H-1B visa shift may favor tech companies
sfchronicle.com
H-1B visa shift may favor tech companies
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Re: H-1B visa shift may favor tech companies
#2> The lottery change could be aimed at hindering those outsourcing firms’ applications, Rand said. Three Indian firms, Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro, have dominated H-1B applications since 2012, government data shows.
This would be great. Almost, all my well qualified peers (on F-1,or H1B) hate the contract coding body shops. Even people who end up working there, hate their time over there, and often choose it as a way to stay in the US, until they get a "proper" job.
Assuming there isn't some hidden fine script that screws qualified people over, this should help weed out the bad actors, without changing much else.
> In addition to the new lottery order, the department also proposed a new way for companies to enter their H-1B visa applicants into the lottery. Right now, employers have to prepare a full petition for each applicant before they’re picked. The proposed rule change would let employers register them online before the lottery, and work on their cases only if applicants are selected.
I wonder if this will make companies more likely to hire h1b candidates, as the legal expense only manifests after they are picked in the lottery.
I am glad they did not put sweeping salary requirements into place. This would have hurt many competent candidates who joined startups (where stocks > base pay) or ones in engineering fields where salaries have historically been much lower than that in the CS industry.
Re: H-1B visa shift may favor tech companies
#3> The Department of Homeland Security wants to switch the order of these lotteries, it said in a notice of the proposed rule change, which would — somewhat counterintuitively — improve the odds for those highly educated workers
> ... with a master’s or doctoral degree from an American college or university
This is a welcome change. But this biases the playing field in favor of those graduating from American degree mills. As a counter-measure against abuse from those, I hope DHS also intensifies scrutiny on the many American staffing companies who bend the H-1B rules to hire these foreign graduates. There is indication that they have started on it, for example [1].
Also,
> The lottery change could be aimed at hindering those outsourcing firms’ applications, Rand said. Three Indian firms, Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro, have dominated H-1B applications since 2012, government data shows.
> “Most of the visas are snapped up by these body shops,” said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR.
Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are outsourcing companies, not "body shops". Body shops are staffing companies - they are mostly American and run out of places like Edison.
Re: H-1B visa shift may favor tech companies
#4> The Department of Homeland Security wants to switch the order of these lotteries, it said in a notice of the proposed rule change, which would — somewhat counterintuitively — improve the odds for those highly educated workers > ... with a master’s or doctoral degree from an American college or university This is a welcome change. But this biases the playing field in favor of those graduating from American degree mi…
Staffing companies should get no H1 visas at all. They are the biggest abusers.
Re: H-1B visa shift may favor tech companies
#5> The Department of Homeland Security wants to switch the order of these lotteries, it said in a notice of the proposed rule change, which would — somewhat counterintuitively — improve the odds for those highly educated workers > ... with a master’s or doctoral degree from an American college or university This is a welcome change. But this biases the playing field in favor of those graduating from American degree mi…
>But this biases the playing field in favor of those graduating from American degree mills.
Undergrad is very expensive in the US, even at some public universities. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this put American graduates at a disadvantage?
If I attend a US public university and pay via loans, I'm now competing for a job with Indian and Chinese students who completed a graduate program (anecdotally, these candidates are preferred by HR and sometimes hiring managers). Alternatively, the US student can stay in school for a grad degree and take on more debt.
That's the general pattern I've seen at the big tech companies anyway. Person A is from some tiny school in the Midwest and wanted to work here but never even got an interview after graduating. Person B is from Hyderabad who just graduated with a masters CS degree and is a new hire on the team.
To be clear - I'm not arguing against immigration or blaming foreign students at all.
I have observed that people in the category B rank are willing to take less pay and deal with a ton more bullshit (politics, grind, etc.) because it's not as easy to switch employers on their visa status. Some of these kids are brilliant, others are extremely ordinary, but they got the interview and the kid from the Arkansas school didn't.
Re: H-1B visa shift may favor tech companies
#6It might decrease the chances for outsourcing shops. But it also decreases the chance for everyone else who has not studied in the US. E.g. myself (european degree, with various jobs at leading tech companies in their field) would have an even worse chance than it is already at the moment.
Re: H-1B visa shift may favor tech companies
#7> The Department of Homeland Security wants to switch the order of these lotteries, it said in a notice of the proposed rule change, which would — somewhat counterintuitively — improve the odds for those highly educated workers > ... with a master’s or doctoral degree from an American college or university This is a welcome change. But this biases the playing field in favor of those graduating from American degree mi…
Staffing companies should get no H1 visas at all. They are the biggest abusers.
The key problem is that the visa is given to the company, not the person, leaving the employee at the mercy of the company, leading to abuses like underpay and overwork in even direct jobs. If you lose your job, you lose your green card application if it's not past a certain stage and may have to leave the country immediately in case of layoffs, being fired. The rules are byzantine and a bureacratic nightmare with long processing delays.
The Trump administration even tried to make it so that if you're working legally while waiting on your extension visa(can take more than 8 months) and it happens to get rejected, they will report you to ICE for deportation proceedings calling the period you worked legally as being illegal, creating a Catch-22 where you're accruing illegal stay after you have to stop working, but cannot leave the country because you're waiting for a court date, since not showing up in a court is another new crime in itself. You have to live without a salary and being able to work at all, and the immigration courts are overloaded and once you accrue 6 months of illegal stay, you can be banned from entering the US for 10 years on any visa.
If you think that sounds too ridiculous to be true, read this:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2018/07/11/new-u...
This is the reason that many talented folks prefer to work for companies on a contract through a staffing company that holds the visa that allows for easier job hopping without losing your chance of getting a green card, or getting fired on Friday and accruing illegal stay starting from Saturday. Otherwise, why would you give away 40% to >50% of your hourly rate to a middleman?
In this new environment, if you somehow get caught in an ICE raid while selling your car for pennies and puting all your belongings that dont fit in luggage in the dumpster or whilepacking your bags, you might get shipped to jail inspite of not violating a single law before you got fired.
The companies oppose these fixes because they will less leverage over their employees on visas and they might job hop more if underpaid or overworked.
Fix these problems instead of creating weird custom rules against staffing companies and the problem will fix itself for the most part.
Re: H-1B visa shift may favor tech companies
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Staffing companies should get no H1 visas at all. They are the biggest abusers.
The key problem is that the visa is given to the company, not the person, leaving the employee at the mercy of the company, leading to abuses like underpay and overwork in even direct jobs. If you lose your job, you lose your green card application if it's not past a certain stage and may have to leave the country immediately in case of layoffs, being fired. The rules are byzantine and a bureacratic nightmare with lo…
Even if you give the visa to the employee, now you run the risk of employers sizing up an employee's status (are they a citizen or an immigrant who needs a job to stay in the country) and hiring or offering salaries based on that. It'll still lead to the wrong behaviors.
Citizenship questions are illegal but still get asked. Are you going to outlaw asking about an employee's immigration status? Good luck enforcing that.
Re: H-1B visa shift may favor tech companies
#9Why not just go to an auction system, where the group that is going to give the highest salary gets the visa? You could adjust it for CoL so all H1Bs don't end up in SF and NYC. What would be bad about this system?
Re: H-1B visa shift may favor tech companies
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
The key problem is that the visa is given to the company, not the person, leaving the employee at the mercy of the company, leading to abuses like underpay and overwork in even direct jobs. If you lose your job, you lose your green card application if it's not past a certain stage and may have to leave the country immediately in case of layoffs, being fired. The rules are byzantine and a bureacratic nightmare with lo…
Even if you give the visa to the employee, now you run the risk of employers sizing up an employee's status (are they a citizen or an immigrant who needs a job to stay in the country) and hiring or offering salaries based on that. It'll still lead to the wrong behaviors. Citizenship questions are illegal but still get asked. Are you going to outlaw asking about an employee's immigration status? Good luck enforcing th…
My point is that it will make it easier for employees stuck in a bad spot due to employee abuse to switch jobs. Lets say they join the company you cite and the boss dumps 80 hours a week worth of work every week and doesn't pay overtime. Currently it's a huge hassle and risky to switch jobs, so that employee may continue thus hurting the job market. If you give the employee the visa, they can shop around for jobs like citizens and the company they left will have to find someone else to replace them, hopefully at better market rates this time.
The biggest leverage the companies have on immigrant labor is the threat of being fired and deported, if you make that less costly and not turn their life upside down in a day, the problem will be lessened and make the job market more fair and competitive for everyone looking for jobs, and also greatly hurt staffing companies. It also lets the employee say "No." more easily when asked to work 80 hours for the fourth week in a row with no extra pay. This is the reason companies lobby against making this happen.