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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

#11

Post by lazaroclapp »

The problem with suggesting that the salary bar be set at the median of the lifetime salary, is that it does mean closing the door to current international students in the U.S., and to recent graduates recruited from universities abroad. The minimum bar for an immigrant should not be that they are better than half the people already employed here in their field, regardless of their stage in life. And, of course, most people immigrate when they are young and without kids.

If you truly believe that H-1B should exist only for truly extraordinary talent, not available in the U.S. at any salary, this might be a reasonable proposal. But the thing is, there is already a program for extraordinary talent, the O-1 and EB-1 categories. If you instead believe that it should be possible for companies to get the best talent, regardless of where they happen to have been born, and for people to work abroad from their nations of birth, then the H-1B program can't be quite that stringent. It is a skilled workers program, and H-1B workers are skilled. It is not a genius engineer only program.

Now, if your proposal is to change green card process so that employers can't hold people hostage over it, or to institute controls that companies can't underpay H1-B workers on average, that's one thing. But in the current political climate the suggestions seems to be "all foreigners must go! exceptions made for super stars". If the U.S. is truly becoming that closed, I genuinely think that, over time, it will find the best technology being developed elsewhere (maybe not at the research lab level if it keeps the O-1/EB-1 programs, but at the industrial/software innovation level for sure). Either in the countries that welcome immigration of skilled professionals (e.g. Canada, Germany, Singapore) or those with large pools of human capital to being with (e.g. China and India).

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

#12

Post by scdoshi »

jordanb wrote: post #10
scdoshi wrote: post #7

Okay, so obviously, an employment based visa program does create conflicts of interest and in general, is not good for the immigrant employee, compared to a non employment based visa. However, the claim that immigrant employees are somehow not as good as their American counterparts is based on shoddy logic. The criteria he uses in his paper to measure this: - high salary - high rate of patent production - Ph.D. disse…

The argument isn't that they're not as good as their American peers. The argument is that they're not exceptionally better than their American peers. The stated purpose of the visa program is to bring people in who can do work nobody else can do. But what happens is that companies bring in tons of perfectly ordinary people to do perfectly ordinary work because they want people who are cheaper, younger, and easier to…

Okay, but he's basing this argument on his paper, where he sets out to show that immigrants are in fact, not exceptional.

However, if you believe my reasoning, then he isn't really measuring anything. So, we don't know if immigrants are exceptional or ordinary or worse. Or at least not based on his paper.

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

#13

Post by Terr_ »

webmaven wrote: post #3

As headlines go, this one elicits a "Duh." However, the HN version of the headline omits "Trump is Right:", which I suppose is attention grabbing, especially from an outlet like HuffPo.

> As headlines go, this one elicits a "Duh."

Well, whenever something isn't being done about X, that implies headlines saying "X!" probably aren't quite "duh" enough.

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

#14

Post by lazaroclapp »

jordanb wrote: post #10
scdoshi wrote: post #7

Okay, so obviously, an employment based visa program does create conflicts of interest and in general, is not good for the immigrant employee, compared to a non employment based visa. However, the claim that immigrant employees are somehow not as good as their American counterparts is based on shoddy logic. The criteria he uses in his paper to measure this: - high salary - high rate of patent production - Ph.D. disse…

The argument isn't that they're not as good as their American peers. The argument is that they're not exceptionally better than their American peers. The stated purpose of the visa program is to bring people in who can do work nobody else can do. But what happens is that companies bring in tons of perfectly ordinary people to do perfectly ordinary work because they want people who are cheaper, younger, and easier to…

But is the H1-B really for "exceptionally better than"? Isn't that what O-1 is for? H1-B is for "highly skilled workers in an area in which there is strong demand for highly skilled workers". Where, at the time the program was created, highly skilled probably meant anyone with a college degree on the same area as their work.

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

#15

Post by neltnerb »

lazaroclapp wrote: post #11

The problem with suggesting that the salary bar be set at the median of the lifetime salary, is that it does mean closing the door to current international students in the U.S., and to recent graduates recruited from universities abroad. The minimum bar for an immigrant should not be that they are better than half the people already employed here in their field, regardless of their stage in life. And, of course, most…

Is your concern about the talent/bidding argument, or the "limited number" part? Because it seems to me that if you relax the latter, the prior is much less an issue.

I dunno, I say the more the merrier. There's lots of problems to solve, may as well solve them here.

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

#16

Post by guard-of-terra »

jordanb wrote: post #8
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…

L visas are abused like crazy but there are important differences, namely that a company has to employ you for a certain amount of time offshore and that you can not work offsite in the USA. The first rule means they're only available for international companies and the second means they don't work for outsourcing firms. Usually when people talk about the "H1b" debate they're talking about the whole constellation of…

We're in XXI century, so I think it's trivial to make your company international if you ever have something to gain from it.

> can not work offsite

Can you elaborate what's officially permitted and what is not? Because wikipedia is unclear on the subject and refers to legalese that I have no hope of understanding.

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

#17

Post by lazaroclapp »

neltnerb wrote: post #15
lazaroclapp wrote: post #11

The problem with suggesting that the salary bar be set at the median of the lifetime salary, is that it does mean closing the door to current international students in the U.S., and to recent graduates recruited from universities abroad. The minimum bar for an immigrant should not be that they are better than half the people already employed here in their field, regardless of their stage in life. And, of course, most…

Is your concern about the talent/bidding argument, or the "limited number" part? Because it seems to me that if you relax the latter, the prior is much less an issue. I dunno, I say the more the merrier. There's lots of problems to solve, may as well solve them here.

The limited number mostly. I think H-1B reform was a good idea under the previous administration, and that better rules for green card processes, salaries, etc. could make it fairer on both foreign-born and U.S.-born employees, and remove the incentives for employers to strongly prefer one over the other all else being equal (which, btw, implicitly favors people already here, but not overwhelmingly so). But I also feel that right now the U.S. political climate is headed towards pretty strong xenophobia as state policy and that re-examining the H-1B program right now will likely lead to it being quite hostile to foreign-born employees and might end up not even benefiting local employees either on the long run.

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

#19

Post by sleepingeights »

lazaroclapp wrote: post #11

The problem with suggesting that the salary bar be set at the median of the lifetime salary, is that it does mean closing the door to current international students in the U.S., and to recent graduates recruited from universities abroad. The minimum bar for an immigrant should not be that they are better than half the people already employed here in their field, regardless of their stage in life. And, of course, most…

> If you truly believe that H-1B should exist only for truly extraordinary talent

Second to last paragraph:

"Employers claim that they hire H-1Bs for rare skill sets or outstanding talent ― traits that they would need to pay a premium for on the open market. Yet current law requires only that they pay the average wage. Worse, it is the average wage within one of those four experience levels. Instead, we should replace this with a single wage floor set at the 75th percentile of the overall wage distribution for the given occupation and region."

Silicon Valley is actively exploiting H1Bs and antagonizing and attacking US born/educated workers just to justify bringing in a cheaper labour force of lower skilled workers from India and China.

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

#20

Post by lazaroclapp »

sleepingeights wrote: post #19
lazaroclapp wrote: post #11

The problem with suggesting that the salary bar be set at the median of the lifetime salary, is that it does mean closing the door to current international students in the U.S., and to recent graduates recruited from universities abroad. The minimum bar for an immigrant should not be that they are better than half the people already employed here in their field, regardless of their stage in life. And, of course, most…

> If you truly believe that H-1B should exist only for truly extraordinary talent Second to last paragraph: " Employers claim that they hire H-1Bs for rare skill sets or outstanding talent ― traits that they would need to pay a premium for on the open market. Yet current law requires only that they pay the average wage. Worse, it is the average wage within one of those four experience levels. Instead, we should repla…

Rare skillset or outstanding talent can be interpreted at different levels in so far as how strong an statement that is. As a percentage of the population, software engineers have a rare skillset, and there is no employment crisis in the field that requires protectionist measures to keep people with said skillset from mass unemployment. The system you are proposing would end with companies having to hire significantly over 25% of their workforce locally. That's not "favoring skilled U.S. workers over lower skilled workers from abroad", that is "restricting our talent pool to 5% of the world population for the most part". You might chose to legislate it thus if you wish, but you would be doing so at your peril.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think the system should incentive not hiring Americans because they can resign with more ease, that is absurd. But on the other hand, I don't think the U.S. really benefits over the long run of having a system where the talent market is strongly distorted by citizenship. Let me put it another way, would you think it is a good idea, if it were legal to do so, if California passed a law saying people born out of state should only be able to work here at 75th percentile overall wage for their occupation?

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