
Legislation would restrict H-1B visas - lnguyen
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-h1b-visa-20160830-snap-story.html
======
cheriot
Right now H1B is a lottery with country specific quotas? Could we think of a
worse way to choose people to bring in?

Let's make it an auction. Let the bids tell us which skills are in highest
demand and use the proceeds for scholarships and training of citizens in those
jobs. Think H1B fees funding computer science scholarships. And at least with
an auction we'll bring in higher quality workers that will contribute more to
our economy (relative to a random selection).

Second, the catch-22 on why brown people hating politicians can't solve the
problem: To make companies prefer foreign workers less we have to protect
those workers better. Make it easier for them to change jobs and harder to
force them into long hours without pay.

~~~
jon_richards
I'm not too familiar with the H1B system, but one of the issues I have with
the idea of an auction is that it hurts startups who are willing to give up a
lot of equity but not much cash to an employee.

~~~
bhickey
Today a huge portion of H1Bs are get assigned to body shops who then provide
labor to large companies. I'm more concerned with worker exploitation than I
am with a few startups who as missing out today, potentially missing out
tomorrow.

------
diogenescynic
Good. The top 10 recipients are all outsourcing bodyshops. It's undeniable the
program is being abused and no longer functions the way it was intended.

~~~
emodendroket
Here's my question: wouldn't it fix a lot of the issues with the program if
preference were given to awarding visas to largest number of sponsors, rather
than a true lottery? So in essence you couldn't get a second visa in the
lottery as a sponsor until every sponsor had gotten at least one.

~~~
diogenescynic
No, it should just be an auction. Bring in the top earners and the specialized
skills will follow. Most of the companies are bringing in H-1B workers who
lack experience and specialized knowledge/skills. In addition, somewhere
between 47 and 85% of H-1Bs are being significantly underpaid compared to
their peers:

>Wages for H-1B workers in computer programming occupations are overwhelmingly
concentrated at the bottom of the U.S. pay scale. Wages on LCAs for 85 percent
of H-1B workers were for less than the median U.S. wage in the same
occupations and state.

[http://cis.org/PayScale-H1BWages](http://cis.org/PayScale-H1BWages)

The top H-1B recipients: [http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2015-H1B-Visa-
Sponsor.aspx](http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2015-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx)

Make the H-1B 'lottery' into an auction. Instead of accepting 65,000 H-1Bs at
random--accept the 65,000 H-1Bs with the highest wages. That way we are
getting the immigrants with the highest valued skills and stopping companies
like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL, and Cognizant that game the immigration system
by applying for the cheapest H-1Bs possible.

~~~
ones_and_zeros
Except that the industry will lobby for that 65,000 number to be increased to
say 195,000 [0] or higher until they can get their $55k per year programmers
in SF. And it will work, because it has in the past. And that is a bill that
has A LOT of bipartisan support.

[0]
[https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/s153/summary](https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/s153/summary)

------
arenaninja
> employers can be exempted from that paperwork if the potential employee
> holds a master’s degree or is paid at least $60,000 annually.

Wow, I wasn't aware the bar was so low. Given the recent brazen misuse of the
program I hope this goes through

~~~
Clubber
The salaries listed for a senior programmer that gauge how much H1Bs are paid
are obnoxiously low. Last time I looked, I was shocked. When the average
salaries listed are lower than anyone other than junior programmers, they get
H1Bs for cheaper. Also, the companies can hire a person as a front line
support and pay them accordingly, but actually have them doing system
development or design.

Big businesses in the macro sense, seem willing to do anything to cheat the
system to drive down costs and subsequently wages.

I do think raising the cap will help.

------
adrenalinelol
The purpose of H1B Visas is to supply talent that CANNOT be found
domestically. They are not designed to suppress the wages of locals at the
benefit to the owners of capital. This is no different than a company whining
about a tax-loop hole being closed and throwing around rhetoric like: "it'll
come at the cost jobs and innovation!" The IT workers cited from the article
in question are not uniquely skilled over their american counter-parts, they
are simply being used by corporations to lower wages.

~~~
huherto
It should bring talent and diversity. Bringing ideas from multiple cultures
and occupations, to establish connections and interchange with those. Right
now many H1B are used by Indian IT companies.

Also, they are the most abused on the green card process since they have to
wait years because of the huge backlog.

Edit: Seems like my argument is being misunderstood. The HB1 program should
bring talent from many different countries not only India. It should bring
different talent for different occupations not only IT.

~~~
riskable
The diversity argument falls flat when you replace _your entire IT workforce_
with H1Bs from the same country (India). This holds true when companies
replace entire divisions or departments with outsourced H1B labor as well.

~~~
huherto
This is the argument. Currently H1B are not bringing diversity. They should.

------
tn13
H1B is a classic case of how legislators are far away from reality.

Increasing minimum wage does not help it creates a bigger problem. A lot of
smaller companies will happily show $100,000 salary to their employee while
paying only $30,000. This is technically a fraud but the companies do it all
the time. Google or Facebook wont be able to do it but those consulting
companies could.

Here are my suggestions:

1\. Do not allow consulting companies to file H1B at all. If the person is
specialized then let some company hire him/her full time. Create a separate
visa category for consulting work for foreign companies trying to send their
staff to USA.

2\. Scrap H4 and give EAD to the H1B spouse. Most of the illegal things about
H1B is because of the desperate attempts by H1Bs to get the well educated
spouse be productive. Also given that most H1B are male this is also a very
anti-women thing to do by putting women out of work. My wife enrolled for F1
in a small university just to get an OPT EAD. Wasting $20K and 2 years for a
completely useless masters degree.

3\. Have a clear and simple path to green-card for H1Bs.

~~~
rtpg
Also, stop connecting H1B to the hiring company!

If the H1B company isn't offering a good salary, the person should be able to
change jobs to another in the US without paperwork. This would remove most
incentives for a person to take a below-market wage, removing the downward
pressure (that I think is theoretical but...)

Plus it stops treating people like indentured servants. +1 for humanity.

For companies whining about people leaving fast: don't offer shitty jobs!
Signing bonuses exist for americans, figure out how to keep people without the
threat of deportation.

~~~
tn13
Yes. H1B = EAD.

My wife had h4 and she could not work. I was sponsored a green card and she
got her EAD while I am still waiting for my PR.

------
dschiptsov
Nowadays remote is as good as local.

There is really no big difference from what physical location one is accessing
project's resources (repos, tracking, etc). Big and sophisticated projects
like GHC (leave alone Linux kernel) are being successfully developed by remote
teams.

The only downside is that pointy-haired managers cannot easily bully and abuse
(with unpaid hours) migrant employees and there is no easy and accessible
personal payment solution (Paypal sucks for non-us citizens) due to "anti-
terrorism" money-control cretinism.

Actually, there is no technical problems at all, only organizational.

~~~
lgieron
> (...) there is no easy and accessible personal payment solution (Paypal
> sucks for non-us citizens) due to "anti-terrorism" money-control cretinism.

What's wrong with bank transfers?

------
anupshinde
Misuse must definitely stop. But wouldn't this force businesses to outsource
to offshore offices... Losing talent, losing jobs to other country and losing
out on taxes. And the jobs that cannot be offshored would require
higher/complex skillset

~~~
dredmorbius
The H1-B program allows employers to hire foreign employees, at below-market
rates, by limiting those employees' options to compete freely on the US
domestic labour markets. Employment is an area in which employers already have
a natural advantage, a point noted (and explained in detail) 240 years ago by
Adam Smith.

Offshoring introduces additional challenges to management -- it's simply
easier to manage a workforce who rolls into the office and is locally present,
though yes, remote (or occasional from-home) management is possible.

If a company wants to pay offshore-wages, then it can employ offshore talent,
offshore, and incur the offshore management and logistics hassles. If it wants
to hire domestic labour, it should do so at local labour rates.

If foreign workers are brought to domestic markets, allow them full mobility
between employers.

Otherwise, the only effect of the H1-B program is to use one class of
restricted-rights workers (the visa holders) to depress domestic wages through
threat of a cheaper, effectively indentured workforce.

This has been clearly evident for years, and eloquently argued by Norman
Matloff of UC Davis:

[http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html](http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html)

~~~
guitarbill
> The H1-B program allows employers to hire foreign employees, at below-market
> rates

However, it's also by far the most attractive visa type for people from many
countries. If I'm an e.g. German dev, what other options do I have if I wanted
to work in the US long term? L-1?

> Otherwise, the only effect of the H1-B program

Obviously misuse isn't okay, but I'm sure they'd be chilling effects worth
thinking about. I've always wondered why there aren't visa swap programs, i.e.
if a Dutch and an American citizen wanted to live in the US/Netherlands
respectively, why not swap (as long as some basic criteria are met)?

~~~
int_19h
If you're a German dev, I doubt you'll come to US to work at Tata. Wouldn't be
worthwhile. You might come to work at Google and such, but they wouldn't be
affected by raising the bar as this law does, since they already comply with
it in practice.

~~~
guitarbill
sure, but it's still the same visa class, right?

~~~
int_19h
Yep. But not all legislation that pertains to it affects all companies that
use it equally.

------
geebee
In many ways, I like the idea of setting a high minimum salary. It's a simple
approach, but complex regulations often just produce elaborate ways to exploit
loopholes. And honestly, the higher the salary, the less I worry that the visa
is being misused.

100k still seems a bit low. I think Ted Cruz suggested 110k. That's still
below the average salary for an applications developer in SF or San Jose. I'd
go higher, though I do think that 110k would do some good - it would have no
effect whatsoever on the use of the H1b to bring in the truly talented, and it
would probably deter some of Disney/Edison style abuses.

------
gwbas1c
I think in our industry we have a huge wrench. It's very hard to hire
experienced Americans in Silicon Valley right now because the cost of living
is so high. There's no way that an experienced engineer, making a Silicon
Valley salary, can afford the same kind of home that he/she expects everywhere
else in the country.

In contrast, an H1-B from a country where homes are typically smaller, might
think the kind of home that he/she can afford in Silicon Valley is perfectly
fine!

------
wrong_variable
People need to first understand that the minimum wage in america allows you to
save more money as a single male then working as an engineer in a large part
of India and many other poor countries.

The salary in my own country for a mid level software engineer is 600 dollars
a month !

Think about that for a moment . . . .

Now imagine if you are a company, you can hire a developer with 10-20 years of
experience at the cost below your junior developer.

Why won't you do it ?

The other part of the equation is the fact that if you do not do it you are a
strong competitive disadvantage compared to companies.

Now many people on HN might want to crack down on this Donald Trump Style.

But actually cracking down on it will make matters worse.

Software, IP is really global these days.

So as soon as wages are pushed up in america, the flow of FDI ( which is
growing at 5x every year in India ! ) will shoot even higher.

Someone made this argument that I find the best explanation for what is going
on.

Countries like India have more untapped computational power compared to the
US, just due to having 4x the population and not even 1:1 the wealth.

There is nothing immoral about what is going on.

Its capitalism working as intended - I also do not think americans are losers
in this game, it just means they will not see any investment or improve in
their standard of living while private money is busy improving the lives of
everyone else.

~~~
theocean154
Arbitrage in labor markets results in a regression to the global mean. Every
year that wages do not grow in the US, the buying power of those wages
decreases due to inflation (increasing the cost of living). This will result
in the standard of livings of the US moving towards that of India. And as a US
citizen, I do not want this. If capitalism worked as intended, we'd be a world
full of slaves fighting for pennies and shitting in open pits while our
masters live like kings.

~~~
wrong_variable
I think that is not what is happening.

Standard of living in the US is growing - but very slowly.

While standard of living is increasing rapidly in developing countries.

You can see the same issue in China, where standard of living has actually
grown rapidly.

I am not arguing to make American standard of living regress at the expense of
improving the standard of living for other developing nations.

Standard of Living would have risen regardless of FDI money moving into India
and China - the only difference is that western capital is allowed to make
money off that development.

The issue is that the amount of money that is required to bring any massive
improvement in living standard in western countries is really large. Things
like self driving cars are much harder to create - then just copying current
technology and distributing it.

This is why it should have been upto western govt to channel a lot of public
money and tax multinationals aggressively so that western countries can have
accelerated rate of growth.

------
lgleason
Keep in mind that Hillary and her running mate are pro H1B. A lot of people
don't like Trump for good reason, but it makes it difficult to vote for her
given that she is likely to work against my interests as an engineer.

~~~
mywittyname
1\. More engineers = more valuable products built.

2\. Move valuable products in the market = more money to reinvest into
building valuable products.

3\. More money invested into building products = more demand for engineers.

4\. Goto 1.

Being pro-H1B is in your interest because it increases demands for your skill
set.

------
rbanffy
Is it me or I suspect the 100K lower limit is kind of ineffective?

Every time I ran the numbers about moving to the US, the minimum acceptable
offer was well above that number.

~~~
arenaninja
I imagine it depends on your country of origin and current standard of living.
There's two salary averages of current H1B holders quoted in the article at
less than 80K

------
ones_and_zeros
Make college free and give tax subsidies to organizations that have training
programs and be done with it.

This program has been around for decades and was created in an effort to bring
in skills not found in the country. If in all of that time we haven't trained
up enough people to meet "demand" then we are obviously doing something wrong
and non immigration intent visas aren't going to fix it.

------
ausjke
A while ago I searched on the data, the majority H1Bs are from India and
China. China took about 12%, most of them are graduated in USA, India had
about 47% of all the H1B visas, most of them are from India and were put under
India's consulting companies. The current lottery system for H1B might have
changed that situation a bit, as it might be able to prevent possible abuse.

------
tn13
USA does not have any visa that would help companies bring in outside talent
at cheaper rate. Create that sort of visa first else H1B would always be a
mess.

~~~
adrenalinelol
Politicians in democratic countries overtly suppressing wages for the benefit
for the super few (0.001%) is not politically feasible and anecdotally, is
probably bad in a consumer driven economy (which the US is).

~~~
tn13
I am not sure what that means. Politicians can suppress wages ? When have they
done it in past ? Isn't the overwhelming support for illegal immigrants in USA
from democratic party similar to what you are talking ? Why is that there is
such a massive support for illegal mexicans but not for legally immigrating
highly educated Indian and Chinese ?

------
vinceguidry
I was talking to my friend yesterday, she works for AT&T. She described being
overworked, and, while she was paid well compared to other PMs, she considered
the idea of taking a pay cut in exchange for a better managed workload.

The problem was that her reports were all leaving her project or leaving the
company. The company was responding to the staffing difficulty with
outsourcing, moving her entire project to Israel. Directors were squabbling
over the most capable employees and twice she was approached about switching
departments.

She has a friend who nominally is an architect, but is instead doing the work
of a frontline dev. He's about to jump. Recruiters have made the job market
liquid enough that businesses can't meet their objectives with the coders they
hired.

In some sectors, coders right out of school can command six-figure salaries,
and they're only going higher. In the larger job markets, firms are moving en-
masse to consulting companies to meet business needs. The developers are
following suit. 5 months ago, I worked at a marketing company as an in-house
dev. I now work for a consulting company, my old company hired a consulting
company to do my old job. I am somebody whose natural tendency is towards
loyalty. I want to find a nice position at a nice company and just stay there
for years. The current job market makes that impossible. The siren's song of
getting a 30% pay bump every year, sometimes twice in the same year, is
impossible to resist.

Make no mistake about it, the US needs more developers. Immigration is an
excellent solution to the problem. Protectionism is only going to make it
worse. If businesses can't meet their objectives, then end result is going to
be a recession. No one comes out better in one of those.

~~~
vonmoltke
I read sentiments like yours frequently. It does not match my experience.

Many of the companies I have talked to have fairly large lists of requirements
for positions and are serious about requiring them. They get really picky
about specific languages, frameworks, and experiences. As I mentioned in
another discussion here recently, there are tens of thousands of programming
jobs controlled by companies who do not see a programmer shortage from their
perspective.

When discussions on hiring methods come up, multiple people inevitably chime
in that the companies in question are dealing with situations where they have
more qualified applicants than slots. That is in direct conflict with what you
said above.

I would love to be able to jump jobs for 30% pay raises. I can't. I started my
career at $55,770. I'm up to $92,500 14 years later, which is only a 66% bump
for my entire career. Even if we consider me underpaid for my area (Hi! I'm
looking in Dallas!) I would likely only be looking at a 100% total career bump
if I got that situation addressed. There _are_ companies out there who refuse
to give you more than X% above your current salary, regardless of how
underpaid you are.

It's funny that you should mention AT&T, what with them being headquartered
here and all. I see them as one of the companies I was referring to in my
second paragraph. I have personally applied to them for multiple positions and
heard bupkis.

It may well be that certain sectors in certain markets have these issues. I do
not see it as widespread. What I do see as widespread are broken recruiting
and sourcing practices, HR departments that work at cross purposes to the
other departments they support, and a general desire to hit all the points on
a wish list, no matter how long it takes.

~~~
scient
Not to offend you or anything, but have you considered that the problem of
your potential (better) employment is you. I see a lot of people claiming that
the H1B program is bad and that there are tons of developers available in the
US etc. But my experience is the polar opposite.

And to make things clear - I am actually a H1B holder, working as a CTO for a
US based company, been here for 3 years now. When looking for people for our
engineering team, we get lots of resumes but very few actually promising ones.
Out of the promising ones, almost none are actual people with tangible
experience that could be hired as a senior person. If there is someone who
could be senior, they ask for like 200k and up a year - and this is just to be
a senior engineer, not even in a managerial position or anything (P.S and this
is the NOVA area, not the bay area).

So yeah, I would say good people are always in high demand, and the lack of
good engineers right now is troubling. Then again most of the H1B visas get
abused by companies who hire second rate talent from abroad so...

~~~
vonmoltke
> Not to offend you or anything, but have you considered that the problem of
> your potential (better) employment is you.

I have considered that, but I would think I would be getting and failing more
interviews if that was the case. I have a hard time _getting_ interviews.

> When looking for people for our engineering team, we get lots of resumes but
> very few actually promising ones. Out of the promising ones, almost none are
> actual people with tangible experience that could be hired as a senior
> person.

What do you consider "promising" and "tangible experience"? I have been
refused interviews because of _who_ I have worked for, without anyone delving
into whether I might still have the experience desired.

> If there is someone who could be senior, they ask for like 200k and up a
> year - and this is just to be a senior engineer, not even in a managerial
> position or anything (P.S and this is the NOVA area, not the bay area).

You realize that NoVa is not much cheaper than the Bay Area, right? I mean,
$200k for no management responsibility in NoVa is ridiculous to ask for, but I
would expect $150k - $160k.

> So yeah, I would say good people are always in high demand, and the lack of
> good engineers right now is troubling.

So what is "good"? I have been told before that maybe the problem is me.
Nobody has ever told me I'm not "good", though. I have consistently been one
of the best engineers (software and systems at least; I was a bit dicier at
electrical) wherever I have worked. I am an order of magnitude more competent
than the anecdotes that come up during these discussions. Yet I get refused
interviews because my background is "too government" and similar bullshit. I
would love for someone to tell me there is something objectively wrong that I
can fix. Nobody has done that. Except for my resume; fecack did a good job
with that. Doesn't help with the aforementioned bullshit rejections, though.

~~~
vinceguidry
> I have been refused interviews because of who I have worked for, without
> anyone delving into whether I might still have the experience desired.

Consider taking those companies off your resume. I'd prefer a gap in the
resume to a negative item. A gap can be explained any way you want in an
interview, but a negative item will cause you to get rejected before you even
begin.

~~~
vonmoltke
The problem is the company is Raytheon, and I spent the first 9.5 years of my
career there. It isn't something I can just drop.

~~~
ryandrake
I've dropped the first 10 years of my career so I could fit my resume onto a
single page. Nobody even asks or cares. No employer even reads your resume
past the first half of the first page.

~~~
vinceguidry
Now that I think about it, it's good practice for anybody to just put the last
few years on a resume. Unless you are actually selling yourself as someone
with 14 years in X, with an expectation of commensurate salary and
responsibilities, it's noise and should just be left off. Noise on a resume is
unforgivable.

