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USCIS announces strengthened integrity measures for H-1B program

uscis.gov

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Re: USCIS announces strengthened integrity measures for H-1B program

#51
post #4

It seems like it would be so easy to fix the H1-B program but no one wants to and I feel like I must be missing something. The purpose of the H1-B is to allow companies to hire foreigners with special skills that can't be found amongst US citizens. So why not just grant H1-Bs to the companies that are willing to pay their talent the most? Let any company apply and list a salary which they have to agree to pay for at…

The thing you're "missing" is that it absolutely is, in practice, about laundering low-wage foreign labor. It's not actually complicated. It's obfuscation of exploitation. Same as it ever was. You're just not supposed to believe that your country is doing that.

A lion's share of H-1Bs go to big tech companies where people make $250k a year or more. And where total comp of $400k+ is common for senior roles, with no regard for visa status.

Yes, it alters market dynamics and the whole reason it's done is that the same skills are not available domestically for that price (or at all) - but talking about "low-wage labor" and "exploitation" as the whole point of the program is pretty rich.

Re: USCIS announces strengthened integrity measures for H-1B program

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lottery ticket price has always been low; you pay the full price once you win the lottery. They're de-duping applications this year (stopping people from buying multiple tickets), and the ticket price will go up next year (to somewhere in the ~$200 range). Raising the ticket price for a lottery is an ass backwards way to solve anything.

No. It was changed for FY 2020. Before that you had to pay in full beforehand with a complete petition and get refunded if you don't get selected. It was quite effective at weeding out non-serious job offers. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/11/08/2019-24...

From what you linked, it looks like it was free earlier, and it became $10. "Moreover, the nominal fee would assist DHS in recovering the cost of administering the electronic registration process. "

Re: USCIS announces strengthened integrity measures for H-1B program

#53
post #4

It seems like it would be so easy to fix the H1-B program but no one wants to and I feel like I must be missing something. The purpose of the H1-B is to allow companies to hire foreigners with special skills that can't be found amongst US citizens. So why not just grant H1-Bs to the companies that are willing to pay their talent the most? Let any company apply and list a salary which they have to agree to pay for at…

The fact that the U.S. immigration system is so obviously broken is the topic on which I am most vulnerable to conspiracy theories. It just makes no sense. From the Southern border to H1-B, it looks designed to anger and disappoint every single stakeholder (excepting the businesses who employ illegal immigrants for poor wages).

An employee with an H1-B is definitionally not an illegal immigrant. H1-Bs are definitionally documented legal workers, the companies using undocumented workers are not companies interested in getting visas.

The solution to the "apparent" scourge of undocumented workers is to make it so that the people running companies the use that undocumented labor are the ones who go to jail, and in the event ICE finds undocumented labor the minimum fine for the company should be a significantly greater than one multiple of the amount the company would have had to pay a documented worker, in addition to ensuring the undocumented workers are fully compensated at the amount a documented worker would have been paid. Threatening to report them to immigration, underpaying, and wage theft are all clear evidence that the company knows they were employing people who were not allowed to work.

That's all that would be needed. Instead of ever more draconian penalties for the undocumented workers - many of whom have lived in the US for essentially their entire lives at this point, and simply don't have a choice - the penalties that should be being increased are the ones that apply to the employers. It's great because it will stop all that evil undocumented labor people claim to hate, because now these employers have to pay the undocumented labor if anything more than documented labor, because undocumented labor can report unsafe or illegal working conditions, come out fully compensated and in addition to those costs the employer has to pay even more in fines, while the managers and executives who knowingly employed said laborers go to jail.

That said as we've seen in Florida, plenty of businesses in America have set themselves up to be unable to operate without violating the law, so when Florida started passing its various "lets punish the workers, but not those that employ them" laws a whole bunch of businesses couldn't handle the idea of capitalism and complained about how they couldn't get any workers.

Re: USCIS announces strengthened integrity measures for H-1B program

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing you're "missing" is that it absolutely is, in practice, about laundering low-wage foreign labor. It's not actually complicated. It's obfuscation of exploitation. Same as it ever was. You're just not supposed to believe that your country is doing that.

A lion's share of H-1Bs go to big tech companies where people make $250k a year or more. And where total comp of $400k+ is common for senior roles, with no regard for visa status. Yes, it alters market dynamics and the whole reason it's done is that the same skills are not available domestically for that price (or at all) - but talking about "low-wage labor" and "exploitation" as the whole point of the program is pre…

> A lion's share of H-1Bs go to big tech companies where people make $250k a year or more. And where total comp of $400k+ is common for senior roles, with no regard for visa status.

Since you're apparently so acquainted with the stats, please enlighten us outsiders: what percentage of H-1B employees make $250K a year or more, and what percentage of H-1B employees make $400K+?

Re: USCIS announces strengthened integrity measures for H-1B program

#56
post #2

I find the entire H-1B program somewhat ridiculously designed. 0. There should be no cap for people who have received higher education degrees in the US. What's the point of educating people and equipping them with everything they need to be successful in the US, advance the US (including creating lots of jobs) and then deporting them right after? 1. There should be no cap for people who are going into STEM, AI, or o…

> There should be no cap for people who have received higher education degrees in the US. Then you're effectively creating a loophole. There would be a proliferation of private schools that accept anyone willing to pay enough $$$ and churn out barely-competent graduates just so that people have a better shot at citizenship. "Attended a school in the US" is not a good proxy for being an asset to the country. > There s…

It's possible to require an accredited degree.

Re: USCIS announces strengthened integrity measures for H-1B program

#57
post #4

It seems like it would be so easy to fix the H1-B program but no one wants to and I feel like I must be missing something. The purpose of the H1-B is to allow companies to hire foreigners with special skills that can't be found amongst US citizens. So why not just grant H1-Bs to the companies that are willing to pay their talent the most? Let any company apply and list a salary which they have to agree to pay for at…

The problem with replacing a lottery with a salary ranked cutoff is that all skills do not exist on a single linear axis proportional to economic value. It is not as if all academics are currently highest paid across the economy, so why would that be true of imported academics? To me, an ideal skilled worker system would define quota categories by skill/job at a much finer granularity, i.e. hundreds or thousands of d…

> It is not as if all academics are currently highest paid across the economy, so why would that be true of imported academics?

I think that academic positions are already exempt from H1-B restrictions. To be more specific, these will be exempted [1]

- a higher educational institution

- a nonprofit entity related to or affiliated with a higher educational institution, or a nonprofit research

- organisation or a government research organisation

[1] https://www.nnuimmigration.com/h1b-cap-exempt/

Re: USCIS announces strengthened integrity measures for H-1B program

#58
post #2

I find the entire H-1B program somewhat ridiculously designed. 0. There should be no cap for people who have received higher education degrees in the US. What's the point of educating people and equipping them with everything they need to be successful in the US, advance the US (including creating lots of jobs) and then deporting them right after? 1. There should be no cap for people who are going into STEM, AI, or o…

There's been a massive problem of diploma mills, both in America, and even worse in Canada, where colleges have basically been admitting students for fake degrees for pay, just because it gets them work permits post graduation much more easily, as somewhat of a workaround Canadian immigration. Canada recently has cracked down on (I believe undergraduate) student visas recently, with effectively a per-province cap. I'…

Sometimes it's not even Diploma Mills but state schools wanting to sweet sweet foreign student money. One of my H-1B coworker got her Masters in Computer Science from University of Houston. She was competent programmer but her work and another developer work was indistinguishable. She said 97% of her class was foreign students because if you look at the program, it makes little sense for any American to go into debt to get this degree.

Re: USCIS announces strengthened integrity measures for H-1B program

#59
post #42
post #4

It seems like it would be so easy to fix the H1-B program but no one wants to and I feel like I must be missing something. The purpose of the H1-B is to allow companies to hire foreigners with special skills that can't be found amongst US citizens. So why not just grant H1-Bs to the companies that are willing to pay their talent the most? Let any company apply and list a salary which they have to agree to pay for at…

> So why not just grant H1-Bs to the companies that are willing to pay their talent the most? Because then the acceptance rate would be x% for people from India, y% from China, and 0.001% for everywhere else, which would be politically untenable.

H1B does not have country caps. So the acceptance rate is already that based on the distribution of applicants. You are thinking of green cards, which do have country caps, and that's why this whole set up is quite asinine. It creates a large immigrant population with limited rights and no realistic path to permanent residency.

Re: USCIS announces strengthened integrity measures for H-1B program

#60
post #27

Oh, so this looks like it's correcting for that thing where companies were essentially using multiple contracting companies to all apply for a visa for the same person? e.g. double (triple? n-ary?) dipping in the lotto? I still think a lot of the more wanton abuses in the H1-B system could be resolved by requiring the employee be a direct employee of the company they're actually working for (e.g. you can't get a cont…

Yeah I’ve heard of multiple applications, some sketchy applicants swaps (basically purchasing the winning ticket) and more. You won’t see it in large established companies because they mostly play fair but there is good amount of fraud in the fat tail
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