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US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week
- fsk 13y agoThey really should call them "indentured servant slave visas". The H1-B visa holder has to leave the country if he gets fired (and doesn't find a new employer quickly), and if he switches jobs the green card process has to start over. Because the H1-B visa employee is legally bound to the job, he becomes more attractive than hiring a US citizen, (assuming equal salary and qualification).
- malandrew 13y agoThe H1-B visa really needs to be completely divorced from the company that originally applies for it. At the end of the day, the US government makes a decision if an individual adds value to the country by working for a US company. Which US company shouldn't matter. The only time the visa should be re-evaluated in a way that the employer may be deported is if the worker is fired for cause. Beyond that the visa should belong to the employee, not the employer. The fact that the green card process resets if the employee switches jobs is crazy. That really does make it an "indentured servant slave visa".
- fsk 13y agoI'm in favor of immigration. I'm saying give them an unlimited work visa, instead of making them a slave to the employer. Also, H1-B visas get 50%-150%+ raises when they get their green card, which proves that the H1-B visa suppresses wages.
- gdilla 13y agoQuite right. It's not a free labor market if laborers aren't free to move around! H1Bs keep wages down for that very reason. If they were attached to the worker, not the company, H1B wages would rise overnight.
- ChuckMcM 13y agoThis is an interesting idea. You could have a lottery for 100K H-1B visas which any non-citizen could apply for on January 1st. Then you have 6 months to find a qualified high-tech job in the US. If you don't have an offer in that time you lose the visa and are put on deferral for 1 year. Then there is a smaller lottery of visas reclaimed from those who were not hired. Every year you get two shots at visa.
- npinguy 13y agoExcept relocation costs, lawyer fees, living expenses (frequently covered for a time period after move), and so on. Bringing a foreign employee over is incredibly expensive. The reason companies do it isn't to get a grateful slave that will do anything to hold his job and rise ahead. They do it because a shortage of skilled workers locally, and incredible competition from other companies. Not to mention all the hassle and uncertainty of interviewing someone, and then not knowing for months or even years if they can come over and start working. As someone that works for a company that hires a LOT internationally, trust me, we'd much rather hire locally. But our needs are greater than can be found in one place, so we have to broaden our reach.
- diegomcfly 13y agoBullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. I've been in this industry for nearly 20 years. There is no shortage. There IS A HUGE SHORTAGE of engineers willing to work for the pay and conditions that an H1B will work for though.
- thingylab 13y agoThat's a bit of an exaggeration. Many H1-Bs work in high-value industries and make a decent amount of money (I should know, I'm an H1-B holder). I don't think many of them consider themselves slaves. The green card process for a H1-B is particularly annoying and restrictive though, as is the arbitrary time limit. Not sure what you mean by "the H1-B visa employee is legally bound to the job". Sure, your company's name is printed on your visa but it is excessively easy to transfer to a new employer.
- potatolicious 13y agoThe H-1B becomes a whole lot more restrictive the moment you apply for a green card, since your transferability just vanished. This is less of a problem for people from non-Indian and non-Chinese backgrounds, since the wait time is reasonably short. The priority dates for Indians and Chinese though make it such that once your green card is started you're stuck for literally years.
- refurb 13y agoOnce you've applied for a green card and the PERM and I-140 has been approved and your I-485 has been pending for 180 days, you do have portability. You can leave your current employer, but you must find another position that is substantially similar. Labor certification and I-140 processing used to be painfully slow. I waited 3.5 years just for my labor certification. However, the new PERM process is much quicker, so you'd probably only have to wait 1 or 2 years to be eligible for portability.
- isb 13y agoYou can't file for an i-485 if your date is not current which is the case for folks from India/China. So there is no true portability.
- IvyMike 13y agoI think you have never been laid off. I know a few H1-B visa holders who were and I cannot imagine the stress they went through. Fortunately they all found jobs in time, although when you've got a time limit, you end up making some compromises.
- logn 13y agoI don't think calling it slavery is accurate, but indentured servitude is close (except I don't think they experience maltreatment or harsh conditions). Anyhow, this article is great: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servant One of the similarities that stuck out to me: Most white immigrants arrived in Colonial America as indentured servants, usually as young men and women from Britain or Germany, under the age of 21. Typically, the father of a teenager would sign the legal papers, and work out an arrangement with a ship captain, who would not charge the father any money.[10] The captain would transport the indentured servants to the American colonies, and sell their legal papers to someone who needed workers. At the end of the indenture, the young person was given a new suit of clothes and was free to leave. Many immediately set out to begin their own farms, while others used their newly acquired skills to pursue a trade. The question of legality would come down to whether it's voluntary or involuntary servitude. But as a practical matter, I think it would be good for all people (not companies) if we found a more lenient path to citizenship as it wouldn't put as much downward pressure on salaries and wouldn't make H1-Bs preferable over others, all else being equal.
- ksolanki 13y agoYour point actually makes H1B worse than "indentured servitude" of the past. Many (if not most) H1B folks stick around at one company just waiting for a green card. This kind-of means it is involuntary in some sense. However, unlike indentured servitude, there the "young person" does not automatically get a green card and is not "free to leave" at the end by default. By default, at the end, he/she has to leave the US.
- chulk90 13y agoDo you have sources for the claims? An H1B visa is easily transferable and is not subject to the H1B quota.
- hpagey 13y ago"and if he switches jobs the green card process has to start over." This is incorrect. You retain your place in the GC queue if your i-140 is applied and approved. You just have to port your i-140 .
- tn13 13y agoCalling H1Bs slave is a big insult to the black community. If H1B was slavery thousands of people would not have willingly applied for it. H1B has lot of restrictions most idiotic being that the spouce has to sit idle. That is idiotic.
- lmg643 13y agoi recently saw a table of firms awarded these visas. it seemed nuts to me that a large proportion of the visas go to firms whose primary business line is outsourcing in one form or another. i typically think of visas as fulfilling unmet hiring needs for domestic US firms - like Facebook! - but instead see they are largely squirreled away by firms whose primary function is overseas labor cost arbitrage. I would be interested to hear informed opinions as to why so many visas go to these firms. i thought the stated objective is to help american firms meet their hiring needs where the local work force is deficient. instead, it seems like all the demand is corralled into a few firms which do the dirty work for everyone else. if your primary purpose is outsourcing, how can you plausibly claim to be searching for qualified workers inside the US, and thus deserving of access to these visas?
- boomzilla 13y agoThere should be a quota for each company, say less than 500 H1B visas each year. The companies then have the incentive to pick the best candidates. Or there could be different brackets depending on company's sizes.
- TeMPOraL 13y agoIf the reason for such visa distribution is really the need to outsource paperwork, then introducing the quota you propose would only result in visas going to myriad of smaller outsourcing companies instead of few big ones.
- josephschmoe 13y agoShould be a percent of workers, say a maximum of 5%.
- bostonvaulter2 13y agoAnd who will categorize all the companies and make sure that they are not mis-representing themselves?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ama729 13y agoWhich empires failed exactly? The Roman empire was one of the most open empire I can think of[1] in its last year and it still failed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutio_Antoniniana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutio_Antoniniana
- tn13 13y agoIn the long run all empires fail.
- firstOrder 13y ago> Does turning away highly skilled and educated people due to an artificial cap on visas sound silly? This is a false way of framing things on many levels. First, as Norm Matloff has extensively documented, they are not all "highly skilled and educated people". Secondly, they can be given green cards and other such things, why is this specific visa necessary? Also, if there's a shortage of talent, then the Silicon Valley CEO's can put an end to things like their conspiracy to drive down tech wages that is playing out in the courts, which is something that would obviously depress the number of engineers applying for jobs. Instead of the federal government cutting loans and grants to college students, they could expand them if they want more engineers. And if there is some humanitarian concern for immigrants, there are waiting applicants from Africa who have far more of a humanitarian need to get into the USA then an Indian IIT graduate.
- ericd 13y agoFrom an economic competitiveness aspect, as a country, we should be trying to get as many IIT graduates to be American citizens as we can.
- throwaway7808 13y agoAnd from an economic competitiveness aspect, as a world?
- lotyrin 13y agoWho do we, as a world, compete with?
- throwaway7808 13y agoDeath.
- ericd 13y agoNational laws are usually tailored to benefit that nation. Do you disagree that countries compete with each other?
- lifeisstillgood 13y agoA good friend of mine works in the US under a high-Skill visa - as a tenured professor at Cornell, with oh, the Presidents medal for something very clever. I think high skilled is a term that we coders are happy to apply to themselves, but really folks we are not compared to a genuine elite. The future will be invented by a very small number of brilliant people - the rest if us are just here to fill in the gaps behind them. let it go, start building a remote-working-orientated company and hire people wherever they live. Stop worrying about the country's tax take.
- johngalt 13y agoExactly. Sure some H1-b visas might be used to just increase programmer supply, but many are like the professor you're talking about. Even catching a few geniuses in an extremely broad net is an invaluable boon to our country. Our concerns should be that we are missing some.
- josephschmoe 13y agoThis is just companies trying to get cheap labor. Work visas are modern indentured servitude.
- suyash 13y agoI"m surprised only 124,000 applications were received. I was expecting the number to cross 200K. It gives more 85,000/124,000 probability which means slightly more than 68% of the people have chances of getting the H1B Visa.
- huherto 13y agoThat number is for last year. There is no information about this year.
- fitzpasd 13y agoNot quite 68% because there are two categories: 20,000 for advanced degree holders and another 65,000. There is an initial lottery between the advanced degree holders for the 20,000, and then the unsuccessful people go into the regular lottery. Don't know if the figures were released for the number of advanced degree holders who applied, but assuming the cap here was also met, the chances in the main lottery would be 65,000/114,000 = 57%
- suyash 13y agoOk that makes sense but then it's not 57% either for all of them since some people would end up getting a shot at the lottery twice.
- jgh 13y agoBetween 2008 and 2012(?) they didn't fill the quota at all. Prior to the recession the quota would be filled on the first day.
- nairteashop 13y agoDoes anyone know why the number of visas isn't capped on a per-company basis? Last year, apparently 40,000 of the 85,000 available visas went to outsourcing companies, and one outsourcing company, Cognizant, got 9,000 visas! http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/04/03/176134694/Whos-Hiring-H1-B-Visa-Workers-Its-Not-Who-You-Might-Think http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/04/03/176134... At my last job, we tried to get an H1 for just one person, and failed in the lottery! I feel there would be much less abuse of the H1 if each company could receive only say 100 visas a year max, or a % of their US workforce size max, or something.
- suyash 13y agoMore accurate figures: http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2013-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2013-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx
- suyash 13y agoI don't think there is a quota limit per employer/sponsor.
- nairteashop 13y agoThose are numbers for filed LCAs (a necessary step prior to filing for an H1), and not the actual numbers for approved H1s.
- huherto 13y agoIt is clearly being abused by outsourcing companies. Also take a look at average salaries for true technology companies and outsourcing companies. Perhaps there should be a minimal salary floor. Or perhaps some sort of auction based on salary instead of a lottery.
- joe_the_user 13y ago"Does anyone know why the number of visas isn't capped on a per-company basis?" Or why the state department does look at what skills are actually needed where ... or why those who get the visas remain utterly dependent on the companies that got them the visas, thus lower wages in a way an "ordinary market" etc? -- Wow, I can think of a reason. I think of "a million reasons", all with the face of a founding father. Yeah, if seriously high-skilled folks were let into the US, no questions asked and then weren't dependent on only company X, then they actually wouldn't be putting pressure on wages of existing geeks because they would have their own legitimate demands. But couldn't have that.
- suyash 13y agoCompanies who scooped up most the Visa slots last year (2013) are Outsource/Consulting companies by far: http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2013-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2013-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx
- huherto 13y agoDoes anyone have more information ? That article seems to be talking about the numbers last year.
- NextUserName 13y ago>124,000 people applied for the combined 85,000 So if we gave them all Visas - we'd be good for less than two weeks? Sounds like a bigger problem here. On a related note, how many highly skilled and educated people live here already who are currently unemployed? Two observations. * Immigrants will go to where the work is. They will live almost anywhere the work is, they are moving already so it is easier than for someone who has roots somewhere. * Immigrants will work harder and for less money. This is like starting a new job x10. Typically starting a new job - people work their tails off (for the first year or two at least). Think about that plus moving half way around the world just for personal achievement. Imagine the motivation that would give you. You would want to prove yourself, get permanent status, make a lot of money to bring family here ETC. And the money? think about it. Would you take less money for a huge opportunity in life? Here is the thing though. Bringing in skilled immigrants is great for greedy capitalism, you get talent, hard work, and for cheap. The problem is - we are just working around a growing problem. What about the people who already live here. Not just the adults, but the kids who will be in high school and college in a few years. Why can't they be the ones who fill these jobs? Bringing in immigrants is a short term moneymaker for corporations. Longer term, and in a couple of generations, these immigrants grand kids will be the ones who don't have a job. Let's put more focus on that aspect rather than always rallying behind opening the floodgates without properly considering the ramifications.
- tommu 13y agoEinstein, Tesla and Musk. None of those guys would have ended up in the US if you had any power over immigration policy. Oh.. and are you native? Genuine question as I have no idea.
- NextUserName 13y agoI don't see how this is a valid argument against anything that I have said. I can argue that many people could have been even more highly regarded who were born in the US if we concentrated on the problems within the country using other means than pulling people from outside the country. I also don't see a direct criticism or counter argument to anything that I said. Downvoters offer no explanation on their disagreement. I wish down voting would require a comment, or at least an identifier of who did it. I think that this would be a much better change than that stupid pending comments thing that almost saw the light of day. Blindly downvoting without any accountability is a pretty poor reality IMO.
- tokenadult 13y agoWhat is that makes the United States such an attractive place to immigrate to for people whose skill sets could take them almost anywhere in the world? (In other words, why is that successive sessions of Congress can basically count on lots of people desiring to live in the United States, thus setting up an environment in which immigration regulation is restrictive rather than open?) (I'm genuinely curious about this, as an American who has lived overseas--with the proper visas of course--for three years in the 1980s and for three years spanning the turn of the last century. I've only lived long-term in one other country, so I still could learn a lot more from all of you who participate here on HN about why people leave their country of birth, which is surely disruptive, to go to another country to live. What's the big deal about living in the United States?)
- joe_the_user 13y agoWhat evidence do you have that the US is an attractive place at all, relative to other advanced or semi-advanced nations? More applicants than places does not prove that much in a world of scarce jobs. People are dying, literally drowning in the Mediterranean, to get into Europe. As I know, people still apply to work in Qatar even as they engage in work practices that well be "nothing less than murder"in the process of constructing their World Cup stadiums. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_FIFA_World_Cup#Migrant_workers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_FIFA_World_Cup#Migrant_wor...
- balls187 13y agoHumans will seek work wherever there is work to be had. All that means is that there are jobs in Europe and Qatar.
- refurb 13y agoAbout 13% of the world's adults -- or about 630 million people -- say they would like to leave their country and move somewhere else permanently. For roughly 138 million people, that somewhere else would be the U.S. -- the No. 1 desired destination for potential migrants. The U.K., Canada, and France also rank among the top choices for potential migrants. http://www.gallup.com/poll/161435/100-million-worldwide-dream-life.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/161435/100-million-worldwide-drea...
- bertil 13y agoIf this is genuinely an issue (I never really tried, I just asked a handful of interesting offers if they'd consider making the effort and never really received a positive reaction), why haven’t more companies tried to set up large teams in Europe and Asia? I never heard anyone say that Google Zurich (a terrible location, work-visa-wise) or Sidney didn't fit the bill. Remote work appears to be common practice — a third of offers consider it, and cools start-ups advertise not having an office.
- jrockway 13y agoDoes it matter? Canada is much more liberal about giving out work visas, so US companies just open offices in Canada and hire the employees there. Meanwhile, Canadians can come work in the US under the TN status, which has no quotas. All the US gets is less tax revenue.
- serge2k 13y agoNo quotas, but some disadvantages too.
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- blub5 13y ago"In 2013, 124,000 people applied for the combined 85,000 slots in the first five-day period." Considering that Americans seem to have little difficulty affording computers and software, yet continue to bankrupted by health care costs, wouldn't it make a lot more sense to give those 85k visas to cheap doctors from overseas to drive down medical costs, instead of giving them to cheap foreign programmers to drive down the wages of American developers?
- ucr 13y agoI don't think doctor/nurse salaries are the main cost in medical care. Probably not even close.
- stephencanon 13y agoThat might make sense, if it wasn't for the fact that those "cheap doctors from overseas" can't practice medicine without a license, which requires that they complete an american residency program regardless of their existing qualifications. No matter how many immigrants you bring in, the number of residency slots is fixed (and is already smaller than the pool of qualified M.D.s). Residency exists in part to limit the supply of physicians and ensure that wages remain high. It's a nice little (100% legal) wage-fixing cabal.
- serge2k 13y agoExcept that won't work because they will just come over and charge the same as every other doctor.
- markdown 13y agoUntil their second week when they discover that due to increased competition, they have to lower their rates.
- emdowling 13y agoGood to note that this does not include the E3 visa available exclusively to Australians. Australia never uses its full allocation of 10,000 E3's each year and they are incredibly easy to get. the candidate simply needs a Bachelor's degree or higher as well as a job offer. If approved, their spouse is also instantly eligible for a E3 visa entitling them to work too. Generally, it takes 2-4 weeks to get one from start to finish if you have a good immigration lawyer. This sort of visa should not be exclusive to Australia. As an Aussie, I get the benefit from it but at the same time, I feel everyone should have access to it. I hope visa reform comes soon! Anyone struggling to hire, big or small, should market to Australians. Its very cheap to fly out and interview a heap of smart candidates who would love to work for startups in the Bay Area.
- anakha 13y agoAre you aware of the details of the free trade agreements Australia signed with the US? We paid our dues to the US, has to be some reciprocity.
- markdown 13y ago> We paid our dues to the US Indeed. You gave them a base from which to spy on Asia and Oceania. Should have negotiated visa-free entry for that alone. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Gap http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Gap
- fitzpasd 13y agoI'm going to be in this lottery and it's unnerving thinking about how different my life could turn out if I get this visa vs. don't. Young male, can't imagine I'd try again next year so it could be the difference of a much higher paying job plus living 5+ years in America vs. staying in my home country probably for life. Nothing wrong with my home country, but I'm excited of the prospect of living in America and the experiences that go with. For people in the same boat: I think it's easier to cope with this if you take the view that you have to be lucky to get the visa, not unlucky not to. No one complains of ill-luck when they buy a lottery ticket and don't win millions. Positivity folks! :)
- norswap 13y agoFYI those visas are not the only way to get foreigners to work in the US. But it is one that is very interesting for companies.
- duaneb 13y agoMaybe companies will have to look domestically....
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- diegomcfly 13y agoAre salaries rising for "high-skilled" domestic workers?
- ori_b 13y agoThis article is slightly misleading, IMO. The agency working on my application specifically timed it so that my application was submitted on April 1st, when the applications initially opened, instead of in November when I submitted the paperwork. If all agencies time applications this way, then the reason that all applications were exhausted within a week is because the entire year's applicants queued up until their requests were submitted this week. This does not detract from the fact that there are too few visas granted, however, the situation isn't quite as insane as you would expect from reading this article.
- BenefitOfDoubt 13y ago>"In the United States, nine percent of computer science graduates are unemployed, and 14.7 percent of those who hold degrees in information systems have no job. Graduates with degrees in STEM - science, technology, engineering and medicine" http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/11/surviving-post-employment-economy-201311373243740811.html http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/11/surviving-p... How does opening up more visas help this? It is not about helping the people of America. It is about corporations getting richer. There are plenty of people already here to fill tech jobs.
- mildtrepidation 13y agoI can't help seeing this as a higher level in some grotesque cultural fractal that, somewhere along the line, also involves ticket middlemen monopolizing admittance to most concerts and shows. I don't know if they're part of the same problem or the same problem expressing itself in different ways, but I have a hard time calling this coincidence.
- zpk 13y agoThe same company that has a press release that they do not wage collude: "Not everybody took part in the no-hire agreement: last week, Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg said the social network rebuffed Google's approaches." http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/30/tech_giants_fail_to_get_hiring_collusion_case_tossed_again/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/30/tech_giants_fail_to_... Is the same guy pushing for visas to drive down wages: "Fwd.us, a group founded in part by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, has pushed for immigration reform. Joe Green, another Fwd.us founder, lambasted current law regarding the cap structure of high-skill visas in an email to TechCrunch, calling the current set of regulations “dysfunctional.” " I guess being a prick knows no bounds.
- tn13 13y agoI am in USA on H1B. A lot of American problems seem to be around the thinking that there is some kind "fixed" number of jobs, misery, poverty, disease etc. A lot of welfare systems here seems to assume that there is a fixed number of single mothers, disabled etc. without acknowledging the fact that the more incentives you give to them more people will try to get into that category. For example more dole you give to disabled I would assume more people would try to get themselves into disabled bucket than in healthy. Similarly the H1B cap seems to have an assumption that there are some fixed number of STEM jobs out there and if Indians fill it up, somehow the Americans will not get it. I would assume a higher concentration of Engineers in USA would only lead to more innovation, more engineers trying to earn more money by being far more creative and so on. In India a typical outsourcing giant pays somewhere between $5K to $10k per year to new engineers. The only way I could break such low pay was by getting a master degree, being an excellent coder and joining a more tech focused company in Silicon Valley. After reaching Silicon Valley I realized the tech giant I was working for did not pay me enough. So I changed the job and joined a start-up which eventually did far well making me richer. Also the Democrats which beat their chest in the name of poor are actually those who treat poor the way a Dog treats a lampost. The lampost helps the Dog navigates but only after it is soaked in his pee. More engineers would mean cheaper engineering services which means more money saved for rest of the non-engineering Americans which a overwhelmingly high population. By putting an artificial cap on H1B American government is forcing the poor American citizens shell out more money.
- geekam 13y agoThere is another important point of outsourcing. If there is more competition here, in the US, then chances of outsourcing to India, China (where pay is substantially low) will also reduce. That might mean more jobs here, in the US. Take Cognizant Technology solutions for example. I know a friend who works for the company. They are a US company (NJ based) but the majority of their life-sciences projects are outsourced to India office. They pay my friend one-thirds of what they charge the client for him in the contract. Him and about 5 other people who work here for the client, send work off-shore to India office to about 50 people. This model of outsourcing the majority work to India suits the client because the total costs about one-tenth of what they'd actually pay if everyone of those employees was hired here, in the US. Not only is this model hurting jobs in the US, it is bad for the employees here well. For my friend, he has to work during the day, and then spend most of the night delegating tasks off-shore. He practically sleeps only over the weekend. This might be a one-off example with this specific client only for Cognizant but I am aware that the profits from pay-scales are company-wide.
- ajg1977 13y agoNext year they should let people apply for the chance to be randomly selected to receive a visa.
- TheCoelacanth 13y agoThat's what they already do. Anyone who applies in the first five days has a chance of being randomly selected.