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Laid-Off Americans, Required to Zip Lips on Way Out, Grow Bolder

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Re: Laid-Off Americans, Required to Zip Lips on Way Out, Grow Bolder

#161

Post by jayd16 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #86
nwhybrid wrote: post #77

As a former H1-B worker myself (please put down the pitch-forks :)), I can tell you that regular companies aren't hiring H1-Bs to replace you directly. Instead they contract swarms of us through companies like WiPro and other body shops. This, along with the inability to seek a more fitting job on your own regardless of skill level is the main problem I see. You're essentially shackled to these body shops. You can't…

Your perspective is the one missing from this debate. I don't have a problem with immigration -- my grandparents were all immigrants. I have a problem with this three-tier system of greencards, guest visas and systematic import of undocumented workers. These leech companies are farming exploited quasi-immigrant labor while screwing up the labor market for everyone else. You should be able to come to this country like…

Speaking totally from a selfish standpoint, these policies against immigrants don't make sense for the American worker either.

H1Bs lower the wage of American tech workers because it fills the workforce with those who can't ask for more.

Cracking down on illegal immigrants just forces them underground away from the ability to demand workers rights. This puts the American worker, who demands minimum wage, safe work places and overtime at a disadvantage.

I don't claim to know what the perfect policy is but as it stands the systems are set up to benefit the employer in every case.

Re: Laid-Off Americans, Required to Zip Lips on Way Out, Grow Bolder

#162

Post by Hondor »

HelloMcFly wrote: post #133
CamperBob2 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that you're competing with those unwashed, underprivileged foreign workers whether they work here in the US or not. Our economy is, and should be, global in nature. If we build the wall that some posters in this thread apparently want, we'll find that instead of locking everybody else out, we've locked ourselves in. There is simply no way to ensure that an American engineer is innately more valuable than…

> There is simply no way to ensure that an American engineer is innately more valuable than a Chinese, Indian, Japanese, or African engineer Nobody made any claim of the sort! In fact, I made the opposite: when they enter into a labor market with local considerations (cost of labor, community investments) they should be treated as an equal. Right now, they are not. And one of the primary ways they are not is by being…

I agree that being locked to one employer is a kind of market distortion. Would you say non-compete clauses are too? I know they're not enforceable in California, but other states effectively lock local workers to their company because they're not allowed to move to another company in the same industry within a year or two of quitting.

Should we try to prevent companies from legally hiring local workers with non-compete clauses in their contracts? I think so. And I think it's a bigger issue than immigrants from the point of view of artificial wage distortion. Yet somehow these threads about immigrant workers get a lot more enthusiasm than threads about non-compete, so there's obviously something else to it. And I can't see what else besides the GP's "I'm an American".

Re: Laid-Off Americans, Required to Zip Lips on Way Out, Grow Bolder

#163

Post by onion2k »

rrecuero wrote: post #123
hibikir wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it would also filter out most of the people outside of the Bay Area, New York and Chicago. In Missouri, for instance you aren't paying 100K to someone that isn't pretty darned senior: 65-70K is a competitive salary right out of school around here. So a recent foreign graduate would have to move to the bay. We also have to understand that consulting companies are pretty great options when you want to get a green c…

That's a good point. It would obviously need to be a more complicated system. I think it would be good to prioritize companies like Google, Facebook and the likes but good, honest consulting companies shouldn't be excluded. Factors like innovation, skill scarcity and wage/cost of living can be weighed in. That happened to me. I actually was at Zynga when they closed studios and I needed to start my green card applica…

It doesn't need to be complicated. Just a rule that the employee must be paid a minimum of the median average wage of any similar domestic employees in the company, or the market average if there aren't any.

Re: Laid-Off Americans, Required to Zip Lips on Way Out, Grow Bolder

#164

Post by Hondor »

awinder wrote: post #141
_audakel wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Foreign workers (fw) who work for less $ than the Domestic worker (dw) drive down wages. In this case fw is benefited by making more than they would in native country, while dw makes less than the old rate. Paying old rate generally means dw keeps old rate, while fw makes nothing. This is the inverse where the dw is benefited at the expense of the fw. If all people are equal who should recieve the benift?

What's the utility to people in dw society of providing benefits to fw? This has happened across broad industries and dw through their governments have signed trade deals that usually include retraining for the workers affected. Otherwise, dw and their governments end up subsidizing the costs of corporations making bank which has so little social benefit that it's really not normal to allow it to go on. It's not a fr…

dw's society can produce goods at lower cost than without fw. But really there doesn't need to be any benefit to dw's society unless dw's people consider themselves privileged and deserving a better life than the world's poor simply because they happened to be born into it.

Re: Laid-Off Americans, Required to Zip Lips on Way Out, Grow Bolder

#165

Post by mavelikara »

hibikir wrote: post #118
pm90 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common misconception. It is a very easy process to change jobs on an H1B. The difficult part is the Green Card process, which gets reset (IANAL) and currently getting a green card takes upto 10 years, if you're from India. The problem essentially is that many of these workers either don't know that they can switch jobs, don't have the skills relevant to get another job or, in many cases, have a sort of loya…

The problem is that many of those workers WANT green cards, as getting one while you are an H1 is arguably the most sensible path forward, and chances are that a company that sponsors your green card will make you pay a penalty if you change jobs while the process is going + 1 year. The end result is that You have an H1, but you not only have to restart the green card process (or at least set it back, depending on th…

You can apply for a new green card via the new employer (or any potential employer too). Once you get through to the I-140 stage of your second GC again - provided that the new job is one similar to your previous one - you can use your same place-in-line in the GC as before.

The green card application can get stuck in the bureaucratic backlog for any number of reasons - for years. These delays messes up with your peace of mind in ways you can probably imagine. Internet is full of horror stories about these things. This prevents people from changing jobs, or making any long term plans about buying a house etc.

It is a long-standing request from many people stuck in GC backlogs to not have them go through the _unpredictable_ re-application process, when they switch jobs. This was hinted as part of President Obama's Executive Action on immigration reform.

In a memo[1] dated 11/20/2014, Jeh Johnson (Secretary of Dept. of Homeland Security) stated:

  As you know, our employment-based immigration system is
  afflicted with extremely long waits for immigrant visas, or 
  "green cards," due to relatively low green card numerical limits 
  established by Congress 24 years ago in 1990.
  ...
  To correct this problem, I hereby direct USCIS to take several 
  steps to modernize and improve the immigrant visa process.
But USCIS has not done anything to improve this situation yet. 18 months have passed since Secretary Johnson's original memo, but USCIS has not made any move to grant an EAD to people waiting in long GC backlogs. While everyone rails at politicians, body shops etc, USCIS gets a free pass at continuing their ineptitude.

The latest visa bulletin [2] lists India EB2 priority date as 1st Nov 2004. Let me translate that for people not familiar with the jargon - an immigrant from India who is being granted Green Card now applied on 1st Nov 2004 and s/he already had 5 years industry experience then.

USCIS rarely wastes an opportunity to remind [3] everyone that it receives very little taxpayer money for immigration services and about 95% of it's budget comes from fees. But this self-financing is made possible by leeching off of thousands of legal immigrants for decades. If they could do their assigned jobs properly - providing EAD for immigrants with approved I-140, recapturing unused green card applications from prior years etc - it would have been a huge relief for many immigrants.

[1] Executive Action: Support High-skilled Business and Workers - https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/14_1120...

[2] Visa Bulletin July 2016 - https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/law-and-policy/bul...

[3] USCIS on Twitter - https://twitter.com/USCIS/status/740574919717715968

Re: Laid-Off Americans, Required to Zip Lips on Way Out, Grow Bolder

#166

Post by mavelikara »

ccrush wrote: post #108

Why not ask the recruiter or company you are applying for if they are willing to sponsor or work with an H1B visa (pretend you are in that position) and move on if they say yes. It will be interesting to see how well these companies do when all they can hire are H1B workers. After all, they can only get so many of those visas, and there is only a 30% chance that the application will actually be approved. They do need…

> After all, they can only get so many of those visas, and there is only a 30% chance that the application will actually be approved.

Once an immigrant is granted an H-1B visa, they don't have to go through the lottery process again for the next 6 years. If within that 6 years they apply for a Green Card and reach a certain stage in the processing pipeline, they will get extensions any number of times past the 6 years too.

Re: Laid-Off Americans, Required to Zip Lips on Way Out, Grow Bolder

#167

Post by nopzor »

brendangregg wrote: post #148
nopzor wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't they make sure to transfer their h1b before they resigned from their old job? (And not threaten or complain until the transfer is processed successfully?)

With the IANAL caveat: that helps prevent one type of employee abuse, the "retaliation termination" intended to force an ex-employee out of the country rather than starting their new job. (Which is also the reason why a visa worker who is waiting on the H-1B "transfer" is advised by immigration lawyers not to tell their current employer that they are thinking of leaving, no matter how much they want to.) But, that's…

What other kind of abuse is there that applies specifically to people on h1b, and not to Americans?

Re: Laid-Off Americans, Required to Zip Lips on Way Out, Grow Bolder

#168

Post by xiaoma »

_audakel wrote: post #67
HelloMcFly wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "exploited" is a matter of perspective. Yes, of course. But that doesn't change the fact that companies are systematically exploiting their life context in order to pay them below a fair market wage (in many cases), and in doing so is also exploiting the rest of the workforce to pay them less. Just because someone is happy doesn't mean they aren't being taken advantage of in a systematic, identifiable, and preventa…

How do you define "fair" in fair market wage? If foreign talent = domestic talent and foreign wage = domestic wage; is there a compelling reason to hire foreign? And if being hired = increase worker happiness, than equal pay will decrease foreign worker happiness. If all people are equal than whos happiness should we optimize for?

>If foreign talent = domestic talent and foreign wage = domestic wage; is there a compelling reason to hire foreign?

Yes, it's diversity. Having people with a variety of cultural backgrounds on the same team will sometimes lead to more creative or more robust solutions.

Re: Laid-Off Americans, Required to Zip Lips on Way Out, Grow Bolder

#169

Post by invalidOrTaken »

Hondor wrote: post #160
Clubber wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but US labor and citizens fought generations for those wages. Revolutionary War, Civil War, World Wars, company / labor riots, taxes to subsidize industry, taxes for infrastructure, taxes for education, legal systems, all that. US taxpayers paid for our economy through blood and toil. You don't think high wages just happen because companies feel generous do you?

Does what your ancestors might have done really make you more deserving of a better life? I understand that it gives you more chance of a better life, but just by the luck of the lottery of birth, not by any actual fairness. Did civil war soldiers really know they were fighting for high wages 150 years later? Were taxpayers really choosing to pay tax because they expected it would give their grandkids a higher salary…

>If you don't want other people to use your country, how do you tolerate babies being born? They never contributed anything. They're just like immigrants - appearing and competing with the existing people.

The phrase "grandfathered in" refers to familial relations for a reason.

Re: Laid-Off Americans, Required to Zip Lips on Way Out, Grow Bolder

#170

Post by invalidOrTaken »

_audakel wrote: post #76
awinder wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These companies depress wages for the people that live & work in the US though, not just for the people they displace. The downstream effects on the places impacted mean this is a consequence that ripples through communities of people who live in and support their nation of residence.

Foreign workers (fw) who work for less $ than the Domestic worker (dw) drive down wages. In this case fw is benefited by making more than they would in native country, while dw makes less than the old rate. Paying old rate generally means dw keeps old rate, while fw makes nothing. This is the inverse where the dw is benefited at the expense of the fw. If all people are equal who should recieve the benift?

>If all people are equal who should receive the benefit?

The million dollar question is: which ones are you entrusted to represent?

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