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Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

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Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#451

Post by yowlingcat »

ravila4 wrote: post #434

I feel like this thread has a lot of bias coming from bad experiences in the computer science field. While I do understand the bad practices of many tech companies, I think the picture is very different when you look at careers in other STEM fields, such as biology, chemistry, and physics. H1B visas are very important for foreign students in these fields particularly those hoping to pursue careers in academia. H1B vi…

> It is convenient for the country to attract and retain their talent, of which there is currently a shortage.

I think this subtle misdirection is how the lie gets slipped in. It's not that there is a shortage for talent. It's that there is a shortage for talent available at the price point that corporations want. Does that mean we should create an indentured servitude system to make that available?

The whole idea of artificially creating an immigration system expressly for those willing to get exploited is pretty distasteful to me and harkens back to a bunch of other distasteful ways this country used to procure its cheap labor. The bandaid has to be pulled off at some point. People will get hurt in the process. But if this isn't rectified now, even more suffering will occur in the future.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#452

Post by mdorazio »

cactus2093 wrote: post #142
jedberg wrote: post #9

Credit where credit is due, this is a good move. The H1B program has been abused for a long time. It sounds like these changes should help make it too expensive for the fraudulent abuse to continue.

Genuine question, what type of fraudulent abuse are you referring to? I see this vaguely mentioned a lot without much to back it up, but I'm open to the idea that it happens. From my own anecdotal experience, I'll admit I have found the rules to be a little ridiculous. Company needs to post a sign in the office advertising the role to any Americans, wait a certain amount of time, and only then can offer it to an H1-B…

Another semi-fraudulent practice I've seen too often: find an H1B worker for a position you want to fill at a sub-US labor rate, then write a very specific job posting that perfectly fits that one H1B worker and no one else, and post the job only on the company website where no one will find it. Congratulations, you've just "proven" that you can't find an American worker to do this job, so you bring the H1B worker over as basically an indentured servant. In reality, there were plenty of American workers who could have and would have taken the role if it was represented properly and actually paid a competitive market salary.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#453

Post by ycombonator »

victor106 wrote: post #46

I finally agree with something this administration is doing. This is a solid move. H1B has been/is being abused by all companies (big and small) for a number of years at the cost of not only American workers but also the visa holders. The only ones benefiting are the companies that sponsor H1B visas by suppressing wages for everyone. I just hope the new administration don't role back these changes. Typically when a n…

The new administration will absolutely roll back these changes to kowtow to pro immigration groups and wage sensitive Silicon Valley. Obama administration expanded the coverage of H1B to their spouses (H4 dependents) who previously were ineligible to work. https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#454

Post by phonebanshee »

jedberg wrote: post #95
jopsen wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will an executive order (which I assume this is) actually make any difference? Doesn't it take an act of congress to make any serious headway here? Personally, I was an H1B a 4.5 years before Trump convinced it was time to leave. I was in the bay area and handsomely overpaid. I have no personal experience of it being abused, but I'm obviously privileged, having worked at reputable tech companies and coming from reaso…

This is a rule in the Federal Register. So it's basically like law. It's essentially how the executive is interpreting the laws that congress has passed. There is a rule that says a new President can automatically overturn all rules made in the last 90 days of the previous administration, but we're before that deadline, so this is pretty much a done deal. If the next admin wanted to change this, they have to go throu…

Or change the law. Not particularly likely with power shared between two parties of course.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#455

Post by kinkrtyavimoodh »

notJim wrote: post #94

I feel like rather than pitting immigrants against native born workers, and trying to come up with the perfect arcane rule, we should have sectoral bargaining where the workers could negotiate pay standards directly with their employers. Then it wouldn't matter where someone is from, because they'd be covered by that contract, and the government could get out of the way of the labor market.

What is this even supposed to mean? We already have bargaining between workers and employees. When you have a larger labor pool, market forces will obviously shift the market towards lower wages in the absence of government intervention.

People who oppose H1B oppose it because they think that foreign workers should not be allowed to enter the labor pool thereby depressing the wages.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#457

Post by la6471 »

ummonk wrote: post #447
ravila4 wrote: post #434

I feel like this thread has a lot of bias coming from bad experiences in the computer science field. While I do understand the bad practices of many tech companies, I think the picture is very different when you look at careers in other STEM fields, such as biology, chemistry, and physics. H1B visas are very important for foreign students in these fields particularly those hoping to pursue careers in academia. H1B vi…

If their projects are that important we should be spending more on them so they meet the minimum pay requirements.

Did Covid not teach us anything? How long do you think it will take for your job to be offshored? Maybe few years? This will give incentive to increase offshoring to the companies. Mind you - offshoring is not equal to outsourcing. If you work for a Global company like Google or GE - good luck. Stopping immigration is like stopping oxygen ... this economy will slowly stagnate and be overtaken by other more efficient economies. Either you try to dial back time and go back to the 40s with no globalization OR you have to push forward with globalization to level the playing field for all countries wether it is a developed or emerging country and achieve a parity in salary which makes the American workers competitive in the Global scale. Do we have the guts to make the second choice because certainly we cannot go back to the 40s and aim for global dominance via WW3.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#458

Post by jb775 »

nrmitchi wrote: post #126
commandlinefan wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> under pay them, the worker would just get another job that pays market rate Then the employer would go back to the H1B well, underpay another worker for 6 months until the worker bailed, go back to the well, lather, rinse, repeat.

Applications for an H1B open up in April, IIRC are accepted for a short period of time, and are not actually granted until October. That is 6 months, plus a couple thousand dollars minimum, to try to get an H1B status for someone you want to hire. If an employer is knowingly expecting the person they hire to bail after 6 months, they won't go through the process.

A couple thousand dollars per H1B hire-attempt is nothing to a big business, especially if they're eventually able to pay each H1B worker a fraction of what they'd need to pay an equally qualified American worker.

Worst case scenario for the business: they lose a couple thousand dollars and a few months of employee development time, then still have the option to immediately hire the qualified American worker (or try the H1B route again).

Best case scenario for the business: they get an overqualified employee at an extreme discount, since that employee is willing to accept less just to be in America. Since that employee knows it's hard to get H1B status, they're probably willing to work for a discount for many years. (therefore the business makes its money back from other failed H1B attempts, and they retain the employee at a discount)

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#459

Post by harichinnan »

908B64B197 wrote: post #25

This is a great move. The current H1B program made no sense at all. If I wanted to hire: A smart graduate from EPFL, Polytechnique or ETH Zurich who interned at CERN and has contributed to the Linux kernel for a software engineering job at a unicorn startup or A grad from a second tier "technical college" in India with a visa refusal rate of ~90% for a job doing manual UI testing and QA for a body shop my only path f…

There are two issues here. American companies need workers with multiple skillsets. Your one app startup that thrives on user unwittingly selecting location on might need a highly qualified European graduate with experience at CERN. But the average utility company needs help maintaining their database and make sure they are billing users correctly. They would need a QA tester from India. There's a real shortage of those jobs too in America. You could argue against work visas and wait for 400K Wall Street exceutives switching to testing jobs. You could imagine a market where software engineers are paid Google salaries at utilities. But overall poor people would suffer at the expense of few highly paid developers.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#460

Post by WillPostForFood »

ravila4 wrote: post #434

I feel like this thread has a lot of bias coming from bad experiences in the computer science field. While I do understand the bad practices of many tech companies, I think the picture is very different when you look at careers in other STEM fields, such as biology, chemistry, and physics. H1B visas are very important for foreign students in these fields particularly those hoping to pursue careers in academia. H1B vi…

bias coming from bad experiences in the computer science field

https://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2020-H1B-Visa-Category.as...

It isn't bias, just look at the H1B distribution, it heavily biased to the CS/IT space. Like for every possible biologist you are imagining, there probably 100 IT/CS guys coming in. I'd love to have the biologists and chemists come in, but the big IT consultancies are massively abusing the system, and that needs to get fixed first.

Look at the top company sponsors, not STEM fields like biology, chemistry, and physics. It is entirely software.

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