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US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

theregister.com

31–40 of 67 posts

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#31
Seems like this would be a problem for smaller companies (not much cash) and startups (remuneration is stock based).

Large companies can absorb the cost if someone is that important. They can also just employ remotely and do an internal company transfer later (L-something visa).

I mean the big people it screws are those companies that abuse the system - the IT "consulting" companies, that are functionally a market undercutting scam.

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#32

Please forgive me for my lacking knowledge of the US immigration system, but does this mean that folks on H-1B currently waiting for a green card must withdraw their applications the next time their H-1B expires unless their salaries are greater than this threshold? Are there any publicly available numbers on how much of the insane GC backlog (greater than a 100 years for Indian nationals) this might affect?

[Not a lawyer, but a former H1-B and Green Card holder]

1) Under current law, that seems unlikely. The hurdles are mostly to get the first H1-B, renewal is practically automatic.

2) If Trump gets re-elected… well, you may have noticed that he, and some of his closest advisors on immigration, e.g. Stephen Miller, consider capriciousness in immigration policy setting a feature, rather than a bug, so who knows?

3) On the other hand, the US has a somewhat functional legal system, and legal immigrants, once admitted, enjoy the presumption to certain rights, so any action is likely to be tied up in legal proceedings for several years.

4) And let's see what happens today.

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#33
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah - you could see in prior years how most h1bs were allocated to WITCH companies. https://www.uscis.gov/tools/reports-and-studies/h-1b-employe... Since h1b is a lottery system, these companies flooding the system with their applicants at lower salaries was directly impacting the chances of employees at other companies. I anecdotally knew a coworker at a FAANG who failed to get his h1b consecutively for two years i…

You are mixing that up with the Greencard, which is a lottery system. H1B must not be a lottery system, and it must not be a way to offload expensive domestic labor to cheap imported labor. Which the well-known Indian H1B cheating companies did. The minimal wage is mandatory to exclude those abusers of the H1B system, so they it is not overloaded anymore. But 200k is definitely too high for the rest of the US, which…

You are confused.

There is lottery for the Diversity Visa program, but that is not the only path to permanent residency and there is no cap on the number of applications for permanent residency.

The H1-B has always used a lottery when there are more applications than visas. There is a cap on both visas granted and applications. There are three caps: Regular, C/S (treaty obligations with Chile and Singapore), and US Master's (US master's degrees or higher). The USCIS will publish a memo when enough applications are received, closing the application season (normally six months) until next year.

Applicants with a US master's degree (or higher) have two chances to receive an H1-B visa. A lottery is held to award the visas available to master's degree holders, and those not selected are entered in the regular lottery.

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#34
post #14

This is such a terrible idea. Ensures only people on H1 are techies in FAANG in the Bay Area. Forget about doctors and nurses in rural areas

What’s terrible about it? Who needs to import world class talent other than world class companies, working on world class problems?

Let’s take the narrative for the full ride, the mythical unparalleled skilled developer that only exists in these other mystical countries and absolutely could never be found locally, even with remote work within the US being validated. The god-like programmer that must be flown here immediately, for how else will this software be built?

Pay the unicorns, unicorn prices. What’s the issue?

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#36
post #14

This is such a terrible idea. Ensures only people on H1 are techies in FAANG in the Bay Area. Forget about doctors and nurses in rural areas

What’s terrible about it? Who needs to import world class talent other than world class companies, working on world class problems? Let’s take the narrative for the full ride, the mythical unparalleled skilled developer that only exists in these other mystical countries and absolutely could never be found locally, even with remote work within the US being validated. The god-like programmer that must be flown here imm…

“What’s the issue?”

Your belief in unicorns.

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically the administration turned the tables on Big Tech. They primarily import H1Bs to dilute the employment pool to let the market take care of wage depression. Not really, Big Tech pays H1Bs competitive salaries ( https://insights.dice.com/2020/05/19/google-apple-amazon-oth... ). What this mostly affects is IT consulting firms like Tata and Infosys.

Does it though? Prior discussions on this made me aware that H1B is mostly not profitable for the consulting firms. It’s the offshore work where they can severely underpay. So long as a US company can get offshore workers via the consulting firms (their preferred business model), all is well. But ya, we don’t need to import someone doing JavaScript over to America anymore (which, believe it or not, is what I’ve witne…

> But ya, we don’t need to import someone doing JavaScript over to America anymore (which, believe it or not, is what I’ve witnessed). There’s no rhyme or reason to it, we have a solid home grown talent pool for that.

Being able to program language X isn't really the marketable skillset at the high level. You don't hire good javascript programmers. You hire good programmers

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#38
post #14

This is such a terrible idea. Ensures only people on H1 are techies in FAANG in the Bay Area. Forget about doctors and nurses in rural areas

There are other incentives and programs for Doctors. In DR, Dominicans are getting visas to go treat COVID in USA and Spain.

Moreover, I think this is great for the job market and US immigration in general. Hopefully it motivates Americans to pursue these markets.

For those of us who would have considered H1-B previously, this is a great change. You now get to compete without the racket.

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#39
post #31

Seems like this would be a problem for smaller companies (not much cash) and startups (remuneration is stock based). Large companies can absorb the cost if someone is that important. They can also just employ remotely and do an internal company transfer later (L-something visa). I mean the big people it screws are those companies that abuse the system - the IT "consulting" companies, that are functionally a market un…

Why should small companies get subsidized, below market rate programmers?

It’s already pretty expensive in legal fees to sponsor an h1b, so really small companies are already suffering due to big firms.

Software is an industry where size isn’t as important as other industries. A five dev company can do great things and as such can afford market salaries.

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#40
One demographic this policy seems to unintentionally trample is international students. There’s a pretty well-trod path of F1 Visa -> OPT -> (OPT STEM Extension) -> H1B -> (green card, if you’re from the right country). It’s a tall order to expect that all new grads from this path will be able to command such high salaries, and there’s an existing set of international students who have planned their lives on being able to get the H1B before OPT runs out.

In my opinion, we should encourage immigration through our higher-education system (and we have been doing so for decades). I generally agree that the loopholes allowing for below-market H1B roles should be closed, but I think that students/recent graduates should be treated differently. There’s a big difference between sourcing lower-wage foreign workers who don’t already have roots in the USA, and paying entry-level salaries to recent graduates who’ve been living in the US for years already.

Of course, some may take issue with the premise here, and might say that the F1 shouldn’t be issued with intent to immigrate. But I think that’s terrible policy; nearly all of my (uniformly brilliant, top-shelf) friends who came here on F1 had horrendous, soul-crushing experiences with work authorization, even though they provide tremendous value to companies and the country by being here.

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