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Gaming the H-1B system for good

blog.triplebyte.com

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Re: Gaming the H-1B system for good

#51

Post by shas3 »

tosseraccount wrote: post #22

A scholarly take on the guest worker visas from Civil Rights advocate Norm Matloff ... [ http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b10min.html ] ... major attraction for employers, especially in Silicon Valley, is the "handcuffed" status of H-1Bs ... There is no tech labor shortage. No study, other than those sponsored by the industry, has ever shown a shortage.

> There is no tech labor shortage.

"Tech labor shortage" is not a clear-cut black-and-white issue. The market is not fully elastic to easily use terms such as 'shortage', etc.

Say, you need to build a team of 5 machine learning scientist with specific experience in image recognition, there may be 100 people in the country specializing in this field, and perhaps 10 of them are the job market, and 7 are international citizens. Then you have a serious case of shortage, and face the possibility of losing the project/business/market to a company in Israel, India, or China that has the requisite staff or to a company in Canada or Australia, where immigration laws are more sensible.

At the same time, there may be no shortage for generally skilled engineers fresh out of college.

Re: Gaming the H-1B system for good

#52

Post by Someone1234 »

harichinnan wrote: post #36
Someone1234 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That legislation has absolutely nothing to do with employers helping their employees gain a green card. It just redistributes the H1Bs differently. Did you reply to the right post?

Look at the chart below. This should explain why H1B employees(Mostly Indians and Chinese) stick with their outsourcers. The legislation would help resolve the backlog. http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/law-and-policy/bull...

Which chart? And the person above was talking about how few employers will go through the green card process, that page appears to be about H1B approvals, which is outside the scope of what they said.

Re: Gaming the H-1B system for good

#53

Post by kirubakaran »

outworlder wrote: post #44
djb_hackernews wrote: post #24

I sort of like this except startups typically pay below market salaries which is sort of against the spirit of the H1-B visa right? And if the startups aren't paying below market salaries then why do they need H1-Bs? Suppose I am an SF based startup and I get a candidate from triplebyte that is on H1-B and is paid 66k by a body shop as a Level 1 Computer Programmer [0] but she is obviously talented and got taken adva…

Not sure if they are paying below market salaries. H-1B households are restricted to a single income. They could be paying below average market salaries, but 66k won't fly in the bay area. I haven't seen to many software engineers living under the bridges. Disclaimer: the single income restriction is why I fought to get a L-1 visa instead.

"H-1B households are restricted to a single income"

This isn't true anymore http://www.immihelp.com/h4-visa-ead/

Re: Gaming the H-1B system for good

#54

Post by lacker »

vskarine wrote: post #41

I transferred H1-B multiple times and here is my take on this: This can solve some problems but not all. Some things to think about: - For example, if you go work for outsourcing company that pays only when there is work to be done (this is illegal by the way) then as soon as you try to transfer visa, you will be kicked out of US and company will be in trouble. The reason for this is that when you transfer visa they…

I have seen some companies advertise "The salary for this position is up to $999,999" to get around making the real salary public.

Re: Gaming the H-1B system for good

#55

Post by srameshc »

This is not 'Gaming' for benefit of better talent over good or bad. This is simply 'Transfer' and everyone who has an approved H1B knows that transfer is an option. So this is an advertorial which simply says you transfer your H1B to us and we will get you a contract somewhere, regardless of your talent.

Re: Gaming the H-1B system for good

#56

Post by bradleyjg »

shas3 wrote: post #46
harichinnan wrote: post #19

I was on H1B with a true blue American startup. They developed cold feet when it came closer to sponsoring Green Cards. To start with GC wage levels are much higher than H1B levels. Also close to 15K+ needs to be spent for processing+ years of patient follow up to USCIS queries/denials and surprise site inspections. The new fangled startups won't have the long term strategy/planning to get me a green card. I had much…

No country is allowed to get more than 7% of the green cards each year (roughly speaking). This GC-H1B lock-in problem is very unique to Indians (~10 year wait), and to a lesser extent, Chinese (~4 year wait). The 7% quota would be illegal were it applied to US citizenship, according to civil rights legislations of the 1960s (prior to which non-whites were discriminated against in naturalized-citizenships via quotas)…

Although the per country limits hit India and Chinese born beneficiaries in employment based preference categories the worst, there is also a waiting list for Filipinos in employment based third and other workers. In the family based categories, Mexicans and Filipinos generally have the longest waits, with Mexican family first preference (i.e. unmarried children of US citizens) in December 1994 and Filipino fourth preference (i.e. siblings of US citizens) in June 1992 vs. 2008 and 2003 for those categories generally.

Re: Gaming the H-1B system for good

#57

Post by djb_hackernews »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #43
djb_hackernews wrote: post #24

I sort of like this except startups typically pay below market salaries which is sort of against the spirit of the H1-B visa right? And if the startups aren't paying below market salaries then why do they need H1-Bs? Suppose I am an SF based startup and I get a candidate from triplebyte that is on H1-B and is paid 66k by a body shop as a Level 1 Computer Programmer [0] but she is obviously talented and got taken adva…

Paying below-market salaries is illegal. The visa has a minimum wage that is defined by your position (developer, designer, etc.). Edit: Of course, one could argue that the wage tables used by the government aren't "market".

Right, but 66k is market rate according to the government for an SF based Level 1 Computer Programmer...

Re: Gaming the H-1B system for good

#58

Post by winter_blue »

harichinnan wrote: post #20
harichinnan wrote: post #19

I was on H1B with a true blue American startup. They developed cold feet when it came closer to sponsoring Green Cards. To start with GC wage levels are much higher than H1B levels. Also close to 15K+ needs to be spent for processing+ years of patient follow up to USCIS queries/denials and surprise site inspections. The new fangled startups won't have the long term strategy/planning to get me a green card. I had much…

You can help end this by supporting legislation. https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/213

That bill does not increase the number of employment-based immigrant visas/greencards -- it just eliminates the 7% per-country limit. In my opinion, it's a poor piece of legislation. The I-Square Act does a much better job at improving the terrible skilled immigration system: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/s153

The best bill so far that Congress has introduced in the last ten years was S. 744 (113th Congress), which passed the Senate, but was blocked by then House Speaker Boehner (despite majority support in the House) under pressure from some racist and xenophobic far-right republicans: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s744

Re: Gaming the H-1B system for good

#59

Post by sytelus »

Whole H1B system is essentially modern form of slavery. I've seen people becoming multi-millionaires exploiting this slavery system. Companies in India have amassed massive revenues exploiting the same. The way it works is you put advertise in newspaper for minimum expected wage for tech worker. Then you buy a genius 3rd world tech worker and sell him/her to clients for approximately twice that rate. Then you put significant chunk of income which was supposed to be all theirs in to your pocket. Even if you managed to sell only 10 tech workers you will be minting close to million dollars a year for absolutely doing nothing but the initial paper work. Companies like TCS, Wipro etc typically have 100s thousands of such workers for sell. The reason this is slavery is because your ability to negotiate your wages is extremely limited. Sure, you can transfer your H1B but companies which accommodates such transfer is few and far between because of cost and legal people they have to keep on their staff. Most startups are immediately out of question for employment, for example. Further, if your H1B is coupled with green card application then it puts further friction in changing jobs.

So in effect, H1B is just glorified tech slavery. The way to fix this system would be to allow H1B workers to apply anywhere they want without effecting other processes such as green cards. This would immediately not only stop slave labor but also bring wage parity to market.

Re: Gaming the H-1B system for good

#60

Post by harichinnan »

Someone1234 wrote: post #50
jsprogrammer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the H1Bs are distributed differently, couldn't employees move to the employers who are willing to help them? This benefits helpful employers. Seems right.

It doesn't distribute them to different employers, it distributes them to different countries. Not the same thing at all. There's no reason at all to think that anything would change in terms of the H1B Vs. employer relationship if that legislation would pass. We'd just have different nationalities in the same situation we do now.

Concentrating the delays and therefore the abuse to two countries created the IT outsourcing monsters you have now(search for TCS, Wipro, Infosys, Cognizant...) . Distributing the delays would therefore create smaller companies with a more diverse workforce and therefore would level out the H1B wage gap. Think of disrupting the status quo..
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