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H-1B: Oracle favored hiring foreign graduates of US colleges over American grads

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Re: H-1B: Oracle favored hiring foreign graduates of US colleges over American grads

#311
post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah like I mentioned, the argument about "best and brightest" isn't really a problem, it is a common point about H-1B but there is always a way in with the O (outstanding) visa. H-1B is for the pretty good developer or when there are labor shortages of certain skills. There is a market need for it but it is also being abused to lower wages and own people undoubtedly. I never said H-1B wasn't needed nor am I against…

>>Yeah like I mentioned, the argument about "best and brightest" isn't really a problem I think you are being uncharitable to your own cause here. If you want to pad $1 trillion to your economy, you are going to have to drain a few millions down the lane. And its absolutely worth it. For some paltry cents and nickels you get to be the most powerful, most wealth super power on earth. Starting a few Google like compani…

> You are guys currently sitting on the world domination throne.

Not really, not the workers. The reason the US is ahead in this is mainly investing, financing, education and credit. I'd also argue America has independence, innovation and disruption embedded in the core, other places squash that via corruption or authoritarian controls.

Nowhere in my statement did I say anything against immigration or temporary workers, I solely blame companies for exploiting it. I like that America attracts people, people want to come and work here for the higher pay and higher quality of life. I'd rather people come here to work for market value not below.

From the OP article, Oracle purposefully abuses the H-1B system to lower wages for not only temporary workers but domestic and immigrant workers as well, to lock them into basically a prison of working just for Oracle at lower wages.

> “These students required work authorization to remain in the United States after graduation,” the Labor Department said in a court filing. “In other words, Oracle overwhelmingly hires workers dependent upon Oracle for sponsorship to remain in the United States. This preference for a workforce that is dependent on Oracle for authorization to work in the United States lends itself to suppression of that workforce’s wages.”

> Of about 500 recent college and university graduates hired into three job categories at Oracle from 2013 to 2016, some 90 percent were Asian, the filing said.

> At the same time, Asians, blacks and women were “systematically underpaid,” according to allegations in the lawsuit, which also claimed that unequal pay cost workers $400 million in lost wages.

> “Industry’s key argument for more cheap H-1B and OPT guest workers is that there’s a shortage of U.S. talent,” Hira said. “That argument completely falls apart in the face of these findings. In fact, the industry is using the visa programs for cheaper guest workers, undercutting U.S. workers, damaging the U.S. talent pipeline, and exacerbating its woeful record on workforce diversity.”

What Oracle is doing is lowering the quality of life for people here, immigrants, and guest workers.

The H-1B system also makes it very hard on small to medium businesses to bring in H-1B due to being locked to one company, allowing them to work for others may solve this and the pay issues.

Right now though the H-1B system is only beneficial to large companies, and most are looking to decrease quality of life or wages. I want even temporary workers to get paid market rate if they take the risks coming here.

What would be your solution to stop companies from abusing the system for the purpose of depressing wages for both domestic and foreign workers?

If you have no solution, understand the companies are the ones breaking this system, not the people seeking opportunity. The employers that abuse H-1B would be happy with a lower quality of life for all, making people more dependent. Noone wants that except the uber wealthy, those are the guys "sitting on the world domination throne". We want people to come here, but if we don't fight for quality of life, the reason people want to come here, people won't want to come here.

Re: H-1B: Oracle favored hiring foreign graduates of US colleges over American grads

#312
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To push the idea furter, a lot of things we call “rights” are privileges in that sense. The basis of most of them is citizenship, which is basically people born in the right place or from the right parents. If you are born in Germany you have the ‘right’ to move anywhere in the EU. If you have Japanese parents you have the ‘right’ to work in Japan. The same way wealthy foreigner will have the means to buy these ‘righ…

I'm on my phone and can't check right now but I'm fairly confident there is global consensus (Geneva convention? or UN or similar) on when/how citizenship is a human right and that there is no such consensus on immigration being a right (modulo refugees), so no, these are not comparable.

Looking around I only found this, which seems to go more in the “open citizenship to everyone” direction:

https://worldinterfaithharmonyweek.com/equal-citizenship-rig...

Or this kind of thinkpiece going basically in the same direction.

https://forestshakespeare.wordpress.com/2011/08/04/citizensh...

I’d be really interested if you could point me to what you were refering to.

Re: H-1B: Oracle favored hiring foreign graduates of US colleges over American grads

#313

Granted that H-1B visas should ostensibly be filled only for positions where it is difficult to find qualified American citizens or permanent residents, but in all honesty are the Department of Labor's allegations really that surprising? In the Bay Area, qualified job candidates are so scarce that it's quite common for citizens/permanent-residents to change jobs frequently. H1-B candidates are attractive for companie…

You did just discuss the difficulty of finding qualified workers without mentioning salary. Yes, talented software developers are scarce at 50k. They even appear to be scarce at 150k/yr. To me, that doesn't signify a shortage, it signifies that employers asked the market for engineers at a particular price point, and the market said no. This isn't a shortage, it's the market's answer, it's the rational decision of people who have freedom to choose their profession in response to market signals, personal preferences, and costs.

The entire point of the H1B visa is to create a pool or workers who are not free to choose their professional path, but are allowed to live in the US only under the work conditions determined by their employer.

Re: H-1B: Oracle favored hiring foreign graduates of US colleges over American grads

#314
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a simpler proposal: anyone from anywhere can come here and take any job. If you leave your job, voluntarily or not, you have 90 days (up from the current grace period of 60 and strict rule of 0) to find another job. If you've been here for a few years you can apply for citizenship, independent of your employer. The primary objection to this is crowding out the labor market, to which I'd say: protectionism does…

The primary objection to that idea is the complete destruction of your country's culture.

To be fair, American culture is the destruction of other cultures if you take a critical eye at American history. It's quite funny to see people so protective of it.

Re: H-1B: Oracle favored hiring foreign graduates of US colleges over American grads

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my point of view - both excluding you from the job market or giving you general purpose work visa are better for the rest of the people in your industry(with second option better for you of course). Than work permit depending on sponsorship. If you are valuable enough to work in US, you are valuable enough to do it as a full market participant without shackles or handicaps.

Exactly. The reason startup salaries are low is that the companies don't have the cash to pay. If they had customers who believed in them they would have cash. If they had investors who believed in them they would have cash. Asking the government to let in someone whose company might eventually make it big enough to pay "the going rate" is asking the government to take a risk -- it's like asking them to invest in the…

Actually, we were very proud of being bootstrapped and not selling stake to an investor. But perhaps that is not a big deal to other people, so I can see your point.

Re: H-1B: Oracle favored hiring foreign graduates of US colleges over American grads

#316
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about ? Most Indians I know on H1B did one and sometimes more job transfers it never came as a problem. Don't believe me, go check LinkedIn. I can point you to atleast a dozen profiles of folks I know personally who did that. H1B is perfectly transferable and I don't know anyone who was worried about moving to/within FAANG because of H1B. Enough hyperbole please. Yes, its frustrating to not get g…

Your spouse can't work on a H1B. I know so many people in this situation and it's really shitty.

Spouses can get their own visa and work.

Spouses were not able to work since the invention of H1B decades ago.

That rule changed only in 2014 and Trump hasn't cancelled it yet despite talking about doing so for almost two years. If he doesn't do it in the next year, chances are spouses will still be able to work without an extra visa.

Re: H-1B: Oracle favored hiring foreign graduates of US colleges over American grads

#317
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was on an h1b, I was making around 60k in the middle of the country, working for an amazing startup where we were ramen profitable. My skill set was highly specialized for the job. However, I couldn’t be a founder due to my visa status and we couldn’t pay each other even basic salaries. But we did some pretty amazing stuff for DARPA, DOD, and eventually some commercial enterprises. You would price out people l…

Nativist implies a racial undertone. I would call it tax-payerist: regardless of your background, the state prioritizes the interests of current tax payers to the detriment of future potential citizens. It's true even for migrants on other types of visas, they should be protected from labour dumping. It's the only way a rich nation can function really, the alternative being open borders and a rapidly decreasing stand…

> future potential citizens

Future potential tax payers. Like myself btw. I am giving so much money to Uncle Sam these days that it makes me sad. I could invest in multiple YC companies with that money.

Re: H-1B: Oracle favored hiring foreign graduates of US colleges over American grads

#318
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, protectionism. If a billion people in India and a billion people in China are competing in global markets, my country's culture isn't going to survive anyway. How is Ottoman culture doing these days? Honestly, how is the British culture of even a century ago doing these days? How long did the Japanese culture so carefully preserved survive Matthew Perry's arrival? (Also as it happens I'm an American-born child…

You're a superficial carrier of American culture. Sure you speak English and consume American media, but you have socialist values which are not American. This is the land of the free, not the land of government-enforced equity and insanely high marginal taxes for the rich. Let me guess, you're anti 2nd amendment? If there were more people who thought like you in America, the country would indeed collapse in on itsel…

No, I'm pro-Second Amendment. Probably more strongly than you: I believe the original purpose of the Second Amendment was to maintain a continuous threat of violent revolution against the government, not to let people hunt deer or whatever, and as a result I believe that the people have a right to own weapons sufficient to win a war against their own government—either by letting the people have a nuclear deterrent, or by disarming the government to the point of having no weapons the people can't have.

Not sure what that has to do with anything, though.

Re: H-1B: Oracle favored hiring foreign graduates of US colleges over American grads

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was on an h1b, I was making around 60k in the middle of the country, working for an amazing startup where we were ramen profitable. My skill set was highly specialized for the job. However, I couldn’t be a founder due to my visa status and we couldn’t pay each other even basic salaries. But we did some pretty amazing stuff for DARPA, DOD, and eventually some commercial enterprises. You would price out people l…

Wow finally someone thinking similarly. Never understood why people think the US owes immigrants (especially skilled ones) anything. If you are truly bright and gifted of course you can make a living in any country! On several occasions I've had my future immigration path clouded and people have always asked me "gosh I bet it's frustrating" but I'm like "not really". I do like the US and would love to continue being…

Yea it’s not worth fretting about the whims of the American political class and neither the American populace. Some people have advantages by accident of birth, but so what.

Cheers to the immigrants who battle the crappy system here with national origin quotas and prioritizing chain migration over the American educated and trained foreigners like us.

I do have my green card but I’ve been contemplating not getting the citizenship because of the anti immigrant sentiment from all sides. Alas, the American passport allows travel more easily so I might just cave - but never vote.

Re: H-1B: Oracle favored hiring foreign graduates of US colleges over American grads

#320

Granted that H-1B visas should ostensibly be filled only for positions where it is difficult to find qualified American citizens or permanent residents, but in all honesty are the Department of Labor's allegations really that surprising? In the Bay Area, qualified job candidates are so scarce that it's quite common for citizens/permanent-residents to change jobs frequently. H1-B candidates are attractive for companie…

> H1-B candidates are attractive for companies because it is harder for them to switch jobs. Companies can lock these employees for longer, and they can pay them less. This is ultimately what it's about. I work as a software engineer in the Bay Area and the number of H1Bs doing the same grunt work coding that I do is astounding. H1Bs were supposed to be for some sort of super specialized work no?

That's why a higher salary should be mandatory. Eg. 140% of a "normal" salary for that function.

It would make companies be more serious about looking for talent elsewhere - such as in their own country.

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