H-1B Visas: U.S. Lawmaker Re-Introduces Bill to Tighten Rules

As others have mentioned in the comments, today H1B is basically indentured servitude visa. While theoretically you can move to another job, few people dare, especially if they have families, because in case of any screwup whatsoever, you have to leave the country within 2 weeks. That's _insane_. When I was H1-B I chose to wait until I got the green card before making any moves. That took 8 years, during which I did not quite made the kind of career progress I was hoping for. Now that I'm not an H1B, _magically_ I have no problems whatsoever with advancing my career. What a bizarre coincidence.

And I'm not Asian, for Asians it takes longer than that. Another type of abuse you often see (and that was the case with me) is companies hire a very experienced worker in a much lower level position than he ought to be in, considering the experience, and then keep them there until they either work up the courage to move, or get the green card.

The _real_ fix for this should be two fold:

1. Allow H1Bs to move more freely between jobs. If you're a programmer, you should be able to move into e.g. DevOps or Data Science, or DB administration without risking that some bureaucrat decides that's not an eligible transition.

2. Allow more time for them to do so, so they don't have to find another job before leaving their current one. Six months to a year ought to be enough. Implement a cliff of e.g. 1 year to make this more fair to employers if need be, but don't kick families out of the country in 2 weeks just because the breadwinner can't tolerate the abuse anymore.

This will make the market for H1B workers price-competitive with native workers (since they will be able to command market rates given their levels of experience), and DRAMATICALLY reduce abuse. That's literally all that needs to be done. This will also make it easier for people just out of school to get well paid jobs that would today be taken by overqualified and underpaid H1Bs, because the employer will not be able to exploit their ignorance of the job market for long.

Instead they are proposing some tactical bullshit that will only get in the way of a more comprehensive reform that the Trump administration might (or might not, the election is over) come up with.

Shouldn't this be first class evidence that there is no shortage of barbers or teachers? If there were a shortage then you would pay them more.

May be thats because no one really speaks about dark-side of Indian body-shops. Students are attracted by (initial) high-pay and on-site chances etc. It will take at-least 3 or 4 years to realize the mistake of joining outsourced services industry. By then its too late to leave the company - because all these years they execute some batch jobs and worked in excel sheets.

Only option is either completely quit IT & do some other business or go for higher-studies & hope for better future. I assume less than 1% may quit, 10-20% will give high-studies a try while rest of them stuck due to lack of courage or/and personal/family commitments.

Think about companies that are far from any cities, they may not find lot of developers and they can't even hire H1B workers unless they pay 100K, why may be a lot more than average labor wages. So, it would be more expensive for businesses.

The same would be the case for proposed bill to introduce bidding system. It just gets expensive for the businesses far from cities.

Removing the country quotas for the green cards is the fix needed. People are tied to the employer now waiting years working low wages. Remove the country quotas or at least give EAD - that encourages people to move if an employer pays low salary.