10 ms·

U.S. Senator blasts Microsoft's H-1B push as it lays off 18,000 workers

147 points by Element_ 12y ago

bavcyc 12y ago
Along those lines, the census agency says most STEM graduates do not work in STEM fields: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/07/10/census-stem-graduates/12492079/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/07/10/cens...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- waps 12y ago
  Anyone who is smart enough to calculate the differential of equations is smart enough to see there's little money in those jobs. You see this in practice. STEM graduates do 3 things, in my experience. Work in management, work in IT, and work in academia. I wouldn't count on any of having up-to-date science knowledge except the academic ones.
  - hga 12y ago
    Plenty of them with serious math chops, such as MIT EECS graduates, become quants in Wall Street and the like, at least for a while.
    - freyr 12y ago
      > Plenty of them Wall Street does draw some students from the math/physics/EECS departments of the very top ranked schools, but this represents a tiny percentage of students graduating nationwide with STEM degrees.
- jandrewrogers 12y ago
  There are an enormous variety of STEM degrees, particularly the "science" part, that have little economic value relative to the number of people with degrees produced e.g. marine biology. In many of these STEM fields the expected wage is essentially lower middle class because the supply of graduates greatly outstrips jobs. Not everyone with a STEM degree is a computer scientist or an engineer. If you are one of the countless thousands of people with a low-value science degree then not only are there few jobs at any pay scale but you will likely make more money doing something else in any case.
wfjackson 12y ago
Aren't 12,000 of the 18,000 mostly overseas jobs at Nokia Devices in Finland? And 6000 doesn't seem that high based on the churn at most big tech companies between people leaving, layoffs and firings. And it's kinda funny that Satya would've himself been on a work visa when he worked at Sun or at Microsoft, perhaps the senator is implying that poor Ballmer shouldn't have been laid off and replaced with a foreign worker? :) Looks like a flamebait headline and article by the same guy at ComputerWorld who seems to be on a crusade against H1B, as part of a personal crusade or for page views (these articles seems to invariably make it to the Slashdot front page). https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=computerworld+h1b&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#q=site%3Acomputerworld.com+h1b+Patrick+Thibodeau+&safe=off https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=computerworld+h...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - jedberg 12y ago
    > He is a Republican Senator from Alabama. He doesn't need to look at facts. Let's be fair here. That should read: He is a Senator. He doesn't need to look at facts.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - Retric 12y ago
      Some seniors face tough elections, others don't. Republican seniors in Alabama only face compition in the primary and little real completion at that.
      - Retric 12y ago
        Note, the incumbent senator for the 2014 election faces literally zero opposition. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election_in_Alabama,_2014 http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election...
DanielBMarkham 12y ago
I've been thinking about this subject for a few years now. Like many HN'ers, I work deep inside the tech industry. I'm also fortunate enough to have watched the operations of dozens of different companies. I think the real problem here is that the tech industry does not know how to manage their workers. I'm not talking about managing projects, or how to coach or train. I mean the whole thing. The technology sector of the economy has no idea of exactly how many workers, in what configuration, it needs for accomplishing any job. Weird situation, I know. But where that leaves us is a lot of "open" job positions that are little more than unfulfilled wishes. Sure would be nice to have another 40 guys on the helpdesk. Would that be as nice as 10 more developers? Who knows? Or -- we've got that big government project coming up, so we'll need at least 500 IT workers. Why do we need it? Who knows? It's a big project. It should have a lot of people on it, right? The implications of this is that there's a huge downward pressure on wages. People want a certain number of tech workers, but there's no market pressure to hire them or even to lay them off if they've hired too many. They just want a certain number. So what they really want is really cheap, disposable workers that they can easily swap in and out as the political winds inside a company changes. The U.S. labor market isn't really geared for that.
- ntakasaki 12y ago
  >I think the real problem here is that the tech industry does not know how to manage their workers It's not just the tech industry, almost all companies struggle to measure productivity, especially as a comparative measure. People like salesmen do have defined metrics like sales, but it's harder to do that for people in HR and Accounting, for example.
  - cpher 12y ago
    That's usually because sales, engineering, etc are "profit" centers, while HR/Accounting/Reception are "cost" centers. One group produces while the other consumes. So, it's really comparing apples to oranges.
- 001sky 12y ago
  * disposable workers that they can easily swap in and out as the political winds inside a company changes* This is a very underestimated point. most hiring is not about skill or productivity. But about building a political base within an organization. In some areas, this means hiring friends, fraternity brothers, or members of some other in/niche chohort. In other areas it means hiring people of a different stripe. It also shows up in HR very often as the term "head count", which an asset quota that is horstraded amongst managers. Headcount brings with it both momentum and inertia. And is a favorite tool useful for building subtle forms of leverage in an organization. Its useful to be aware of these dynamics in places like startups and politics because they exist there, too.
icebraining 12y ago
"U.S. Senator accuses Microsoft of not treating workers as the generic cogs they are" "'When I go down to the market to get some workers, I always check the label', says the Senator, 'it's our patriotic duty to acquire locally produced workers'"
- drdeadringer 12y ago
  The locally-produced workers also must be fresh. Organic might be nice for a few more decades, but let's not discriminate against our upcoming robot overlords too much.
srameshc 12y ago
A large pool of H1B quota is being misused for sure. Instead of those mediocre or low tech workers, if more highly skilled workers are let in, I guess it would be better and we can manage with current allotted quotas.
- _delirium 12y ago
  I've long wondered why they don't allocate the slots (however many are politically palatable) via some kind of bidding system, e.g. highest-salary-filled-first, instead of the current first-come-first-served system. There is a "prevailing wage" requirement, intended to ensure that H1B is used to bring in workers where there's a shortage, not merely to undercut wages. But that's hard to police. And there is a more market-oriented way of allocating the slots to where genuine shortages exist: look at revealed preferences in the form of how much companies are willing to pay for a worker. If a company is willing to offer $150k to an H1B worker, I'm willing to believe there is actually a shortage of that person's skills. If they're only willing to offer $60k, I'm less convinced this offer is filling a skill that suffers from a major national shortage.
  - pooper 12y ago
    I really like this idea. It is a shame that H1B workers get 60k for a job that I'd take at 85k and the company's justification is that it costs them 25k to process the visa or what not. That cost should not be computed into someone's compensation!
  - walshemj 12y ago
    Maybe make H1B applicable only to direct hires no contracting via a third party body shop - also reduce a companys H1B allowance by the number of redundancy's in the previous year
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
drpgq 12y ago
I wonder if any H-1B workers would have been among those laid off by Microsoft.
- keithpeter 12y ago
  According to the minimicrosoft[1] blog comments, yes they have. UK perspective: absolutely no chance of visas for people outwith EU if you are in a redundancy situation locally. Endof. I'm surprised this could even be happening. Disclaimer: I live in a 50:50 city, in a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood where the 'recent immigrants' are Polish. [1] http://minimsft.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/18000-microsoft-jobs-gone-eventually.html http://minimsft.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/18000-microsoft-jobs-...
  - walshemj 12y ago
    Not sure what you mean here. I think that Finish ex nokia workers could work in the UK/EU if they have a job offer Finland is a member of the EEA area.
moogoo 12y ago
If you want to miss the point focus on the headline. We all know there is no shortage of tech workers, theres a glut. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been shipped overseas in the last 10 years, and for what benefit - zero, and we have VCs blowing millions of dollars into companies that want to let you order a pizza on your iphone. Malinvestment rules the day in the US, that and outright wage suppression when little of value is ever created. Welcome home to America.
eyeareque 12y ago
Why hire local talent when you can get a foreigner who will work for cheaper? (Not to mention the foriegner will also work under the shadow of having to go back to their country if they get fired..) While there might be a good argument for this, I've never seen proof that it was not being abused.
- lgleason 12y ago
  very very true.
lgleason 12y ago
Raising the H1B cap has everything to do with creating downward pressure on wages. There are plenty of tech workers, but not enough cheap ones. Lots of companies also want experts in specific technologies instead of getting a good generalist who can learn quickly. If you are in tech in the US and don't mind making less money for what you do keep supporting legislation for more H1B's. Just don't complain when you become a commodity, are required to dress "business casual" and cannot work remotely. The reason it is good to work in tech is because companies have incentives to make it a good place for you to work. If your skills are something that is easy to find those benefits will go away. Most companies are not going to give you these benefits out of the goodness of their heart in today's environment. If they did then the average Wal-Mart worker would be making a lot more and have much better benefits.
- cynicalkane 12y ago
  As a left-libertarian it always disappoints me to see this attitude. But political opinions have always been about incentives, always about expressing your position in an in-group, and it's amusing in a depressing sort of way to see how peoples' political philosophies switch when their interests are at stake. In particular, it seems to be common among hackers to be very libertarian except when they feel threatened in their jobs, then you hear them talk about unions and protectionism and regulation and so on. I think it's very selfish to oppose H1B visas. America is wealthy compared to almost everywhere, and phenomenally wealthy compared to many of the places these H1B workers come from. Furthermore, the best thing for the US in the long run is to import as many smart people as it can. The best thing for us in the long run is to import as many smart people as we can. There are economists who dispute increasing immigration, but there is to my knowledge no serious argument against importing smart people. Again, there is to my knowledge no economist, who anyone takes seriously, who would say "The USA needs to import fewer tech workers". It's a gain for everyone except the worker being "replaced", and that's a fallacy anyway because the economic pie is not zero-sum.
  - bicknergseng 12y ago
    There are probably not a ton of people here who would disagree with the phrase "the USA needs more tech workers." There are probably quite a few who disagree with the phrase "the USA needs more tech workers at the expense of its current tech workers." Do you see the difference? If MS, Google, Cisco et al want to import workers, they should be paying them the same amount as their American counterparts, rather than pulling them in to be temp workers and lay off higher cost employees.
kordless 12y ago
Just wait till the guy's seat gets replaced by an app written by one of those H1B holders he'd like to ban from the country at the ripe age of 23.
mountbob 12y ago
1) If it was the same in OTHER PROFESSIONS then I'd be ok - but it's not. Professionals licensed to practice in their country cannot immigrate and practice here - they end up resorting to things like becoming cab drivers etc (not that there's anything wrong with being a cab driver - but if you went to university for a solid profession then it's not a good result). Allow accountants, doctors, lawyers accredited in their countries to come and be able to become licensed here and push down their wages for the rest of us, then we can talk. This keeps supply in their field down and their wages up. 2) These visas do not incentivize corporations to RETRAIN their employees. Yes the specific technology changes but the ability to understand how to interact, program, maintain, etc do not (in relation). 3) Is AGEISM a management or a worker problem? Sure, it's up to the worker to keep up to date, but I've seen plenty of examples where ageism is more a problem of the industry. Somebody who is 40+, has a CompSci degree, worked in the industry for 15-20 years, gained wisdom is somehow worthless because they don't know the exact specific technology. These visas are a bandaid to a problem that tech corporations themselves created. They don't retrain their valuable workers with outdated skills and instead look to foreign countries for a quick-fix out of their mess. Keep up the high wages and you'll continue to see an increase in CompSci enrollment. Then pay to retrain your (good) employees for the latest technology and you'll keep them. Corporations have options, they're just more motivated at the H1-B candy then something that benefits everyone.
mrsharpoblunto 12y ago
As someone going through the US immigration process at the moment, the real issue as far as immigration reform goes should not be raising the H-1B cap, but rather fixing the insane greencard backlog. At the moment its pretty common for people to have to spend over a decade waiting in a legal limbo with an uncertain future. In addition to this, requiring companies to sponsor greencards for all H1-B workers would go a long way toward stopping those who are simply looking for cheap captive labour and would leave the pool open to those companies who are legitimately looking for skilled workers in good faith.
htormey 12y ago
As someone working in the US on a H1B I am against raising the cap. Instead I think this visa should be replaced with one that can not be used by consulting companies and offers a short clear path to a green card. The main problem is that the majority of people on this visa are being used as tools to drive down US wages. These are the people working for consulting shops in the middle of no where making below market wages while being forced to do mind numbing work. It is very hard for someone in a situation like this to switch jobs. Their is also no incentive for their employers to sponsor them for a green card until they absolutely have to. It's not uncommon to find people spending close to a decade being one step away from being deported. I want immigration reform not the perpetuation of a half baked visa that favors big companies and allows immigrants to be easily exploited. In summary I think talented people should be encouraged to work in the US but on an equal footing to everyone else. Raising the H1B cap is not immigration reform.

147 points by Element_ 12y ago

Along those lines, the census agency says most STEM graduates do not work in STEM fields: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/07/10/census-stem-graduates/12492079/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/07/10/cens...

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
waps 12y ago
Anyone who is smart enough to calculate the differential of equations is smart enough to see there's little money in those jobs. You see this in practice. STEM graduates do 3 things, in my experience. Work in management, work in IT, and work in academia. I wouldn't count on any of having up-to-date science knowledge except the academic ones.
- hga 12y ago
  Plenty of them with serious math chops, such as MIT EECS graduates, become quants in Wall Street and the like, at least for a while.
  - freyr 12y ago
    > Plenty of them Wall Street does draw some students from the math/physics/EECS departments of the very top ranked schools, but this represents a tiny percentage of students graduating nationwide with STEM degrees.
jandrewrogers 12y ago
There are an enormous variety of STEM degrees, particularly the "science" part, that have little economic value relative to the number of people with degrees produced e.g. marine biology. In many of these STEM fields the expected wage is essentially lower middle class because the supply of graduates greatly outstrips jobs. Not everyone with a STEM degree is a computer scientist or an engineer. If you are one of the countless thousands of people with a low-value science degree then not only are there few jobs at any pay scale but you will likely make more money doing something else in any case.

wfjackson 12y ago

Aren't 12,000 of the 18,000 mostly overseas jobs at Nokia Devices in Finland? And 6000 doesn't seem that high based on the churn at most big tech companies between people leaving, layoffs and firings. And it's kinda funny that Satya would've himself been on a work visa when he worked at Sun or at Microsoft, perhaps the senator is implying that poor Ballmer shouldn't have been laid off and replaced with a foreign worker? :) Looks like a flamebait headline and article by the same guy at ComputerWorld who seems to be on a crusade against H1B, as part of a personal crusade or for page views (these articles seems to invariably make it to the Slashdot front page). https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=computerworld+h1b&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#q=site%3Acomputerworld.com+h1b+Patrick+Thibodeau+&safe=off https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=computerworld+h...

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- jedberg 12y ago
  > He is a Republican Senator from Alabama. He doesn't need to look at facts. Let's be fair here. That should read: He is a Senator. He doesn't need to look at facts.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - Retric 12y ago
    Some seniors face tough elections, others don't. Republican seniors in Alabama only face compition in the primary and little real completion at that.
    - Retric 12y ago
      Note, the incumbent senator for the 2014 election faces literally zero opposition. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election_in_Alabama,_2014 http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election...

DanielBMarkham 12y ago

I've been thinking about this subject for a few years now. Like many HN'ers, I work deep inside the tech industry. I'm also fortunate enough to have watched the operations of dozens of different companies. I think the real problem here is that the tech industry does not know how to manage their workers. I'm not talking about managing projects, or how to coach or train. I mean the whole thing. The technology sector of the economy has no idea of exactly how many workers, in what configuration, it needs for accomplishing any job. Weird situation, I know. But where that leaves us is a lot of "open" job positions that are little more than unfulfilled wishes. Sure would be nice to have another 40 guys on the helpdesk. Would that be as nice as 10 more developers? Who knows? Or -- we've got that big government project coming up, so we'll need at least 500 IT workers. Why do we need it? Who knows? It's a big project. It should have a lot of people on it, right? The implications of this is that there's a huge downward pressure on wages. People want a certain number of tech workers, but there's no market pressure to hire them or even to lay them off if they've hired too many. They just want a certain number. So what they really want is really cheap, disposable workers that they can easily swap in and out as the political winds inside a company changes. The U.S. labor market isn't really geared for that.

ntakasaki 12y ago
>I think the real problem here is that the tech industry does not know how to manage their workers It's not just the tech industry, almost all companies struggle to measure productivity, especially as a comparative measure. People like salesmen do have defined metrics like sales, but it's harder to do that for people in HR and Accounting, for example.
- cpher 12y ago
  That's usually because sales, engineering, etc are "profit" centers, while HR/Accounting/Reception are "cost" centers. One group produces while the other consumes. So, it's really comparing apples to oranges.
001sky 12y ago
* disposable workers that they can easily swap in and out as the political winds inside a company changes* This is a very underestimated point. most hiring is not about skill or productivity. But about building a political base within an organization. In some areas, this means hiring friends, fraternity brothers, or members of some other in/niche chohort. In other areas it means hiring people of a different stripe. It also shows up in HR very often as the term "head count", which an asset quota that is horstraded amongst managers. Headcount brings with it both momentum and inertia. And is a favorite tool useful for building subtle forms of leverage in an organization. Its useful to be aware of these dynamics in places like startups and politics because they exist there, too.

icebraining 12y ago

"U.S. Senator accuses Microsoft of not treating workers as the generic cogs they are" "'When I go down to the market to get some workers, I always check the label', says the Senator, 'it's our patriotic duty to acquire locally produced workers'"

drdeadringer 12y ago
The locally-produced workers also must be fresh. Organic might be nice for a few more decades, but let's not discriminate against our upcoming robot overlords too much.

srameshc 12y ago

A large pool of H1B quota is being misused for sure. Instead of those mediocre or low tech workers, if more highly skilled workers are let in, I guess it would be better and we can manage with current allotted quotas.

_delirium 12y ago
I've long wondered why they don't allocate the slots (however many are politically palatable) via some kind of bidding system, e.g. highest-salary-filled-first, instead of the current first-come-first-served system. There is a "prevailing wage" requirement, intended to ensure that H1B is used to bring in workers where there's a shortage, not merely to undercut wages. But that's hard to police. And there is a more market-oriented way of allocating the slots to where genuine shortages exist: look at revealed preferences in the form of how much companies are willing to pay for a worker. If a company is willing to offer $150k to an H1B worker, I'm willing to believe there is actually a shortage of that person's skills. If they're only willing to offer $60k, I'm less convinced this offer is filling a skill that suffers from a major national shortage.
- pooper 12y ago
  I really like this idea. It is a shame that H1B workers get 60k for a job that I'd take at 85k and the company's justification is that it costs them 25k to process the visa or what not. That cost should not be computed into someone's compensation!
- walshemj 12y ago
  Maybe make H1B applicable only to direct hires no contracting via a third party body shop - also reduce a companys H1B allowance by the number of redundancy's in the previous year
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

drpgq 12y ago

I wonder if any H-1B workers would have been among those laid off by Microsoft.

keithpeter 12y ago
According to the minimicrosoft[1] blog comments, yes they have. UK perspective: absolutely no chance of visas for people outwith EU if you are in a redundancy situation locally. Endof. I'm surprised this could even be happening. Disclaimer: I live in a 50:50 city, in a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood where the 'recent immigrants' are Polish. [1] http://minimsft.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/18000-microsoft-jobs-gone-eventually.html http://minimsft.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/18000-microsoft-jobs-...
- walshemj 12y ago
  Not sure what you mean here. I think that Finish ex nokia workers could work in the UK/EU if they have a job offer Finland is a member of the EEA area.

moogoo 12y ago

If you want to miss the point focus on the headline. We all know there is no shortage of tech workers, theres a glut. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been shipped overseas in the last 10 years, and for what benefit - zero, and we have VCs blowing millions of dollars into companies that want to let you order a pizza on your iphone. Malinvestment rules the day in the US, that and outright wage suppression when little of value is ever created. Welcome home to America.

eyeareque 12y ago

Why hire local talent when you can get a foreigner who will work for cheaper? (Not to mention the foriegner will also work under the shadow of having to go back to their country if they get fired..) While there might be a good argument for this, I've never seen proof that it was not being abused.

lgleason 12y ago
very very true.

lgleason 12y ago

Raising the H1B cap has everything to do with creating downward pressure on wages. There are plenty of tech workers, but not enough cheap ones. Lots of companies also want experts in specific technologies instead of getting a good generalist who can learn quickly. If you are in tech in the US and don't mind making less money for what you do keep supporting legislation for more H1B's. Just don't complain when you become a commodity, are required to dress "business casual" and cannot work remotely. The reason it is good to work in tech is because companies have incentives to make it a good place for you to work. If your skills are something that is easy to find those benefits will go away. Most companies are not going to give you these benefits out of the goodness of their heart in today's environment. If they did then the average Wal-Mart worker would be making a lot more and have much better benefits.

cynicalkane 12y ago
As a left-libertarian it always disappoints me to see this attitude. But political opinions have always been about incentives, always about expressing your position in an in-group, and it's amusing in a depressing sort of way to see how peoples' political philosophies switch when their interests are at stake. In particular, it seems to be common among hackers to be very libertarian except when they feel threatened in their jobs, then you hear them talk about unions and protectionism and regulation and so on. I think it's very selfish to oppose H1B visas. America is wealthy compared to almost everywhere, and phenomenally wealthy compared to many of the places these H1B workers come from. Furthermore, the best thing for the US in the long run is to import as many smart people as it can. The best thing for us in the long run is to import as many smart people as we can. There are economists who dispute increasing immigration, but there is to my knowledge no serious argument against importing smart people. Again, there is to my knowledge no economist, who anyone takes seriously, who would say "The USA needs to import fewer tech workers". It's a gain for everyone except the worker being "replaced", and that's a fallacy anyway because the economic pie is not zero-sum.
- bicknergseng 12y ago
  There are probably not a ton of people here who would disagree with the phrase "the USA needs more tech workers." There are probably quite a few who disagree with the phrase "the USA needs more tech workers at the expense of its current tech workers." Do you see the difference? If MS, Google, Cisco et al want to import workers, they should be paying them the same amount as their American counterparts, rather than pulling them in to be temp workers and lay off higher cost employees.

kordless 12y ago

Just wait till the guy's seat gets replaced by an app written by one of those H1B holders he'd like to ban from the country at the ripe age of 23.

mountbob 12y ago

1) If it was the same in OTHER PROFESSIONS then I'd be ok - but it's not. Professionals licensed to practice in their country cannot immigrate and practice here - they end up resorting to things like becoming cab drivers etc (not that there's anything wrong with being a cab driver - but if you went to university for a solid profession then it's not a good result). Allow accountants, doctors, lawyers accredited in their countries to come and be able to become licensed here and push down their wages for the rest of us, then we can talk. This keeps supply in their field down and their wages up. 2) These visas do not incentivize corporations to RETRAIN their employees. Yes the specific technology changes but the ability to understand how to interact, program, maintain, etc do not (in relation). 3) Is AGEISM a management or a worker problem? Sure, it's up to the worker to keep up to date, but I've seen plenty of examples where ageism is more a problem of the industry. Somebody who is 40+, has a CompSci degree, worked in the industry for 15-20 years, gained wisdom is somehow worthless because they don't know the exact specific technology. These visas are a bandaid to a problem that tech corporations themselves created. They don't retrain their valuable workers with outdated skills and instead look to foreign countries for a quick-fix out of their mess. Keep up the high wages and you'll continue to see an increase in CompSci enrollment. Then pay to retrain your (good) employees for the latest technology and you'll keep them. Corporations have options, they're just more motivated at the H1-B candy then something that benefits everyone.

mrsharpoblunto 12y ago

As someone going through the US immigration process at the moment, the real issue as far as immigration reform goes should not be raising the H-1B cap, but rather fixing the insane greencard backlog. At the moment its pretty common for people to have to spend over a decade waiting in a legal limbo with an uncertain future. In addition to this, requiring companies to sponsor greencards for all H1-B workers would go a long way toward stopping those who are simply looking for cheap captive labour and would leave the pool open to those companies who are legitimately looking for skilled workers in good faith.

htormey 12y ago

As someone working in the US on a H1B I am against raising the cap. Instead I think this visa should be replaced with one that can not be used by consulting companies and offers a short clear path to a green card. The main problem is that the majority of people on this visa are being used as tools to drive down US wages. These are the people working for consulting shops in the middle of no where making below market wages while being forced to do mind numbing work. It is very hard for someone in a situation like this to switch jobs. Their is also no incentive for their employers to sponsor them for a green card until they absolutely have to. It's not uncommon to find people spending close to a decade being one step away from being deported. I want immigration reform not the perpetuation of a half baked visa that favors big companies and allows immigrants to be easily exploited. In summary I think talented people should be encouraged to work in the US but on an equal footing to everyone else. Raising the H1B cap is not immigration reform.