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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

#91

Post by olliej »

nostromo wrote: post #75
olliej wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Democratic donors have openly stated that demographic changes would help them win more elections. How does "illegal immigration" impact this? You know undocumented workers cannot vote, right? Hell, you know documented, legal, residents also cannot vote? The only people who get to vote in US elections are US citizens. Demographics shifts obviously help the modern DNC, for the same reason it helped the GOP a century…

While migrants can’t vote in national elections, they are counted in the census (California has an additional four or five seats in congress just from illegal immigration, for example). Secondly, the children of illegal immigrants are citizens and can vote. It takes decades for this strategy to pan out obviously. It can be sped up by family unification policies once an immigrant has a child citizen.

> While migrants can’t vote in national elections, they are counted in the census

Much like prisoners and legal non-citizen residents.

> Secondly, the children of illegal immigrants are citizens and can vote.

People born in the US - children of citizens, of legal residents, and of undocumented are all citizens because that's the only how the colonies justified their right to govern the territory they colonized. If you remove birthright citizenship the overwhelming majority of people in the US would not have any right to citizenship, and in fact most "illegal immigrants" would have a much stronger claim to governance and/or citizenship than pretty much every other group.

The fact that some people now find it inconvenient that the rules that were helpful to them now help a different group is irrelevant to that.

Moreover arguing that illegal immigrants are human (let's be clear here, the DNC is anti-immigrants as well, Obama deported more people than bush or trump), is not the same as being "pro-illegal immigrant".

You could make the same argument that conservative states weakening penalties for assault, removing women's bodily autonomy, fighting against actual sex ed, defunding education, etc are similarly a grand plan to increase the representation for conservative states.

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

#92

Post by remarkEon »

nine_k wrote: post #69
tomrod wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some pushback on your logic chain: > foreigners with special skills that can't be found amongst US citizens This is honestly rare, unless you couple it with a wage level that is lower than the domestic market will bear. Some individuals involved in R&D, but outside of that there are few skills that are not found in the US. I believe the condition isn't not found, but rather, in low supply? > make the visa transferrab…

The foreigners with special skills for which it's really hard to hire someone in the US, even for a lot of money. Maybe if you agree to pay $1M / mo, you'll have them leave their current jobs and flock to you, but will your business still stay profitable? Hence the idea of prevailing wage, and paying somehow above that. This of course creates an avenue to game the system, because prevailing wage for basically any wor…

I'm a little confused with your logic here. You're saying that businesses are looking for these allegedly rare skill sets, which do exist in the US but only at excessively high wages (your "$1M / mo" hypothetical/exaggeration). So the solution is to bring in H1Bs and pay them less (or what's affordable for the company).

How does this not, by definition, depress what would otherwise be the prevailing wage for these "rare" skill sets in the US?

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

#93

Post by olliej »

dilyevsky wrote: post #60
olliej wrote: 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

My recollection was that it was essentially company A would decide they wanted to employ person X, and they would then go to contracting firms 1 through 100 and get all of them to apply for the same person X. And they could use the contracting company model to then deflate the salary for the h1-b recipient by having the wage comparison be to similar (below real market rate) contracting company jobs rather than the employees they would be working with.

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

#94

Post by slaw »

nimish wrote: post #88
livinginfear wrote: post #63

When I looked into who is actually hiring H1-Bs, I was shocked to see it was mostly bodyshops. See: https://www.mbacrystalball.com/blog/2022/02/07/h1b-visa-stat... The majority of "Top H1-B Recruiters" are in the "Professional and Technical Services" industry. I think people imagine that most immigrants on H1-B visas are being paid princely sums directly by FAANG companies. Instead the reality looks like they're bein…

Ideally the admin would ban bodyshops from using the H-1B process, but that'd stop their benefactors' sources of cheap labor.

Ideally the admin should close H1B for few years until job market recovers.

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

#96

Post by elevatedastalt »

elashri wrote: post #57
saltcured wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gover…

They are only exempt from the yearly quota (aka 'cap'). They still result in foreign talent being brought in so if your concern is about displacing the labor pool that still applies.

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

#97

Post by tock »

US immigration is an absolute nightmare especially for Indians.

In Europe its simple. Job offer above minimum salary? Apply and get a blue card yourself. Has been in the country for over 5 years and speak the language? You get citizenship.

In the US its nearly impossible to get a Green Card. Forget how difficult it is to get an H1B visa in the first place because of the lottery system.

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

#98

Post by ex3ndr »

tock wrote: post #97

US immigration is an absolute nightmare especially for Indians. In Europe its simple. Job offer above minimum salary? Apply and get a blue card yourself. Has been in the country for over 5 years and speak the language? You get citizenship. In the US its nearly impossible to get a Green Card. Forget how difficult it is to get an H1B visa in the first place because of the lottery system.

Good luck doing so being russian

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

#99

Post by COGlory »

jedberg wrote: 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…

Or we could pay grad students and post docs actual wages and have no skill shortages.

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

#100

Post by qaq »

ex3ndr wrote: post #98
tock wrote: post #97

US immigration is an absolute nightmare especially for Indians. In Europe its simple. Job offer above minimum salary? Apply and get a blue card yourself. Has been in the country for over 5 years and speak the language? You get citizenship. In the US its nearly impossible to get a Green Card. Forget how difficult it is to get an H1B visa in the first place because of the lottery system.

Good luck doing so being russian

That would highly depend on the particular EU country.
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