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H-1B: Government issues first-ever official estimate of visa population in U.S.

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Re: H-1B: Government issues first-ever official estimate of visa population in U.S.

#11

Post by ReptileMan »

vsskanth wrote: post #8
Jach wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTA: Citizenship and Immigration said in its report that coming up with a number for H-1Bs living in the U.S. “is complex, as no electronic data system tracks or houses this information.” A scream emoji seems appropriate...

Of course it exists. It's called an I-94. DHS has that info. Every single foreigner is assigned a unique alien number and tracks your entry and exit into the country. They just don't want to deal with connecting information from two different departments.

With so many types of data collected, one shudders to imagine what will happen if they discover the join sql statement.

Re: H-1B: Government issues first-ever official estimate of visa population in U.S.

#12

Post by rpiguy »

The H-1B program is terrible and needs to be reformed. It is supposed to temporarily shore up the supply of critically skilled workers that are in demand.

While it does this, when the program was envisioned no one imagined H-1B visa holders working here for 10+ years.

If only there were a word for the importation of minority labor and locking them into employment with their sponsor, effectively reducing their negotiating power for salary to zero...

Not to mention by artificially suppressing H-1B salaries over time, it puts negative wage pressure on US workers in similar positions.

I believe H-1B workers should be offered green cards if they are here for more than 2-3 years, so they can negotiate on equal footing with US citizens.

Re: H-1B: Government issues first-ever official estimate of visa population in U.S.

#13

Post by [deleted] »

vikramkr wrote: post #5
jypepin wrote: post #2

"estimate"? How can they not know exactly how many people have H1bs?

They know how many have h1bs, but not how many of them are actually in the US. Which is just amazing. We need to bend over and let them take our privacy away so they can fight the terrorists apparently, but the same government doesnt even keep track of how many h1b holders are in the country? If the data of who every citizen is calling on their phones is so important for national security- how is it not worth the gov…

[deleted]

Re: H-1B: Government issues first-ever official estimate of visa population in U.S.

#14

Post by arcticbull »

vsskanth wrote: post #8
Jach wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTA: Citizenship and Immigration said in its report that coming up with a number for H-1Bs living in the U.S. “is complex, as no electronic data system tracks or houses this information.” A scream emoji seems appropriate...

Of course it exists. It's called an I-94. DHS has that info. Every single foreigner is assigned a unique alien number and tracks your entry and exit into the country. They just don't want to deal with connecting information from two different departments.

Strictly speaking that's insufficient as crossing from the US into Canada by land doesn't invalidate your I-94. They do need to join it against a bunch of other data -- which they do have.

Re: H-1B: Government issues first-ever official estimate of visa population in U.S.

#15

Post by arcticbull »

rpiguy wrote: post #12

The H-1B program is terrible and needs to be reformed. It is supposed to temporarily shore up the supply of critically skilled workers that are in demand. While it does this, when the program was envisioned no one imagined H-1B visa holders working here for 10+ years. If only there were a word for the importation of minority labor and locking them into employment with their sponsor, effectively reducing their negotia…

> If only there were a word for the importation of minority labor and locking them into employment with their sponsor, effectively reducing their negotiating power for salary to zero...

It really doesn't do that. To be fair, H-1Bs are supposed to be in-demand specialty workers, to meet the spirit of the program. That means they have, by definition, negotiating power. I've spent a lot of time in H-1 status and I have definitely negotiated my compensation -- with both current and prospective employers.

This data is available for you to search, and it's all public record. You can find my salary in the database. [1]

[1] https://h1bdata.info/

Re: H-1B: Government issues first-ever official estimate of visa population in U.S.

#16

Post by jacobriis »

Looks like about 25% of software developers (broadly defined) are on H1B visas.

254k/365k of H1B petitions in 2017 were for computer occupations (those are predominantly in software development and computer programming). If we assume the proportion of actual workers is similar to petitions, we would assume there are about 400k H1B workers in software. About 1.5 million were employed in software development and computer programming 2018.

Re: H-1B: Government issues first-ever official estimate of visa population in U.S.

#17

Post by xxpor »

rpiguy wrote: post #12

The H-1B program is terrible and needs to be reformed. It is supposed to temporarily shore up the supply of critically skilled workers that are in demand. While it does this, when the program was envisioned no one imagined H-1B visa holders working here for 10+ years. If only there were a word for the importation of minority labor and locking them into employment with their sponsor, effectively reducing their negotia…

I agree with you generally, but I think you might just be a missing a piece of the puzzle. For folks from countries that don't have a large backlog, you can get a green card in something like 3 or 4 years today.

But if you're from somewhere with a large backlog (e.g. India and China) you're looking at a decade+.

So the real issue here is the green card quota levels, not so much the h1b itself.

Re: H-1B: Government issues first-ever official estimate of visa population in U.S.

#18

Post by arcticbull »

xxpor wrote: post #17
rpiguy wrote: post #12

The H-1B program is terrible and needs to be reformed. It is supposed to temporarily shore up the supply of critically skilled workers that are in demand. While it does this, when the program was envisioned no one imagined H-1B visa holders working here for 10+ years. If only there were a word for the importation of minority labor and locking them into employment with their sponsor, effectively reducing their negotia…

I agree with you generally, but I think you might just be a missing a piece of the puzzle. For folks from countries that don't have a large backlog, you can get a green card in something like 3 or 4 years today. But if you're from somewhere with a large backlog (e.g. India and China) you're looking at a decade+. So the real issue here is the green card quota levels, not so much the h1b itself.

> For folks from countries that don't have a large backlog, you can get a green card in something like 3 or 4 years today.

If you've got a motivated employer you can get it done in 18 months.

- PERM takes 6-9 months to prepare.

- PERM takes 120 days to certify currently.

- I-140, I-485, I-765, I-131 and I-693 can be filed simultaneously for rest-of-world.

- I-140 with premium processing takes 1-15 days (3-12 months without).

- I-485 takes 8-14 months, but after 180 days you're AC21 portable.

Re: H-1B: Government issues first-ever official estimate of visa population in U.S.

#19

Post by gruez »

baggy_trough wrote: post #4
Jach wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTA: Citizenship and Immigration said in its report that coming up with a number for H-1Bs living in the U.S. “is complex, as no electronic data system tracks or houses this information.” A scream emoji seems appropriate...

You want the government to be more effective and efficient at tracking people?

They already:

* have access to your internet usage, search history, and phone records

* track our location through cellphones

* have surveillance cameras everywhere, in case you didn't bring your phone

* track where your cars is through a vast network of ANPRs

* fly drones/planes over cities doing aerial surveillance

And you think that tracking the number of H1B visa holders is too much?

Re: H-1B: Government issues first-ever official estimate of visa population in U.S.

#20

Post by jacobriis »

xxpor wrote: post #17
rpiguy wrote: post #12

The H-1B program is terrible and needs to be reformed. It is supposed to temporarily shore up the supply of critically skilled workers that are in demand. While it does this, when the program was envisioned no one imagined H-1B visa holders working here for 10+ years. If only there were a word for the importation of minority labor and locking them into employment with their sponsor, effectively reducing their negotia…

I agree with you generally, but I think you might just be a missing a piece of the puzzle. For folks from countries that don't have a large backlog, you can get a green card in something like 3 or 4 years today. But if you're from somewhere with a large backlog (e.g. India and China) you're looking at a decade+. So the real issue here is the green card quota levels, not so much the h1b itself.

Or just also quota H1B.
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