
H-1B: Oracle favored hiring foreign graduates of US colleges over American grads - hanging
https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/01/25/h-1b-oracle-favored-hiring-foreign-graduates-of-u-s-colleges-over-american-grads-feds-allege
======
mykowebhn
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 companies because it is harder for them to switch jobs.
Companies can lock these employees for longer, and they can pay them less.

Rather than going after the companies, shouldn't we be focusing on fixing the
H-1B visa process instead? It almost seems like the government has set up a
broken process for companies to take advantage of, and instead of fixing
things, they blame the companies.

~~~
yholio
Seems like such a simple issue to fix: the only condition for getting a
specialist visa should be to find an employer willing to pay a specialist
salary, say above 150K. Doctors included, I see no reason to protect them from
competition. Hop jobs at will but need to maintain within 85% of that level.

If a company can't find workers, it should pay more up until a level that puts
the competitiveness of the economy under question. Below that level, it's the
citizen's right to a fair salary without labour dumping from a poor country.
Above that level, it's everybody's right to fairly priced services without
professional rents.

~~~
vowelless
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 like me and make it virtually impossible for me to
become a citizen eventually. But maybe that is by design and I don’t mind that
opinion. All countries have nativist subsets of society so it is just a
normal, natural stance.

Historically, america has attracted the best minds. Historically. But maybe
now the populace believes the natives need to be protected from outside
competition so that they can improve. Fair enough.

~~~
ReptileMan
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.

~~~
repsilat
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 company on the promise that the
payoff will be as good or better than the next person in line.

~~~
vowelless
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.

------
petilon
America is the most powerful nation in the world today not because it has the
most number of people, but because it has the best and the brightest, gathered
from around the world.

There are 4x as many geniuses in China as in the US. This is not because they
are superior genetically. This is simply because the population of China is 4x
that of USA. If one in 1,000,000 people are geniuses, then China must have 4x
more geniuses than the US. That's a threat to the US. If our economy is to
remain strong and if we are to remain a superpower we should invite the
smartest of the Chinese to immigrate to the US.

Abuse of H1B must be stopped. It is not intended as a mechanism for
undercutting American workers. But the baby should not be thrown out with the
bathwater. We should expand the H1B system and make it easier for immigrants
to become citizens, while at the same time preventing abuse.

~~~
ausjke
As far as I know, while Chinese students are way more than India students in
USA, Indian H1B holders are about 4~5 times more than Chinese. In short, the
vast majority(about 50+%) H1Bs are taken by India, Chinese is about 10%.

Indians abuses the system severely by setting up phony staffing companies and
do fake multiple filings on h1b application, etc.

There is a saying, that if an Indian becomes a manager, soon all his
department becomes Indians, which really stands out among all other races. I
will not be surprised someday they will be sued for not following equal job
rights.

~~~
screye
> Indians abuses the system severely by setting up phony staffing companies
> and do fake multiple filings on h1b application, etc.

Most Indians I know, hate this H1B abuse as much as Americans. (maybe even
more. I have seen people spout some genuine hate towards it) It ruins the
reputation of most Indians in Masters programs at well regarded R1
universities (most people at such programs, get proper full time roles to my
knowledge)

> There is a saying, that if an Indian becomes a manager, soon all his
> department becomes Indians, which really stands out among all other races. I
> will not be surprised someday they will be sued for not following equal job
> rights.

haven't seen enough teams here to refute this claim. Hope it ain't so, but
knowing Indians, I wouldn't be that surprised if some Indian managers did
behave in such a manner.

~~~
cannonedhamster
I have seen the Indian manager phenomenon in 3 separate companies. Literally
everyone other than me was Indian previously in my management and adjacent
chain. All of them were financially intertwined. When one quit they all quit.
I was only there because they hadn't hired me. There was not a single person
that they hired that was not Indian. This is definitely a real phenomenon.

------
m0zg
Posted this elsewhere, but as a former H1B here's what should be done to end
abuse:

1\. Award a fixed pool of H1Bs to qualified applicants with the highest wage
in the offer (and monitor that this wage is in fact being paid). This should
be easy to pass if your representatives in congress are in fact _your_
representatives. The president will sign this immediately, since he was the
one who proposed it in the first place.

2\. Establish at least 6 month grace period if the H1B person leaves the
sponsoring company to go work elsewhere. Currently if you leave (or are laid
off/fired) you have to GTFO within 2 weeks, so people endure abuse and low
wages for years until they get a green card.

There. There's your solution. No need to do anything else, guaranteed to work.
It should not be possible to hire foreign workers into entry level positions
at all.

~~~
vowelless
> It should not be possible to hire foreign workers into entry level positions
> at all.

And with that, you perhaps got rid of a (imo) very useful subset of potential
future Americans: ones who went to college and graduate school in the US.

This group went through it’s formative years in the United States. They are
deeply imbibed in the culture and eventually start identifying with it.
However, if they can’t get an entry level job, they now have to leave the
country to go back to where they came from (or some other alternative like
Canada / Australia). Instead, you would rather be bringing in 30 year olds
from foreign nations who are unlikely to change and adopt America as much as
someone who moved here at 18 would; and who have formed habits more suited to
their nation than to the US.

But as I mentioned above, perhaps this is desireable.

~~~
rbanffy
> go back to where they came from

That's not really a nice thing to say.

~~~
vowelless
It’s been said to me plenty. I don’t mind it :)

~~~
rbanffy
I would mind having the place I came from called a "shit hole".

------
cptskippy
Top teir software companies might claim the H-1B program allows them to hire
the best and brightest from around the world, but that's not how everyone else
uses the program. It allows consulting/contracting firms to hire low wage tech
workers who are desperate to stay in the US and lock them into a form of
indentured servitude because the road to a green card or citizenship is now a
decade long journey and changing your job effectively restarts that journey.

~~~
newshorts
H-1B coupled with the vendor contractor model are IMO the root causes of
downward pressure on wages. Neoliberalism at its finest.

------
asenna
Can't believe this is only recently getting attention. It's not just Oracle,
it's common knowledge how the same thing has been happening in several large
corps. I know from the inside because Deloitte came in and scooped up our
entire foreign students batch on graduating (Pennsylvania). Same thing
happened the next year as well. Many of my friends still work there.

I remember there was a fire drill that took place in their campus in
Harrisburg, and my friend sent me a pic he took when the entire campus was out
- You could've mistaken it for a campus in Bangalore or Pune. There's
definitely some preference they're giving to foreign nationals (specially from
India). Please note, I'm an Indian national myself working in the US.

~~~
sonnyblarney
It's had 'attention' for a while - it's just a very hard thing to prove.

Moreover, the investigation has a political sensitivity that could create bad
headlines, so it needs the right environment to happen.

------
testrr95
I will tell you what they do in India

In 2015, I got a call from Oracle India and interviews were arranged and I got
hired into Oracle India. It was my first job change.

Before to that, I used to work as a contractor for one of the US companies via
one of the services company in India.

Oracle offered me way less than what they are offering to other engineers in
the same BU, for the same value generated.

Reason Oracle told me that, since I am coming from a lower salary band, Oracle
is still giving a reasonable high pay hike. I argued back IN WRITING that
still it is way less than ( lesser than 1/3) of Oracle generally pays.

Oracle said to me, Ok, we will raise your salary in the first pay review which
happens. I asked clearly and concisely, what they mean by review, they said
you will be in the band.

I left Oracle in 2018.

They never met their promise. Few of my financial aspirations were burned
down, trauma different.

They = [ recruiter, director, vp, hr, ceo's office, legal ]

During all the time at Oracle, I knocked many doors, all of them simply said
"Oracle never committed in writing, a phone call means there is a
miscommunication ", hence I do not stand a case.

It is not Indian Director which simply reneged from the bargain, it was the US
director, US legal team, which simply reneged.

Escalating to Safra's office also did not help.

Oracle is full with corrupt directors who simply trick Oracle's own rules to
cheat the potential hires and trick them to get a lower paying offer.

This was done my director of SW dev in US but I was an India employee.

~~~
flowerlad
If you accepted a job offer based on verbal promises as opposed to written
then you only have yourself to blame. Learn your lesson and move on.

~~~
testrr95
I told you Sir, It was my first job change. I did not knew the tricks of the
trade.

Yes, I have myself to blame because I trusted the people involved in hiring
from one of the top 5 tech companies in the world. Id did not occur to me that
I am being played upon.

However, If you had noticed, I mentioned I argued with hiring team [ PM,
director, recruiter] IN WRITING BEFORE JOINING THE COMPANY. I still have those
emails. As a response to those they used to call on phone, NOT reply in
writing. It was evident to me that they are calling back because they have
read the emails. I forgot to take the same thing in writing, because I trusted
them.

So, Yes I joined them because of verbal promises, but the emails do exist
still, in my mailbox, where I have asked them in band pay, before joining.

Initially when I approached the company's authorities they said " I am making
this stuff up", but when I showed them emails from my mailbox, they switched
to "since you do not have replies, ... .. .. you do not stand a case"

------
1024core
A simple solution to the H1B "cheap workers" problem is to sort applications
by (descending) order of salary, and pick the top 65K as authorized by
Congress.

~~~
enraged_camel
And have basically all H1Bs go to Silicon Valley/Seattle/NYC tech companies?

(You really should think things through before suggesting them as solutions,
especially when the problems are complex.)

~~~
loosescrews
Why can't companies in other locations pay competitively?

~~~
raz32dust
They pay competitively for their location. Pay is determined by demand and
supply. If you sort H1Bs by pay, the places with highest cost of living will
get all of the H1Bs. Perhaps a better idea is to do the same thing, but on pay
that is normalized against a cost of living index.

~~~
maksimum
I don't think CoL indeces are relevant because salaries are based on how much
value a developer brings to the business.

Suppose you have two jobs: $140k in NYC, and $100k in Dallas. If only one
company can get an H1B, IMO it should clearly be the NYC company.

The NYC job will yield higher personal income federal income taxes. Also the
NYC job is delivering at least $40k more value to the business than the Dallas
job. This additional value again translates to higher corporate federal income
tax.

I'm not sure what benefit the federal government has by favoring the $100k
job, even though normalized for CoL ($1.5 NYC=$1 Dallas according to one
index) the Dallas job is "higher paying".

~~~
alkibiades
not true. for instance an employee at google hq vs a satellite get paid
different based on market rate for developers in that locale. the companies
pay based on market rate, not “theoretical value produced”. no one who works
there thinks the satellite office engineers are producing less and plenty
produce more profit for the company than ones who get paid more

~~~
dlubarov
> an employee at google hq vs a satellite get paid different based on market
> rate for developers in that locale

I agree but that doesn't fully explain the salary disparities. The employee at
Google HQ is also worth more to Google than an employee in a satellite office,
because the former will communicate more efficiently with the rest of the
organization.

~~~
tonfa
That argument might seem ok if you compare satellite vs. hq (tho I doubt
that's actually true), but breaks down if you compare two non-hq offices (e.g.
Boulder vs. Zurich).

~~~
alkibiades
i actually don’t think it’s ttue at all having worked at the hq and seeing
people from ny and la and zurich offices. there really wasn’t any difference
in value

------
wickrom
With the recent articles doing rounds about the feds Looking into Oracle
paying minorities and women less, this seems part of the scheme to basically
get lower wage workers under H1B who they know will work like minions for long
hours because their visas are tied to the job. It's a pretty standard way of
gaming the H1B. Oracle is no different.

------
oracle_anon_29
Hiring manager at Oracle here- Oracle is very balkanized, different business
units have different practices and policies, so I can only speak
(unofficially) about the one I am part of.

Whenever I have openings for junior positions, I get flooded with resumes from
men and women with degress at universities in China and India, and only a very
small fraction from people educated entirely in the US. My personal
speculation is that younger software engineers in the US would rather not work
at a company that is perceived to be a dinosaur, and is definitely not as sexy
as other FAANGs or startups. People who want to be H1-B sponsored have fewer
options, and I think Oracle's name isn't as tainted in China or India.

Also, for the (unofficial) record, the women and those with H1-B visas (incl
women with H1-B visas) on my team are paid the same as US born men on my team
with similar experience.

~~~
tagrun
Oracle has deeper problems than just being a dinosaur.

------
aiisahik
I think there are two cures for this issue:

1\. Expose the pay disparity at Oracle and other companies so candidates know
ahead of time what they are getting themselves into.

2\. Make it easier for any H1B employee to get a job at a different company if
they have the ability and desire.

I am on this visa called the E-3 which is almost identical to the H1B except:

\- No annual cap

\- No 6 year limit

\- Only available to Australian nationals

I have never had any trouble finding a tech job despite being an asian
foreigner. My pay has varied from 60k - 180k and the companies i've worked at
have varied from multi-nationals to 3 person startup.

High Minimum salaries would disadvantage startups and companies in smaller
cities.

Here's how to fix the h1B

\- No hard annual cap

\- No 6 year limit

\- For any company that hires more than 10 H1B hires, the average salary of
h1b employees should not be lower than the average salary of non-h1b
employees.

\- Additionally, for large companies (say > 10,000 employees) the average
salary of h1b employees of a certain level of seniority should not be lower
than the average salary of non-h1b employees of that same seniority.

This will give companies more certainty that a potential H1B hire would be
approved, providing H1B candidates more job mobility. It would also prevent
larger companies from abusing this system.

------
zachguo
Maybe it's my own sample bias. Aren't graduates in top CS schools largely
international students?

~~~
likeabbas
You may be correct, but possibly for the wrong reasons that you are are
inferring.

The University of California lost a lawsuit in which they were accused of
preferring international students to in-state and out-of-state students
because the international students could afford the higher tuitions. UC has
several of the top CS schools in the nation.

It's possible that the we could could replace many of those accepted with US
students, but it would take a major audit of the university systems to find
out.

------
syntaxing
This super prevalent in manufacturing related jobs too. It's funny how the
rhetoric is to save our manufacturing nowadays when we give a crap ton of IP
to countries like India with the process. The sad part is, I've seen a lot of
unqualified people fill up these H-1B positions and then we'll have to train
them. By the time they can start doing some real work from us training, their
visa coincidentally runs out and this process repeats. We literally pay
relatively high wage to train India's engineers. Yet managers turn a blind eye
because it helps them balance their numbers.

------
objektif
I am sure locking in employees played a part in their decision. However, I
have to point out that foreign graduates, especially from China are preferred
in my profession due to their strong technical background. Its kind of how
things evolved over time. So a similiar thing might be going on here.

------
Friedduck
I don’t know if my experience in the mid-2000s is unique. A company I worked
for laid off thousands of American workers and replaced them with H-1B and
off-shore labor.

Many (most?) of the H-1B workers were utterly unqualified. Right out of
school, inexperienced, and some just hopeless. The impact beyond the obvious
was anyone pursuing a tech career at that company found alternate work.

The lesson was not lost. They learned that they could be replaced at any time
by much cheaper global labor.

So I wonder if some of the scarcity in the tech labor market isn’t due to this
perception.

------
jorblumesea
It's really not hard to see why, H1B have none of the bargaining power and all
of the risk. Especially for a shady company like oracle it's just pure
exploitation going on here.

------
synaesthesisx
Makes sense - they can guarantee employee loyalty by locking them down, and
can probably pay them less too. It's no wonder Oracle abused this.

------
newshorts
Well of course. Is anyone surprised by visa abuse? It’s clear that tech
companies are all for the program, why do you think that is? Equality?

------
known
Last year it was discussed in [https://qz.com/889524/the-us-says-oracle-is-
encouraging-indi...](https://qz.com/889524/the-us-says-oracle-is-encouraging-
indians-to-hire-others-indians-and-its-killing-diversity/)

------
En_gr_Student
Duh! It is 1/3 the cost (bullshit aside) for someone from a culture of hunger,
hard work, desperation, and oppression. That makes them easy to work very
hard, unlikely for them to push back, and so they have superior output for 1/3
the price. There is no book-cooking megacorp in the US that doesn't prefer H1b
to citizens with the same qualifications. Not one.

A "competitive" work schedule in China is 9-9-6, or 9am to 9pm for 6 days a
week. That means "normal" is a 72 hour work-week plus commute. A 40-hour work
week, is comparatively cake. The 72 hour work-week is 80% increase over a 40
hour work-week. The HR ghouls say imagine salaried employees being glad to
work 80% more hours, including nights or weekend hours, for the same pay:
amazing; sold!

The book-cooking for h1b is intense, but after talking personally with a dozen
or so folks, they really do only take home about 1/3 to 1/2 what their peers
do. There is bs about job duties, titles, responsibilities, but that is just
folks trying to pay the lowest price for a commodity worker. I've seen several
fortune 100 companies say they prefer "low cost geo's" as much as h1b so that
gives a second population with similar pricing. It is open knowledge that
engineers in Malaysia, India, or Costa Rica are paid 1/3 of US wages for what
is, as far as HR can tell, the same job. They do the same job, and get a lot
lower wages for it.

When someone was bullied as a child, they are easier to bully as an adult.
Stupid/evil/inept bosses love employees who they can abuse without pushback.
Folks from cultures of oppression aren't going to report safety issues to
safety folks. They aren't going to report managerial violations to those who
police managers. They are non-reporting victims. The HR ghouls see them as
"don't make waves" or "get along" and the hiring managers see them as "easy
prey". In grad school there were prof's who wouldn't let overseas grad
students get even a short break to attend their own mothers funeral, and those
guys got away with it. That is "liberal academia" and not the underbelly of
corporate/industrial America. Think about what that means for bully-bosses in
the workplace.

It isn't going to change unless the value of the commodity can be forced into
a competitive market, where the price will go toward actual parity, and the
rate of preference will go to parity with citizens. Until that, h1b is the
lottery where the only way to lose is not to play.

There is one and only one solution, and it is a lottery. If it becomes an
auction, then the h1b prices will double or triple - that is to day they will
go up to parity for US wages for the same job.

------
john4534243
There is another loop hole other than H1B. Do your post graduate in the US and
you will get hired easily. Its common among indians who can afford post
graduate study in US.

------
chenpengcheng
Remove the caps. Let us change job easily. Give green cardright away. Make
immigration suck less.

------
ozfive
Looks like Oracle blew the party for the rest of the big companies that are
most likely doing the same. Party foul Larry Ellingson.

------
sgjohnson
You could fix all of the problems with the US immigration system by abolishing
the welfare state and opening up the borders.

I love America and I’d move there in an instant if I’d get a chance, but I’ve
got too much dignity to go thru the US immigration system and put myself in a
limbo for many years.

Maybe when I’ll qualify for EB2 NIW.

~~~
jhwang5
For most people, green card process takes about 2 years, not many years.

------
baybal2
The problem of the system is that US left close to nothing to regular work
visas. The premise that only "high end" companies are deserving to be let
hiring cheap workforce is wrong.

In reality, it seemed to me, that pretty much any "white collar" job was
passing H1B invariably of the salary, but even very high skill requirement
"blue collar" jobs were denied by default.

This is my experience from the time one of my past employers tried to make a
final assembly plant for electronics in Washington state. It was very hard to
find well educated assembly line workers. The company ended hiring fresh
master degrees grads to simply do assembly from knockdown kits for 70k, but
even they were not up to the task.

That business was scrapped in the end.

------
temp4358
There is so much hate for the H1-B visa, but let me play devil's advocate. US
"lax" (not really) immigration policy improves the image of America/American
companies abroad.

If US starts tightening immigration laws, US companies will start outsourcing
their work (which they have already started). If they start to clamp down on
outsourcing, countries like India have no incentive to let US to freely use
their market. They would simply follow china's method and restrict entry to
all foreign players. If US follows US first policy in everything, the third-
world already suspicious of western countries will only see this as west's new
imperial ambitions.

Software is easy to replicate, specially by people which have already worked
in Google, Facebook, etc. People in third world already have expertise to set
up the competition to US companies. All that is stopping them is competition
from US companies.

US being the becon of freedom and hope the world is a net good for US and US
businesses according to me.

~~~
diogenescynic
That’s a fake threat. If they could outsource the work and pay less they
already would. They aren’t keeping the jobs in America for their health...

Go do it then.

~~~
temp4358
Currently Top Talent in those countries want to move abroad to earn more and
have a better standard of living. If they see no way out, they have stay in
their countries and then US companies will have access to top talent for
cheaper.

For example, US is the best destination for doing a Ph.D. currently and ph.D.
students then work in US. If US stops them from working here, they will go
back work and form competitors.

China has already shown that this is achievable.

~~~
diogenescynic
That might be better for the world. Maybe if everyone wasn’t moving to
America, they’d make their own countries better... spread the love out.

I’d be fine with a few less tech companies. Life would go on. I care more
about the impact on American workers and as I’ve said, bringing in severely
underpaid workers that they can abuse isn’t really going to help.

Yeah, China is really somewhere people are desperate to get into... the air
and freedom! /yawn...

~~~
throwaway-oid
> Yeah, China is really somewhere people are desperate to get into...

I know a lot of Africans and Southeast Asians that are desperate to go to
China.

~~~
GeoffKnauth
How many Africans does China let in? How many Southeast Asians does China let
in? I.e., what kinds of quotas does China have for non-Chinese?

------
kolbe
Disparate outcomes do not imply disparate treatment. Maybe the real reason
that Oracle favored hiring Asian students is that they are more talented than
domestic alternatives?

~~~
bdcravens
In order to not abuse the h1b visa, they would have had to establish that
there is no available local talent per an objective standard.

------
Thousionced1989
As a foreigner with an American degree, I find this news unsurprising. In
fact, I had wondered why some companies were seemingly reluctant to fill in
the H1B paperwork, considering these workers are probably more loyal than
their citizen / permanent resident counterparts.

As for me, the lack of proper immigration avenues in practice was one of the
reasons leading me out of the country, this despite the higher salaries,
having adopted the “American way of life” during my stay, and my many friends
in the country. I found it bizarre, for lack of a better word, that a country
would welcome people for 4 or more years of highly specialised education and
training (F1, J1) and yet so few alternatives would be offered later for
working (basically, the H1B programme, and the O programme, the latter not
being a path to permanent residence).

I believe the current system mostly benefits the employer by making it
difficult to switch jobs, and that this causes a real depression in salaries
or working conditions.

As an aside, and an example of this depression, during my stay I was only
allowed to work campus jobs(1). Even though my work was voluntary (i.e., I did
not _need_ to work to remain in the country), I wanted to because I thought it
would help me gain experience and I found a technically relevant position.
But, because I had to work on campus, I was making significantly less than I
would have made outside.

Edited: formatting

(1) There are some exceptions to this for things like internships, unforeseen
financial hardship, etc.

------
d--b
What's everyone so angry about?

Having been through H1B, I think the system is designed fairly well. It's
extremely hard to figure out whether a particular hire required a foreign
worker. And, in doubt, the US in general always sides with what's easier for
companies. So, in doubt, immigration will consider that there is more harm
done if a company doesn't get the worker they need than if a US citizen's job
is taken by a foreigner. And probably even more so in tech, where jobs are
allegedly plenty.

As with everything some companies will exploit it, which is forbidden, but
then they get outed, and then they get sanctions, and abuse is reduced...

~~~
baby
Having been through H1B the system is not designed fairly. I tried twice and
failed the lottery. So I had to go through a green card process that took a
year and a half. Such a waste of time and a lot of moving around countries.

------
reaperducer
Slightly off-topic, but there's something about H-1B abuse that the vast
majority of people in the SV bubble don't realize. H-1B appears to hurt the
poor.

No, I'm not talking about struggling coders in India who dream of a life in
Seattle. I'm talking about the really hand-to-mouth poor who apparently rely
on seasonal H-1B visas to feed their families.

For example, there was a report on Radio New Zealand this week about how dirt-
poor Samoans can't get H-1B's to go to American Samoa to work in its last fish
cannery because all of the American visas have been slurped up by the mainland
tech industry.

I know H-1B's are supposed to be for specialists, and according to Wikipedia:
"A specialty occupation requires the application of specialized knowledge and
a bachelor's degree or the equivalent of work experience."

But I suspect that the "specialist" requirement is lifted for U.S. territories
so they can get the workers they need. There are a great number of mainland
labor rules that are relaxed, voided, or otherwise not valid in U.S.
territories, so I wonder if this is one of them.

Anyway, something to ponder.

~~~
hanging
Agriculture (including aquaculture) work visas are a different category:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-2A_visa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-2A_visa)

