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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.

#31

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

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 don't think incremental reform can work here. As you say, the H-1B is by design a non-immigrant visa. If we want a "I'd like to immigrate to the US for software engineering" visa, we need to design one from scratch; anything jury-rigged on top of the H-1B process is going to be inequitable or unfair somehow.

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

#32

Post by rosensan »

jypepin wrote: post #6
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...

So when a H1b holder enters the US with their H1b, there is no way for the border official to know if it's real? That seems impossible to me.

When you enter the country on an H1B or otherwise do anything related to any visa status, the onus is on you to carry around all relevant and supporting documentation, in physical, original paper form. Visas, passports etc. existed before computers, probably in much the same way as they do today.

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

#33

Post by paulgb »

arcticbull wrote: post #15
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…

I've also had several employers (from a startup to a FAANG) tell me that an H-1B transfer would be no problem. I haven't actually done it, but I don't feel as mobility-impared as people seem to believe I should.

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

#34

Post by novok »

sjs7007 wrote: post #23
arcticbull wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 w…

I think you are missing the point that it's only a pain point for countries with a backlog, not ones without a backlog. 3-4 years in the grand scheme of things is not all that long for gaining PR of a different country.

On top of that, the pain is extra bad for people from India, where the queue wait is effectively infinite. While for Chinese people it's a relatively tractable 5 years last time I checked.

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

#35

Post by monoideism »

arcticbull wrote: post #15
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…

Economists have researched that data, and consistently confirmed what the GP asserted:

"Research by Daniel Costa, of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, and Howard University political science professor Ron Hira, found that 60% of H-1B workers receive lower-than-average wages for their job and region. Google, Facebook and Apple “take advantage of program rules in order to legally pay many of their H-1B workers below the local median wage for the jobs they fill,” Costa and Hira said in an Economic Policy Institute paper."

(from the article above)

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

#36

Post by jen20 »

refurb wrote: post #22
arcticbull wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly. They have the data, but they’d need to link it to a few other sources for it to be complete. The US, unlike Europe (at least in my experience) doesn’t check passports on the way out. They rely on flight manifests or information from Canadian authorities on who has exited.

> unlike Europe

Unlike the Schengen zone, certainly, but some European countries also do not check passports on exit (the UK is a good example).

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

#37

Post by monoideism »

sagarm wrote: post #28
anticonformist wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reforming the H-1B to do what it was intended to do would mean eliminating 99% of the visas that are granted. It turns out that the entire H-1B program has been a massive scam. It was created and promoted by American Big Tech companies to make them money at the expense of American citizens. It's been a trillion dollar theft from lower and middle class Americans into the hands of the 1%. Without the H-1B in place, the…

Those big tech companies already have international offices. Why wouldn't they have just expanded those offices? Investing in education etc is not really the job of companies in our capitalist system. They could not capture enough of the value to justify the cost, especially given the very long lead times.p

> Those big tech companies already have international offices. Why wouldn't they have just expanded those offices?

Because they still want to hire lots of Americans. They just don't want to pay them market prices. So they bring in H1-Bs to lower wages. If they hired them overseas, there wouldn't be that effect:

From the article above:

"Research by Daniel Costa, of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, and Howard University political science professor Ron Hira, found that 60% of H-1B workers receive lower-than-average wages for their job and region. Google, Facebook and Apple “take advantage of program rules in order to legally pay many of their H-1B workers below the local median wage for the jobs they fill,” Costa and Hira said in an Economic Policy Institute paper."

I'd personally like to see the US adopt a systematic and generous immigration system like Canada's. But the H1-B system has mostly been a farce, used as a weapon against American workers. There are exceptions, but overall, it's most benefited the big tech company stockholders.

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

#38

Post by xxpor »

jacobriis wrote: post #20
xxpor wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This assumes the green card quotas are actually solving a problem in the first place.

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

#39

Post by enraged_camel »

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…

When was the last time you traveled outside the USA? Did you notice how Customs and Border Patrol did not check and stamp your passport, like they do for incoming travelers?

Therefore, since there is no way to detect when an H1B worker leaves the country, there is no easy way to estimate the number of H1Bs currently in the country.

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

#40

Post by greatwhitenorth »

corporateslave5 wrote: post #21
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…

As an American worker, I have been discriminated against on majority H1B teams at two separate companies. I have seen the same for other Americans.

I'm an Indian. As a past H1B visa holder, I know that this happens. I've seen people being so biased that they only recruit people from the state they belong to in India.

And, I've come across Americans in bay area who were so pissed off with this that they voted for Trump. The level of politics and discrimination I've seen would make anyone angry.

There are highly skilled people working on H1B but they're a minority. If H1B allows only full time employment and no contract jobs, a lot of abuse will be eliminated.

Edit: Why the downvotes? Truth hurts? This is a known secret throughout the valley.

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