
Laid-off IT workers muzzled as H-1B debate heats up - grej
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3027640/it-outsourcing/laid-off-it-workers-muzzled-as-h-1b-debate-heats-up.html
======
titomc
H1B worker here. I understand the sentiments of being replaced by an H1B
worker. I just want to emphasize that the worker is not be blamed for this.
The fault is with the H1B system & the consultancies which exploit the H1B
system.

1\. The H1B visa is supposed to be a "skilled visa". But currently this visa
is purely based on luck and not on skills & that's how many bad apples game
the system. The DOL approves LCA based on minimum wages. The consultancies
just pay the minimum wages and bring in the H1B employee. This minimum wage
should be increased to match the salary of a skilled American worker. So that
this exploitation will stop.

eg: (the salaries are approximate)

In Arizona , the minimum annual salary for LCA is 62K, the average salary paid
to an American worker is 115K. Consultancy firms like TCS,Infosys and many
other local "one room" consultancies pays 62K and bring in H1B employees
because 62K is the minimum stipulated by Department of Labor. Increasing this
minimum 62K to a realistic salary like 115K will stop this abuse.

2\. There is no easy job portability for H1B workers. Switching jobs on H1B is
a precarious act and if something goes wrong, you will have to be out of the
country immediately, no grace period. So to be on the safer side, many H1B
employees stay silent and accept lowball offers. They also have kids who are
going to school and a spouse who cannot work because they are on H4. So H1B
workers job portability is not really easy.

Make H1B jobs portable without any strings attached. So that if an H1B
employee is paid less and abused by the employer. He/She can switch jobs
easily. So this will prevent H1B abuse by the employers and they will think
twice before low balling an H1B worker.

3\. H1B is a dual intent visa. Once the employer starts GreenCard process for
the worker. The H1B worker is literally on shackles. The rules are so strict
that the worker cannot change jobs easily. Cannot accept promotions or title
change for years. The worker silently accepts this because he/she has a family
& kids to support just like any other American worker.

All I want to convey is: The H1B employee is not be blamed for this. The very
rules of the H1B system are being gamed by the consultancy companies from
India. Stopping H1B system is not the solution because all the large companies
in US has huge dependency on H1B employees.

So to stop this abuse, 1\. Increase the minimum wages to a more realistic one.
2\. Stop lottery system and grant visas based on top salary. 3\. Make the H1B
job easily portable.

~~~
product50
The challenge here will be for international undergrads graduating from US
universities. How are they expected to find a job when the minimum salary reqd
to get an H1 is $150k+? This is why they have Level 1 Computer Programmers and
Level 4 Software Engineers. That Level 1 is meant for undergrads so that they
can have a chance to enter the workforce. Of course, Indian companies misuse
that a lot and do classify their workers as Level 1 as well to save on cost.

Also, you are not accounting for non tech professions. For example, fashion
industry doesn't generally pay as well. Do you expect that none of them are
granted an H1 in that case?

The solution is much more complex than you have laid out here..

~~~
dikdik
H1-B is supposed to be used when there are no qualified candidates in the US.
The US is overflowing with throngs of people capable of being Level 1 computer
programmers and working at the bottom of the fashion industry.

No offense at all to those in the US for H1-B, but too many citizens are
unemployed or underemployed right this very second.

~~~
perseusprime11
Not true. There are not enough qualified candidates. It still takes a long
time to find people in places like New York, Boston and San Fransisco. Not
every company is Apple that they attract tons of resumes from prospective
candidates.

~~~
bsder
> Not every company is Apple that they attract tons of resumes from
> prospective candidates.

If Apple can attract the candidates and you can't, you're not offering enough
money.

This is exactly the point about the "engineering shortage". If there is a
shortage, salaries should be going up. Since salaries are not going up, there
is, by definition, no shortage.

------
hwstar
This is a race to the bottom. Most companies today prioritize the satisfaction
of the stakeholders as follows:

C-Level Management->Shareholders->Customers->Employees

In this environment, one must be financially prepared to retire early once you
reach your 50's because you will likely be replaced.

Replacement by H-1B's is just a symptom of a greater underlying problem: The
need to enrich management and shareholders.

Instead of C-corporations which put profit above everything else, we need more
public benefit corporations (B-corps) which have balanced priorities.

~~~
ovi256
And which investor, when put before the choice of supplying capital to a
C-corp or a B-corp, will willingly choose the entity that admits having his
ROI as a lower priority than the other, all other things being equal ?

By this logic, we could see B-corps in niches where capital is not a strategic
advantage. The search for these niches is left as an exercise for the reader.

~~~
dev1n
The public absolutely would invest if it meant these B-corp's have solid,
steady, long term focused growth.

~~~
hippich
or C-corps taxes more and international tax avoidance loopholes are closed.
But i guess both of these would be hard to make happen

------
qihqi
H1-B and Outsourcing to offshore are two completely different things. As
outsourcing means hand part of a job to contactor firm which could either be
local or foreign. Foreign contracting firm don't need visas, and local
contracting firm can either hire Americans or sponsor visas.

The real problem is that a foreign worker should not get paid less doing the
same job American do. That will kill the incentive and it's also very inhumane
and racist to pay less for the same work based just on citizenship.

~~~
jobu
It's never made sense that H1B Visas are awarded by lottery instead of salary.
In a lottery system a company can game the system by applying for thousands of
visas.

If they were to do it based on highest salary it would offer U.S. workers more
pay protection, and it would still allow companies to bring over the high-
quality talent they need.

~~~
untog
The problem with that is that it would immediately prioritise areas with a
high cost of living - San Francisco, New York, etc.

~~~
Eridrus
Yes, if companies in lower cost of living areas want more people, they will
have to increase how much they pay; if they can't match "market" H1B rates
they could increase their pay until they can recruit people from other areas
of the US. I don't think there is anything wrong with that.

~~~
untog
Seems like a way of discouraging any non-Silicon Valley parts of the country,
which already have fewer developers available.

------
discardorama
If I'm reading the situation correctly, the foreign workers are NOT on H1-B,
but on internal "company transfer" visas. The way it works (and someone can
correct me if I'm wrong) is that the company, say TCS, brings in workers from
India in the B1 (?) visa category, which is unlimited and for internal company
transfers. It then sends these workers (who are still working for TCS) to the
client's site. This way, they avoid the H1-B mess altogether.

~~~
jpollock
L1 is the internal company transfer. It's actually a quite nice visa, spouses
can work on that visa.

~~~
praneshp
I think it doesn't have a market wage requirement though. I'm not sure.

~~~
jedmeyers
It does not, however as of 2012 it is quite hard to prove that the worker
skills are essential to the company in a way that only transfer will fill the
skill gap. Also L1s are not allowed to change employers so de facto it's an
indentured servitude.

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mring33621
Not sure how a simple statement of, "I was a full-time employee of company XYZ
until I was laid off, with severance, after training my H1B contractor
replacement," is at all disparaging. It is simply a statement of fact.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I assume you're talking about these paragraphs:

> _Leo Perrero, an IT worker at Disney who was laid off after training his
> foreign replacement, says non-disparagement agreements hinder the debate
> over the H-1B visa. Without such agreements, "you would have a lot more
> people speaking out - real human beings with real stories, not just
> anonymous persons speaking out," said Perrero._

> _" Their freedom of speech is being taken away from them with the non-
> disparagement agreements," he said._

Stating a fact is probably not disparaging. (Not a lawyer; I dunno.) But
that's not a debate, either. If you want to debate about it, you basically
have to say that this act hurt you, which may count as disparaging or
discrediting your former employer.

------
randcraw
You do wonder how much of the "silence" on this issue is due to all major US
media outlets now being owned by large corporations who don't want this issue
to see the light of day.

To wit, how much of the American government's dysfunction is made possible by
today's captive press?

~~~
seivan
Depends if the people running the press sides with Government A or Government
B.

------
supergeek133
You know I think this has been a debate for longer than just H-1B. Take
consulting companies and the recent huge expansion of companies like TATA/TCS.

I've worked for two companies now that completely replaced their operations
teams with TCS, and it's been a disaster each time, but it's cheaper and the
tradeoff in ops quality doesn't matter when you have millions in labor off the
bottom line instantly.

It's much easier to see that than any negative perception or lost sales.

------
Zikes
Is the US Government not also to blame for this? I had thought that one of the
major rules about immigrant worker visas was that they can only be granted for
workers whom are doing a job for which no available citizen worker can be
found.

~~~
titomc
" no available citizen worker can be found. "

H1B stipulates this. Here is how the companies work around this. The ADs that
they put for this position should have the salary too. The salary will be the
bare minimum specified by the Department of Labor for that work location. eg:
Arizona I think its not more than 62K per year. There will not be any American
worker who will be willing to work for that. So the AD will yield zero
American applicants for that position and thus they hire an H1B worker.

If your company has H1B workers, go to to your company's public notice boards
usually in the break rooms. You can find notices like "Labor condition
application for a foreign worker". Take a look at the second page or the third
one and see the salary for that position. Usually it will be a bare minimum or
minimum + ~10K.

~~~
mingfli
I'm pretty sure you're conflating H-1Bs and Green Card applications. H-1Bs do
not have this stipulation, and you're not required to put out ads for the
position (like you do for green card labor certs).

The only stipulations for H-1Bs are that you work in a specialized field as
described by USCIS, that you have the requisite degrees (and that the position
requires those degrees), and that you're paid market salary. Whether the
"market salary" describes the actual market is another issue, and should be
enforced by the government.

~~~
titomc
You are right. In the case of LCAs, the employer do not have to prove that
they did not find a qualified citizen worker.

------
ck2
Can you imagine being forced to train your replacement?

Holy hell. I couldn't do it, I'd starve first.

And can you imagine sitting with and being trained by someone that you knew
you were causing them to lose their job?

Corporations making people hate each other, it's the American way.

Those H1B replacements should be keeping those American flags - what other
country would allow this kind of nonsense to happen.

~~~
analyst74
Or you can negotiate a nice bonus/severance and good references for the favor
of training your replacement, provided that you are willing to quit on the
spot.

~~~
gherkin0
Good luck with that. If you're being laid off and your replacement is already
lined up for you to train, you're not really in a very good negotiating
position. Plus, a company that would put you in that situation probably
doesn't understand or care about the value of your knowledge before they've
already felt the pain of losing you.

------
gorbachev
These companies are doing something blatantly illegal.

The H1-B program was designed to prevent abuses like these. It looks like
enforcement is sorely lacking.

------
anon987
How does someone sniff out companies like this during an interview or pre-
screen?

~~~
hwstar
It's really hard to tell without working there as employee. What most people
do not realize, is that you need to be in a position to quit a job if you find
it doesn't work for you. Too many people live paycheck to paycheck and are not
in a position to do this.

------
st3v3r
It should be absolutely illegal to place any kind of condition on severance
pay.

~~~
hwstar
The main reason why severance is offered is to keep people from portraying the
company in a bad light. If anti-disparagement clauses were made illegal, fewer
companies would offer severance.

~~~
gherkin0
> The main reason why severance is offered is to keep people from portraying
> the company in a bad light. If anti-disparagement clauses were made illegal,
> fewer companies would offer severance.

Then let's make anti-disparagement clauses illegal and severance packages
mandatory.

Companies afraid of bad press may then be motivated to be _even more_ generous
than they would have otherwise. Not only would they have to pay you enough to
sign, they'd have to pay you enough to make you happy enough that you don't
speak against them. They'd only have a carrot but no stick.

Frankly, if a company doesn't want to be portrayed in a bad light, it should
endeavor to avoid doing things worthy of disparagement.

~~~
hwstar
I agree 100% on your last sentence. As for making severance statutory in the
US; that will be a uphill battle.

------
ones_and_zeros
The major issue with the H-1B isn't the Indian consultancies, who contribute
to some of the more egregious abuses, but the regular tech companies: The
Intels, Microsofts, IBMs, EMCs, Googles, Facebooks, Amazons, etc. It's not
that they are replacing employees that are citizens it's that they are
preferring the H-1B and OPT for open positions.

Modern tech corporations have been automated to the point that the biggest
cost is labor, so they are now spending a lot of effort to address this cost.
The claim that there is a STEM shortage is a myth invented by these
corporations in order to lobby and expand these programs. They operate within
the letter of the law but not in the spirit, with misleading job
advertisements and preferential hiring practices. This becomes a self
fullfilling prophecy in that the smart people who are paying attention are
driven away from technology.

~~~
mrsharpoblunto
Not true, the numbers clearly show that its consultancy companies that take up
the vast majority of the H1B quota.

[http://foreign-employment.findthedata.com/](http://foreign-
employment.findthedata.com/)

Microsoft is the first big 'tech' company on the list at no. 11 with 3600
applications. Compare that to Infosys which had over 23,000 applications, or
Tata with 14,000.

Its also conspicuous that the consultancy companies pay much less and seem to
apply for drastically less green card labour certs as a percentage of H1B's
than the tech companies.

------
archlight
In singapore, work permit class are all based on salary you earn and
associated rights. EP1 above 8k you can apply long term visa for your parents.
EP2 above 6k you can think about applying permanent residency. SP you cannot
bring your own spouse. WP you cannot marry to local.

It is a bit brutal. but effective.

IT outsourcing is like training you while you on pay. once entry level
engineers get experienced and they will ask to migrate to US. eventually a
local hire become out of job.

Things I don't understand is why all these IT jobs require degree. why cannot
we train school dropout to do the works? don't listen to outsource company
when they say we have 80% graduate/16% masters/4% PHD etc. see what skills you
really want.

------
johngalt
I'm completely in favor of H-1B. I've been trying to hire an American CEO for
years, but there is a critical shortage of CEOs (willing to work for a
reasonable salary). I'm certain there are plenty of MBAs we could import to
fix this shortage.

~~~
uglysexy
_willing to work for a reasonable salary_

Reasonable salary to you is different from reasonable salary to a highly
qualified CEO. Also, you should revisit your idea of qualifications. There are
many VP/SVP level folks who are fully qualified to be CEO given the chance.
CEOs weren't born CEOs. There were promoted to that position.

------
davidw
This video came out yesterday, about immigration. I think it's worth a watch,
and the economics behind it are good:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoHCT2bUjwg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoHCT2bUjwg)

My views:

[http://journal.dedasys.com/2014/12/29/people-places-and-
jobs...](http://journal.dedasys.com/2014/12/29/people-places-and-jobs/)

~~~
ones_and_zeros
He lost me with his first false equivalency.

To keep with his basketball analogy, imagine a basketball league with a
separate farm system. There is an unspoken agreement that the farm system will
train basketball players and when the major league needs them the farm system
will get a percentage of the players salary. Now the major league teams are
using players that didn't go through the farm system, and are only playing
garbage time (80% of H-1Bs are paid on the lower 2 tiers of the DOL pay
scale).

So young people and families see that the farm system isn't really all that
viable and so they either don't participate or chose a different sport all
together. Ultimately the farm system dries up...

I also skimmed your views, and I'd like to address the straw man in your moral
section. People that are against H-1B aren't trying to keep out other people.
I'd prefer that if we do indeed have a shortage which requires special
immigration visas that we have actual hard evidence of the shortage first and
if the data shows it then to focus on encouraging employers and education
institutions to train citizens first. If that can't be done, I'd rather we
automatically give citizenship to those that we deem are vital to our economy
instead of keeping them in immigration limbo that is the H-1B system.

~~~
NhanH
> I also skimmed your views, and I'd like to address the straw man in your
> moral section. People that are against H-1B aren't trying to keep out other
> people. I'd prefer that if we do indeed have a shortage which requires
> special immigration visas that we have actual hard evidence of the shortage
> first and if the data shows it then to focus on encouraging employers and
> education institutions to train citizens first. If that can't be done, I'd
> rather we automatically give citizenship to those that we deem are vital to
> our economy instead of keeping them in immigration limbo that is the H-1B
> system.

Yes, but the majority of people against H-1B are not proposing or pushing a
feasible alternative. Let me just state a short argument here: currently
,there is no simple way for a programmer being offered a $300k salary to
immigrate to the US within a reasonable timeframe (let's say <6 months). EB-x
will take years depending on your country of origin (and still takes 1-2years
even without waiting, just for the processing time alone). Said programmer
will not qualify for O-1 (O-1 requires specific types of achievement/
popularity). L-1 requires you to stay with the company abroad for at least a
year.

~~~
ones_and_zeros
At 300k the O-1 visa should be doable. Peter Roberts, an immigration attorney
for SV startups that did an AMA here a few weeks ago seems to be able to do
them. Here is a blog of someone who went through the process as essentially a
glorified programmer[0]

Either way I'd rather not keep a broken system just because it works some of
the time. 80% of H-1B use the lower 2 pay tiers, so your 300k programmer is an
outlier when it comes to H-1B.

[0] [http://www.dirkdekok.com/2013/08/my-o1-visa-story-and-how-
it...](http://www.dirkdekok.com/2013/08/my-o1-visa-story-and-how-it-almost-
killed-my-startup-mobtest/)

------
theklub
I love that a power company is outsourcing its IT. Isn't that a security
concern?

~~~
jcslzr
Not really, foreigners governments are minions of the US Military, it just for
war reasons they are painted as real enemies. In reality any country fighting
the US in any way would be like being a skinny kid who fights Mike Tyson in
his prime and Mike Tyson has a bat and a gun and the referee is Tyson Mother.

~~~
crpatino
The problem with that approach is that while Mike Tyson keeps flexing his
muscles and banging heads around the neighbourhood, some scrawny nerdy type is
quietly toying in his basement with ultralight drones and shrapnel grenades.

I think if most people around here agrees that Big Old Industries can be
"disrupted", there is no reason to think that the same cannot happen to Big
Old Geopolitics.

Not to say that Tyson's mom does not have her own nerds working in her own
garage, but the scenario is probably more complex that what you made it out to
be.

~~~
aws_ls
Time-frames. You imply major changes in geopolitics which typically need
multiples of 100s of years. No body can plan for that long a period - they can
sure pretend to. Such changes, often come undetected until we are well into or
past them, so useful for anthropoligists and historians.

Another example of a still larger time-frame are geographical and ecological
changes (multiples of 10,000 years)

IMHO, the GP's argument is relevant to time-frame of politics/policies in a
few years/decades. Post 2nd world war and more so end of cold war era. Its US
which rules the world, and so GP is quite right (found the Tyson example,
hilarious).

------
LorenPechtel
Why do I have a nasty feeling that Disney's severance contract was written by
a H1-B lawyer? Whoever it is I think will be looking for a new job if they
aren't already.

~~~
pc86
I think that's unlikely since it _doesn 't_ include the prohibitions against
disclosure or disparagement common in these agreements.

