13y ago
      Sorry - I missed the 'non treaty' mention in your post. Doesn't that pretty much mean H1Bs (and maybe all the investor visas)? While I agree that it would increase employee freedom to have them bear the cost and not be tied to the company, I doubt that it would end up with increasing income - in theory, all the Silicon Vally companies are already paying as much as they can to attract talent. edit: actually, there is of course also O, L, P and I. I'm not sure how much you'd gain by folding them into a single category - there's very little relationship between,e eg, whether Nadal should be here for the US Open and how many programmers should be coming here. L perhaps has some overlap.
      - dragonwriter 13y ago
        > Sorry - I missed the 'non treaty' mention in your post. Doesn't that pretty much mean H1Bs (and maybe all the investor visas)? > edit: actually, there is of course also O, L, P and I. And the immigrant E series Employment-related ones. There's a few others that might fit into the general description I laid out depending on exactly where you draw the line on transitory (non-immigrant H-2A, for instance, could be argued either way.) (I specify immigrant/non-immigrant, because there's a handful of categories designations used for both immigrant and non-immigrant classes where the use between the two classes has no real relationship; E is one of these.) > I'm not sure how much you'd gain by folding them into a single category - there's very little relationship between,e eg, whether Nadal should be here for the US Open and how many programmers should be coming here. "How many" isn't really an issue, since the whole idea of folding it into one class is that its a class that is open to any non-banned entrant and isn't numerically limited, instead its open-for-pay. Anyhow, I'd think Nadal for the US Open be a non-immigrant B-1, which is transitory by any reasonable definition, and certainly isn't in the scope of what I was proposing.
sologoub 13y ago
You'd have to include some form of protection for the employer on the expenses associated with H1B process, otherwise it's not really worth the risk - imagine if you paid say $15k for the filing and waited 6 months. Then the person you hired comes in and asks for a 20% raise or he/she walks on day 1.
- DamnYuppie 13y ago
  Why are we giving protection to the employer? Have employers in this country shown they care about employees except for sound bites?
  - jacalata 13y ago
    If you gave the employers some kind of protection for training outlays, they might bother to train locals instead of hold out for unicorns to land in the factory fully trained.
    - toomuchtodo 13y ago
      So now the government needs to protect incompetent HR managers and management because they have unrealistic expectations towards hiring?
      - jacalata 13y ago
        No, they need to provide incentives to people who are able to make a difference and currently aren't. Like they give tax credits for hiring veterans, and other similar programs to manipulate the behaviour of employers for the benefit of potential employees.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > You'd have to include some form of protection for the employer on the expenses associated with H1B process, otherwise it's not really worth the risk I thought increasing the risk in the H-1B process (and thus making not choosing that over spending resources retraining domestic workers) was exactly the point of the suggestion.
abhiv 13y ago
This already exists as a practical matter. According to current rules (specifically, the AC21 act), H-1B workers can start working at a new employer as soon an H-1B transfer application is filed by their new company. There is no need to even wait for the application to be approved. Applications to transfer H-1B visa are not subject to the cap, so there isn't that issue either. H-1B employees are currently quite mobile. I have many friends who've switched jobs repeatedly during their H-1B period because it's so easy to transfer the visa. I honestly don't know where this whole "indentured servitude" idea comes from. The part of the system that's fubared is the green card process, which can stretch for up to 10 years if you're from India or China. During a part of that time (not the entire duration), you can't switch jobs unless you want the green card process to be restarted, which affects mobility. But that is not related to the H-1B, and the solution to that is to fix the green card process.
- dclusin 13y ago
  Additionally not all H1B's are underpaid. I'm currently in the minority on the engineering team, being one of the few American citizens actually born in America. From discussions with my peers from India they don't make that much less than me. The cost of immigration is factored into their salary of course, but for the most part are on par with market wages. But the company was also founded by immigrants so this may be an exception rather than the rule.
  - tn13 13y ago
    There is definitely an underbelly for software industry and we do not know how it function. For example I have a friend who has H1B but no job and is working for cash at a superstore for $40 a day.
- HistoryInAction 13y ago
  Comprehensive immigration reform, at least the Senate bill, will implement green card sponsorship portability, which will fix this problem. You're completely right that H-1B portability was implemented, which happened in 2008 with the America COMPETES Act. The indentured servitude view is lingering, but it's also still unfortunately valid when it comes to the H-1B dual-intent EB-2/3 green card applications, as many try to follow that pathway.

by tn13 13y ago

dragonwriter 13y ago

Even simpler would just be eliminating most economic non-visitor, non-treaty-based visa categories in favor of a single, category for all non-prohibited entrants who either are not qualified for a family, political (refugee, victimization-based, etc.), etc. visa, or who are qualified for such a visa in a category for which there is a waiting list to enter and remain prior to moving to the head of the list, which carries a substantial basic annual fee and requires supplemental income tax on any wages income earned in the US during the period they are present on the visa.

jacalata 13y ago
I'm already paying you for social security and medicare that I will probably never be eligible to benefit from, and you want me to pay extra 'fuck you' taxes as well? Thanks but no thanks. Aside from that, this wouldn't be simple at all because changing the visas available would in many cases involve renegotiating the deals that they made with other countries that got those visas created in the first place. Sure, it would likely be possible to tell all the other countries to get stuffed, but good luck getting US citizens a visa to travel anywhere if you keep doing that.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > I'm already paying you for social security and medicare that I will probably never be eligible to benefit from, and you want me to pay extra 'fuck you' taxes as well? This was in response to a suggestion about what the government would do if it was interested in serving its citizens. If you would be paying the fees, serving you is very much not the point. Though I'll point out that, by moving from employee sponsorship and charges (and pay limits, etc.) on employers for things like H-1B to charges to the prospective entrant, it means that the entrant has substantially more freedom (and potentially greater net income after charges, too, since instead of the employer paying a fee and dealing with wage limits, the employee pays a flat fee and a share of income, but isn't burdened by salary limits.) > Aside from that, this wouldn't be simple at all because changing the visas available would in many cases involve renegotiating the deals that they made with other countries that got those visas created in the first place. By definition, changing the non-treaty visas, as I specified, would not require that, and many economic visas (including the H-1B) are not treaty-based. Obviously treaty-based econonmic visas like the H-1B1 (Singapore or Chile), TN/TD (NAFTA), E-1/E-2 (Treaty Trader/Treaty Investor) etc. are a separate issue, but at least in theory the government is serving citizens interests with those because of the reciprocal benefit US citizens have with regard to economic entry to the countries involved.
  - jacalata 13y ago
    Sorry - I missed the 'non treaty' mention in your post. Doesn't that pretty much mean H1Bs (and maybe all the investor visas)? While I agree that it would increase employee freedom to have them bear the cost and not be tied to the company, I doubt that it would end up with increasing income - in theory, all the Silicon Vally companies are already paying as much as they can to attract talent. edit: actually, there is of course also O, L, P and I. I'm not sure how much you'd gain by folding them into a single category - there's very little relationship between,e eg, whether Nadal should be here for the US Open and how many programmers should be coming here. L perhaps has some overlap.
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > Sorry - I missed the 'non treaty' mention in your post. Doesn't that pretty much mean H1Bs (and maybe all the investor visas)? > edit: actually, there is of course also O, L, P and I. And the immigrant E series Employment-related ones. There's a few others that might fit into the general description I laid out depending on exactly where you draw the line on transitory (non-immigrant H-2A, for instance, could be argued either way.) (I specify immigrant/non-immigrant, because there's a handful of categories designations used for both immigrant and non-immigrant classes where the use between the two classes has no real relationship; E is one of these.) > I'm not sure how much you'd gain by folding them into a single category - there's very little relationship between,e eg, whether Nadal should be here for the US Open and how many programmers should be coming here. "How many" isn't really an issue, since the whole idea of folding it into one class is that its a class that is open to any non-banned entrant and isn't numerically limited, instead its open-for-pay. Anyhow, I'd think Nadal for the US Open be a non-immigrant B-1, which is transitory by any reasonable definition, and certainly isn't in the scope of what I was proposing.

sologoub 13y ago

You'd have to include some form of protection for the employer on the expenses associated with H1B process, otherwise it's not really worth the risk - imagine if you paid say $15k for the filing and waited 6 months. Then the person you hired comes in and asks for a 20% raise or he/she walks on day 1.

DamnYuppie 13y ago
Why are we giving protection to the employer? Have employers in this country shown they care about employees except for sound bites?
- jacalata 13y ago
  If you gave the employers some kind of protection for training outlays, they might bother to train locals instead of hold out for unicorns to land in the factory fully trained.
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    So now the government needs to protect incompetent HR managers and management because they have unrealistic expectations towards hiring?
    - jacalata 13y ago
      No, they need to provide incentives to people who are able to make a difference and currently aren't. Like they give tax credits for hiring veterans, and other similar programs to manipulate the behaviour of employers for the benefit of potential employees.
dragonwriter 13y ago
> You'd have to include some form of protection for the employer on the expenses associated with H1B process, otherwise it's not really worth the risk I thought increasing the risk in the H-1B process (and thus making not choosing that over spending resources retraining domestic workers) was exactly the point of the suggestion.

abhiv 13y ago

This already exists as a practical matter. According to current rules (specifically, the AC21 act), H-1B workers can start working at a new employer as soon an H-1B transfer application is filed by their new company. There is no need to even wait for the application to be approved. Applications to transfer H-1B visa are not subject to the cap, so there isn't that issue either. H-1B employees are currently quite mobile. I have many friends who've switched jobs repeatedly during their H-1B period because it's so easy to transfer the visa. I honestly don't know where this whole "indentured servitude" idea comes from. The part of the system that's fubared is the green card process, which can stretch for up to 10 years if you're from India or China. During a part of that time (not the entire duration), you can't switch jobs unless you want the green card process to be restarted, which affects mobility. But that is not related to the H-1B, and the solution to that is to fix the green card process.

dclusin 13y ago
Additionally not all H1B's are underpaid. I'm currently in the minority on the engineering team, being one of the few American citizens actually born in America. From discussions with my peers from India they don't make that much less than me. The cost of immigration is factored into their salary of course, but for the most part are on par with market wages. But the company was also founded by immigrants so this may be an exception rather than the rule.
- tn13 13y ago
  There is definitely an underbelly for software industry and we do not know how it function. For example I have a friend who has H1B but no job and is working for cash at a superstore for $40 a day.
HistoryInAction 13y ago
Comprehensive immigration reform, at least the Senate bill, will implement green card sponsorship portability, which will fix this problem. You're completely right that H-1B portability was implemented, which happened in 2008 with the America COMPETES Act. The indentured servitude view is lingering, but it's also still unfortunately valid when it comes to the H-1B dual-intent EB-2/3 green card applications, as many try to follow that pathway.