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Silicon Valley Is Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

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Re: Silicon Valley Is Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#81

Post by calvinbhai »

wdcgu wrote: post #29
guard-of-terra wrote: post #4

My co-workers raised a note that H1B no longer relevant so much for the purpose described in headline. It's much easier to bring workers on L visa - they have even less opportunity to skip jobs or aruge for a raise than H1B holders, and there's no lottery and no limits. Just bring as much people on L as possible. As far as I know, Microsoft did this with Canada long ago. They hire you and relocate to Canada, then aft…

Don't forget the TN visa. Those Canadians are stealing American jobs. Really surprised that everyone likes to complain about the H1B/L1 but not the TN visa.

Totally agree with you. H1b visa combined with the green card backlogs are meant to systematically keep immigration of Indians and Chinese citizens disproportionately low.

Many countries have agreements with US that allow their citizens to work without the hassle of h-1b

Sadly, because of the clout Indian outsourcing firms have in filing the number of h1b applications, most people think Indian outsourcing firms are steeling jobs.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#82

Post by muninn_ »

krzyk wrote: post #77
muninn_ wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be concise here: you can hire an American. There are plenty of people who can do that job living in New York City.

Why hire someone new and train him when you have a guy that doesn't need training.

Because that guy lives in a different country, and the business is in the United States.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#83

Post by mildbow »

shard972 wrote: post #60
alextheparrot wrote: post #59

Does anyone else consider immigration a significant part of US foreign policy? Wouldn't offering visas to "rising" countries allow us to pick off much of their best talent, thus boosting the US and lowering the other countries? The global power struggles of today, I believe, will be won by countries who can dictate the technology that refocuses which resources are needed.

> Wouldn't offering visas to "rising" countries allow us to pick off much of their best talent, thus boosting the US and lowering the other countries? I haven't seen H1B visa's used like this in my personal experience. At the last company I worked for they were mostly used to fill our testing team with people from India. Maybe they were all guinness, the problem was all but one of them could speak/write english fluen…

Guinness? Are you calling them stout? :)

Anyway, the point should be you want to get people who are skilled. Maybe/maybe not that means English fluency. But, that's another matter.

It seems most abuse[0] happens due to random Indian body-shops. Since Trump is so carte-blanche maybe he can just blacklist the ones we know to be obvious abusers.

Maybe a better answer is to require all H1-Bs be actual full-time employees of the company, rather than being under contract through a third party?

[0]I define abuse as using H1-Bs primarily for cheap labor vs skilled labor.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#84

Post by geebee »

Ceezy wrote: post #49

I'm glad that here the comments section is not full of Trump trolls like it is in huffingtonpost. First it's true that HB1 visa holder are not free agent and can't contest for the best wages. But I trully don't understand how can ANYBODY say that, tech in general is NOT in shortage of ingineers. Median wage in SF for dev is around 110 000. But even outside SF buble it's around 70 000$. With no downward pressure, How…

The median salary for a dental hygienist in San Francisco is also about $110,000 a year. That salary level qualifies for direct housing subsidies for a family of 4 in San Francisco. So why are we taking claims of a desperate shortage of developers more seriously than claims of a desperate shortage of dental hygienists?

Just to be clear, immigrants should be welcome to become devs. And dental hygienists, drywall installers, real estate agents, and sandwich shop owners. What I don't welcome is a program that specifically uses the immigration system to increase the number of developers relative to other professions. That should be left to the market and freedom of choice for the individuals who participate in it.

I just see absolutely no reason whatsoever to give tech employers the power to determine who is allowed to come to the US, what jobs they are allowed to work, and the circumstances under which they are allowed to remain in the US. This is immensely harmful, and doesn't have much to do with immigration. It has to do with corporate control over the immigration system.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#85

Post by dogma1138 »

mpoloton wrote: post #41
wdcgu wrote: post #31

As usual, these rants treat "Silicon Valley" as a single entity. http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2016-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx There are some companies that underpay, while other pay quite well. Conflating the two is like throwing out the baby with the bath water.

The statistical expectation from the dataset that you link to is $86,328.67 [1]. I no nothing about US salaries, but I don't consider this value a competitive salary. Therefore, I believe the premise of the article is statically correct. Citing a few example with large salaries (Apple, Google, ...) is misleading. 1- https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f0iZ7VZkA7Th2dCE6rgD...

86K may not be a competitive salary in heart of SV but it's damn competitive in the US, and around the world.

Unless you are living in NYC/SV your cost of living in the US is lower, you tax burden is lower. 86K$ is more than the vast majority of highly paid developers in Europe get.

I don't understand why Amazon/Google paying 50-60K Euros in Germany or even lower than that in other EU countries with a tax burden of nearly 50% of income is fine by some guy from India coming and working for 85K+ in the US is somehow exploitation.

Do companies take advantage of the fact that they relocate people from effectively developing nations and pay them below market rates, sure, that's business but honestly do you think anyone complains? The average indian developer with 5-10 years of experience earns between 350-500K RS a year, with the 350-400K being more common this is about 5500-6000$.

If you think that the cost of living in India is so low that it can offset the discrepancy in income then you clearly haven't spent much time in India.

Some employers might abuse H1B too much, some might even do illegal things with it, but that's the case those things are illegal, just offering a lower than average salary isn't illegal, it's not even amoral.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#86

Post by wdcgu »

mpoloton wrote: post #41
wdcgu wrote: post #31

As usual, these rants treat "Silicon Valley" as a single entity. http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2016-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx There are some companies that underpay, while other pay quite well. Conflating the two is like throwing out the baby with the bath water.

The statistical expectation from the dataset that you link to is $86,328.67 [1]. I no nothing about US salaries, but I don't consider this value a competitive salary. Therefore, I believe the premise of the article is statically correct. Citing a few example with large salaries (Apple, Google, ...) is misleading. 1- https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f0iZ7VZkA7Th2dCE6rgD...

Only looking at the mean does not tell the whole story. Not all companies pay their H1Bs peanuts which is what this article seems to imply.

$86K might might not be competitive for the HN crowd with their inflated egos, but it's quite high for a number that includes other industries and regions.

Tell the average American to guess what underpaid is, they're likely going to guess lower 86K. You got to wonder why these rants don't like to cite any actual numbers.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#88

Post by wdcgu »

muninn_ wrote: post #72
winter_blue wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why should the US be forced You've got it backwards. Nobody is forcing the US to take anyone. Instead, employers in the US are instead being forced to hire native workers, and are effectively being prohibited from hiring from the rest of the world. It's this prohibition that needs to be defended. I'm an employer, and I want to hire a French software developer. I'm willing to pay him $160,000 a year. But now, immigr…

I'll be concise here: you can hire an American. There are plenty of people who can do that job living in New York City.

This free market thing isn't really working out. The government should just run everything, make 5 year plans and assign jobs to everyone.

Oh wait, but that's communism, nvm then.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#89

Post by wdcgu »

muninn_ wrote: post #82
krzyk wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why hire someone new and train him when you have a guy that doesn't need training.

Because that guy lives in a different country, and the business is in the United States.

Ah, don't you miss good old xenophobia and isolationism?

Re: Silicon Valley Is Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#90

Post by wdcgu »

unprepare wrote: post #76
kelnos wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're ignoring the fact the US already produces a surplus of skilled and qualified STEM professionals. That may be true, but we're hardly a homogeneous group. There certainly isn't a surplus of skilled and qualified professionals from my subgroup of STEM. And I suspect that's the one where most H-1B visa holders end up in. Not saying the system isn't abused: oh sweet jesus, it most certainly is. But throwing it ou…

> Why are they unable to find a job? >Are they less skilled and capable than a foreign worker? If so, then the foreign worker should get the job Are you under the impression that organizations when hiring are looking to maximize skill and disregard all other factors? once you reach 'good enough' skill level, its a cost minimization game. If the American costs twice as much, but the foreign worker is good enough - who…

Hire the foreign worker obviously. That's just business and economics 101.
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