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US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

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Re: US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

#31

Post by JOnAgain »

nairteashop wrote: post #12

Does anyone know why the number of visas isn't capped on a per-company basis? Last year, apparently 40,000 of the 85,000 available visas went to outsourcing companies, and one outsourcing company, Cognizant, got 9,000 visas! http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/04/03/176134... At my last job, we tried to get an H1 for just one person, and failed in the lottery! I feel there would be much less abuse of the…

Or just rank em by salary/comp. More skilled people => more valuable to the economy => receive higher salary => more likely to get visa (=> pay more in taxes).

Re: US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

#32

Post by volune »

lmg643 wrote: post #3

i recently saw a table of firms awarded these visas. it seemed nuts to me that a large proportion of the visas go to firms whose primary business line is outsourcing in one form or another. i typically think of visas as fulfilling unmet hiring needs for domestic US firms - like Facebook! - but instead see they are largely squirreled away by firms whose primary function is overseas labor cost arbitrage. I would be int…

H1B workers typically work for contracting companies, so that when the work is up (or if they lost their job) they can go to a new company and continue their green card application. The way the government attaches the process to a job really discourages H1B workers from working for US companies as full time employees.

Re: US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

#33

Post by jrockway »

Does it matter? Canada is much more liberal about giving out work visas, so US companies just open offices in Canada and hire the employees there. Meanwhile, Canadians can come work in the US under the TN status, which has no quotas.

All the US gets is less tax revenue.

Re: US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

#36

Post by blub5 »

"In 2013, 124,000 people applied for the combined 85,000 slots in the first five-day period."

Considering that Americans seem to have little difficulty affording computers and software, yet continue to bankrupted by health care costs, wouldn't it make a lot more sense to give those 85k visas to cheap doctors from overseas to drive down medical costs, instead of giving them to cheap foreign programmers to drive down the wages of American developers?

Re: US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

#37

Post by fitzpasd »

suyash wrote: post #8

I"m surprised only 124,000 applications were received. I was expecting the number to cross 200K. It gives more 85,000/124,000 probability which means slightly more than 68% of the people have chances of getting the H1B Visa.

Not quite 68% because there are two categories: 20,000 for advanced degree holders and another 65,000. There is an initial lottery between the advanced degree holders for the 20,000, and then the unsuccessful people go into the regular lottery. Don't know if the figures were released for the number of advanced degree holders who applied, but assuming the cap here was also met, the chances in the main lottery would be 65,000/114,000 = 57%

Re: US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

#38

Post by TeMPOraL »

boomzilla wrote: post #10
lmg643 wrote: post #3

i recently saw a table of firms awarded these visas. it seemed nuts to me that a large proportion of the visas go to firms whose primary business line is outsourcing in one form or another. i typically think of visas as fulfilling unmet hiring needs for domestic US firms - like Facebook! - but instead see they are largely squirreled away by firms whose primary function is overseas labor cost arbitrage. I would be int…

There should be a quota for each company, say less than 500 H1B visas each year. The companies then have the incentive to pick the best candidates. Or there could be different brackets depending on company's sizes.

If the reason for such visa distribution is really the need to outsource paperwork, then introducing the quota you propose would only result in visas going to myriad of smaller outsourcing companies instead of few big ones.

Re: US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

#39

Post by joe_the_user »

tokenadult wrote: post #26

What is that makes the United States such an attractive place to immigrate to for people whose skill sets could take them almost anywhere in the world? (In other words, why is that successive sessions of Congress can basically count on lots of people desiring to live in the United States, thus setting up an environment in which immigration regulation is restrictive rather than open?) (I'm genuinely curious about this…

What evidence do you have that the US is an attractive place at all, relative to other advanced or semi-advanced nations? More applicants than places does not prove that much in a world of scarce jobs.

People are dying, literally drowning in the Mediterranean, to get into Europe. As I know, people still apply to work in Qatar even as they engage in work practices that well be "nothing less than murder"in the process of constructing their World Cup stadiums.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_FIFA_World_Cup#Migrant_wor...

Re: US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

#40

Post by logn »

fsk wrote: post #2

They really should call them "indentured servant slave visas". The H1-B visa holder has to leave the country if he gets fired (and doesn't find a new employer quickly), and if he switches jobs the green card process has to start over. Because the H1-B visa employee is legally bound to the job, he becomes more attractive than hiring a US citizen, (assuming equal salary and qualification).

I don't think calling it slavery is accurate, but indentured servitude is close (except I don't think they experience maltreatment or harsh conditions).

Anyhow, this article is great:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servant

One of the similarities that stuck out to me:

Most white immigrants arrived in Colonial America as indentured servants, usually as young men and women from Britain or Germany, under the age of 21. Typically, the father of a teenager would sign the legal papers, and work out an arrangement with a ship captain, who would not charge the father any money.[10] The captain would transport the indentured servants to the American colonies, and sell their legal papers to someone who needed workers. At the end of the indenture, the young person was given a new suit of clothes and was free to leave. Many immediately set out to begin their own farms, while others used their newly acquired skills to pursue a trade.

The question of legality would come down to whether it's voluntary or involuntary servitude. But as a practical matter, I think it would be good for all people (not companies) if we found a more lenient path to citizenship as it wouldn't put as much downward pressure on salaries and wouldn't make H1-Bs preferable over others, all else being equal.

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