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H-1B Visas: U.S. Lawmaker Re-Introduces Bill to Tighten Rules

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Re: H-1B Visas: U.S. Lawmaker Re-Introduces Bill to Tighten Rules

#211

Post by mavelikara »

hibikir wrote: post #65
findjashua wrote: post #48

The real problem with H1B, that outsourcing firms exploit, is the lottery system. Issa's proposal doesn't address that problem. Zoe Lofgren's bill, which replaces the lottery with a salary ranking system, would be much more effective, in my opinion. http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/06/technology/h1b-reform-bill/

We didn't have a lottery system a decade ago: What we had was big quotas, but the same number of green cards as we've had for many decades. So instead of a useless H1-B system which only helped big outsourcers, what we had was a big H1B population that had to wait even longer to get permanent residency. Make green cards quotas bigger and people that will stay here anyway will just spend a lot less time as indentured…

Of the 1M people immigrating every year, only 14% goes to skilled workers on H-1B. Of these both the primary applicant and their family get counted separately, so the actual number is closer to 7%.

Of these 7%, there is a per-country limits - Iceland (population 320K) and India (population 1.2B) both are allotted the same number of Green Cards. These limits treat each nation equally, but not immigrant equally. Applicants from Iceland get their Green Card in few months, but those from India will have to wait many years to get theirs.

This is broken.

Re: H-1B Visas: U.S. Lawmaker Re-Introduces Bill to Tighten Rules

#212

Post by blazespin »

geebee wrote: post #85
shas3 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about the bidding war. I've been in situations where companies are looking for people with specific skills (e.g. working with specific microbiology techniques) but would never be able to outbid what Facebook or someone in Bay Area would pay for generalist skills in another field. There is nowhere close to 100% elasticity in wages to make an auction system fair. Also, this would handicap companies in low-…

I'm not sure that I'm sympathetic to employers who want to pay less. Keep in mind, the US takes in well over a million immigrants a year, and has a huge internal workforce. The H1B was created to help employers find critical and highly skilled workers that are in desperately short supply in the US. "Oh, but we can't afford to pay them a lot of money, that's not fair!" isn't the sort of argument that tends to evoke mu…

I think exceptions for small businesses of 3-10 employees would be a cool idea, but otherwise I completely agree. We need more small businesses. Wasn't Apple, Facebook, MSFT, Goog, AWS .. didn't they all start as small businesses?

Re: H-1B Visas: U.S. Lawmaker Re-Introduces Bill to Tighten Rules

#213

Post by hatred »

BurningFrog wrote: post #177
suryacom wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you mean by you are a risk taker? You have no idea what you are comparing here. Will you risk your family getting deported due to a clerical error? Once H1B lose his job, he and his family has to leave the country in 15 days. Sell his house, pull kids out from school, etc. All this arises whenever H1B tries to change the job.

> Once H1B lose his job, he and his family has to leave the country in 15 days This is not true in practice. There is a rule saying that, but it has never been enforced. As long as you don't leave the country, you'll have no problem looking for a new job for however long that takes. At least that's what my immigration lawyer told me many years ago.

That has been true for many years that is _technically_ you would loose your status the day you lost your job and leave the country. However, there were ways around this.

This has been recently changed though giving a grace period of 60 days and goes into effect from Jan 17:

https://www.uscis.gov/news/news-releases/uscis-publishes-fin...

Re: H-1B Visas: U.S. Lawmaker Re-Introduces Bill to Tighten Rules

#214

Post by Synroc »

hibikir wrote: post #57
79d697i6fdif wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The root of the problem with H1B is that despite a bunch of laws meant to make sure that these workers are paid and treated the same as US citizens, that isn't happening at a lot of companies. This is creating a huge demand for visa workers as a kind of indentured servitude. This isn't a good situation for US citizens or visa workers. If the laws are fixed by, for instance, making it far easier to switch jobs on a vi…

It's not that hard to switch jobs once you have an H1B: The hard part is to do so while trying to get a green card. Ultimately, the tremendous wait times for everyone in the 00s, and now the tremendous lines only for a few countries, come down to the maximum number of green card numbers being vastly inferior to the number of people that qualify for said visas and are already living and working in the US. Even in case…

As a fellow European I'm curious, why did you have to wait 7 years? Isn't the quota almost never hit for European countries?

Re: H-1B Visas: U.S. Lawmaker Re-Introduces Bill to Tighten Rules

#215

Post by winter_blue »

Synroc wrote: post #214
hibikir wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that hard to switch jobs once you have an H1B: The hard part is to do so while trying to get a green card. Ultimately, the tremendous wait times for everyone in the 00s, and now the tremendous lines only for a few countries, come down to the maximum number of green card numbers being vastly inferior to the number of people that qualify for said visas and are already living and working in the US. Even in case…

As a fellow European I'm curious, why did you have to wait 7 years? Isn't the quota almost never hit for European countries?

There is no per-country quota for permanent residency, instead there is a worldwide quota of 120,000 employment-based green cards per year, and a law that says "no more than 7% immigrants with the same country of birth" (Note: country of birth, not citizenship).

The only countries that hit this limit are India, China, Philippines, and Mexico. The 120,000 global quota still applies to the rest of the World. Hence, there still are these potential long-ish delays, even if you're not from one of those four countries.

Re: H-1B Visas: U.S. Lawmaker Re-Introduces Bill to Tighten Rules

#216

Post by codeonfire »

euphoria83 wrote: post #8

Raising the minimum wage is a welcome move to counter abuse of this visa. However, the minimum level needs to be set based on the city of employment and it's living cost. It cannot be a flat rate.

Businesses will just lie about where the person is working. Also this is probably not constitutional. If the rate were left up to states to set it might be constitutional, but places like CA and WA would just set their rate to $60k, 50% below market, because that's where all the rich elites who want cheap indentured labor are.

Re: H-1B Visas: U.S. Lawmaker Re-Introduces Bill to Tighten Rules

#217

Post by baristaGeek »

Isn't it a HUGE problem that it's not discriminated by cities according to its living costs?

I'm not an expert in macroeconomic policy but I guess it wouldn't be so hard ad doing the discrimination for say the minimum salary, as business owners/shareholders tend to have a better understanding of the concept of the price index than minimum salary earners.

And I'm saying this because tech companies in the Bay Area won't have such a hard time following this rule than startups in cheaper cities.

Which would be a recoil in terms of making all America have knowledge-based industries. Wouldn't it?

As for people taking the H-1B, would this be something better? Or worse?

Re: H-1B Visas: U.S. Lawmaker Re-Introduces Bill to Tighten Rules

#218

Post by codeonfire »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #115

I would like to see a requirement for contracting companies to keep at least 51% of their domestic staff as US citizens. It's obscene that businesses are allowed to game the H1B program by staffing through these middlemen. That is not the original intent for these visas. After the Disney fiasco it's clear that the rules for which jobs qualify need to be tightened up. There is no way rank and file IT skills are so spe…

It's not only obscene but completely racist and violates employment law in a very open and flagrant way. There should be a lot more lawsuits like this:

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3137500/it-careers/info...

Re: H-1B Visas: U.S. Lawmaker Re-Introduces Bill to Tighten Rules

#219

Post by ActsJuvenile »

yellow_viper wrote: post #165
diogenescynic wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Immigration Attorneys are making a fortune of this broken system Those same law firms hire lobbyists to make sure the system remains complicated and inefficient. Also, all the law firms that service tech companies have almost 100% of the work done by recent college grads for very low pay. Ever wondered why your L-1/H-1/I-140 support letter has so many errors? It's because it was a generic template that some recent c…

Green cards too. My family moved out of America a few months after my dads work had secured us greecards at a total of $350,000 (iirc - for the family of 7). These were voided as we didn't stay in the country long enough to validate them - what a waste.

You mean $35,000?

Re: H-1B Visas: U.S. Lawmaker Re-Introduces Bill to Tighten Rules

#220

Post by deepGem »

diogenescynic wrote: post #208
deepGem wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a generic rhetoric that Indian outsourcing companies just drive down wages is plain wrong. Most of the contracts that these guys bag are long term maintenance type contracts. The companies that are awarding these contracts are doing so mostly because they are stuck with legacy software that are hard to replace. The replacements costs are typically higher than the 5 year maintenance costs. It's no wonder that…

>a generic rhetoric that Indian outsourcing companies just drive down wages is plain wrong >They are just paying the correct price determined by the market for that particular aggregated job function. If 47% and 85% of H-1Bs at bodyshops are being significantly underpaid compared to their peers, what is your argument that they aren't driving down wages? If these employees weren't on visas, do you really think they wo…

If 47% and 85% of H-1Bs at bodyshops are being significantly underpaid compared to their peers

Who are the peers ? People in similar job functions ? It's very hard to know just by the report. A 'software engineer' job function is the same on paper across Facebook and Infosys. While the software engineer in Infosys is mostly performing maintenance related tasks and nowhere on par with the software engineer in Facebook, talent wise. There are exceptions of course and they always find better jobs.

"There's a huge disconnect between the intent and purpose of the visa programs and their actual use."

Yes absolutely. That's mostly because there is no other legal option for these companies to hire. L1 was an option, but the USCIS hiked L1 fees and it's now very expensive. Also L1 requires the employees to have spent a year at the home branch.

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