
Solving the H-1B Visa Problem - prostoalex
http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/20/solving-the-h-1b-visa-problem/
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bonobo3000
I think this is a great idea, let the H1B prices be freely controlled by
market, and let companies buy/sell H1Bs among themselves.

People have mentioned that this makes things more expensive for companies.
This is true, but i wish someone would take the side of the immigrants (there
are only a few of us, and we can't vote!). Companies oppose this because its
more expensive, and politicians oppose it because its "taking jobs away from
Americans" and anyways immigrants on H1B can't vote. Of course, if we don't
like it we should just "go back home", even if we have been here for years,
have houses, spouses, jobs and friends here and don't have roots back home
anymore. Immigrants have to put up with a lot of crap:

\- a very short deadline to find a job if you are unemployed on H1B.
Technically 0 days! - its only an unofficial grace period at the mercy of the
whims of an immigration officer. meaning constant uncertainty and scrambling
to find a job ASAP lest the immigration gods smite you down.

\- ridiculously long wait times for green cards. in some cases 10+ years.

\- unable to move companies while in the green card process. if you do, you go
right back to the end of the line. many companies know and abuse this. during
this time, you are pretty much a slave to the company - think about it, if you
don't ultimately have a choice to switch companies without throwing away years
of waiting, you have no means of recourse when they treat you poorly.

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boulos
This proposal (run an auction for the H1-B slots) would likely make it even
harder for startups to offer H1-B visas compared to say Microsoft.

For arguments sake, lets consider an average potential hire. Lots of startups
are willing to pay ballpark $130k in San Francisco right now (low end $70k,
upper end $180k). Since the company most likely don't have funding lasting
more than 18 months, this means they're budgeting just about $200k plus taxes
and benefits for this person over that duration.

You might be willing to pay 10, 20 or even 30% as a fee for the right
candidate (just like headhunter fees) but that translates into either that
many fewer employees or that much less runway. Taking 18 months of capital and
turning it into 12 is a quick way to end up dead. By contrast, large companies
are paying much more in total compensation and can easily afford to spread
this cost over multiple years (assuming the candidate doesn't nearly
immediately utilize his ability to transfer his visa).

If anything this proposal seems like it would lend itself towards ensuring
only large companies apply for H1-Bs and that smaller ones just have to hope
people will transfer, despite not being able to promise that they'll be in
business long enough to sponsor a green card.

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srinivasan
It's a false premise that startups are currently competing against large
companies like Microsoft for H-1B visas.

The biggest H-1B users are offshoring/outsourcing companies (source:
[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/06/us/outsourcing...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/06/us/outsourcing-
companies-dominate-h1b-visas.html))

Moving to an auction system will in fact _improve_ a startup's chances - most
VC funded startups can comfortably outbid an outsourcing company. The
outsourcers' business models are dependent on visa costs being on the low
side.

~~~
boulos
Wow! Thanks for this link. For those that didn't click through: all the big
tech firms combined only took about 5000 of the 85000 H1-B applications in
2014. Tata/Wipro/Infosys etc. each took more than 3000 a piece (Tata alone did
more than all the big tech firms combined).

Still it seems like an auction isn't necessary, just a higher fixed fee upon
selection. If it was say $10k, that's a pretty big chunk of the $45k to $90k
that PayScale reports for software engineers at Tata Consultancy Services.

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vskarine
I've been on H1B for years in various companies and I totally support this
proposal. I personally have not seen any case where H1Bs were underpaid in
salary terms but I definitely saw people being threatened and worked to death
because their green card application was dependent on the company (this made,
hourly wise, a minimum wage job for them).

~~~
melted
They aren't underpaid wrt their nominal career level. Many of them definitely
are underpaid if you consider their actual experience and what they'd get if
they were in the market. That price point can only be established if you can
safely change jobs, which on an H1-B you can't.

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MisterBastahrd
I have an easier solution. Companies routinely use supply and demand to whine
their way politically. It's simple: any H1-B who comes into the US should be
paid at least 30% more than the prevailing market average because it's clear
that there's more demand than supply for their talents. The truly talented
still get to come to the US, and they get paid handsomely for it. The rest
won't, and more employers will be willing to train young developers,
engineers, nurses, and scientists rather than pay the difference. Having a
talented and educated native populace is far more important than propping up
companies that abuse the system.

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melted
There's no such thing as "prevailing market wage", at least not in software
engineering. Your comp can vary by a factor of 3 or more, depending on where
you work, for the exact same skill set.

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geebee
In the opposite corner: Immigration skeptics…

Ouch. I disagree with this, so much. The US takes over a million new legal
immigrants into the country every year. These immigrants are free to choose
their career path in response to market signals and their own personal
interests. This sort of immigration has nothing to do with the H1B visa.

A lot of people are certainly skeptical of claims that there is a severe
shortage of tech workers. Many of us simply believe that when people are free
to choose their own path in life, those with the skills necessary to become
excellent programmers are able to apply those skills more profitably and find
greater personal fulfillment in other areas. We believe that the government
should not coercively force people to work for a period of time in certain
fields and for certain employers as a condition of gaining the right to become
a free participant in the US labor market, and that this sort of corporate
power invites mischief.

In fact, I'd say that a program that provides a captive workforce whose
ability to enter new fields and jobs is limited will create bad market
distortions. It will prevent or at least suppress the kind of changes that
would make programming and other tech fields attractive enough to start
drawing that top talent out of other fields and into programming.

Employers, even "good" ones, should not control their employee's right to live
in the US. People should be free to choose their path in life, and should not
be coerced into studying or working in a particular field as a condition of
living in the US. Those beliefs do not make an immigration sceptic. I'd say
they are consistent with a very pro-immigration mindset.

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tn13
The top tech industry seems to be totally unaware of underground H1Bs. Some
companies "charge" people to file their H1B, run fake payrolls and pay below
legal salary. Government probably does not have much resources to catch all of
them and hence catches only fraction of tip of iceberg.

F1 is another route through which lot of Indians enter the country and then
struggle bribe their way to OPT/H1B.

It is really sad that the dishonest people get rewarded more.

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KingMob
This "solution" seems a bit naive. If H1B's were actually auctioned off at
market rates, the companies involved would lobby even harder to increase the
number allowed, in order to drive the prices down.

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padiyar83
This is my own opinion here. I think if you increase the price of H1B
significantly then jobs would just move to Bangalore, Dublin or Vancouver.
There is a higher limit to how much you can jack up the prices of a H1 visa
and that higher limit should be set taking into account what the companies are
willing to pay and still keep employing people in the US, assuming they have
an option to hire people elsewhere in the world. If its too high, you might
just have incentivized a behavior that stops companies from hiring people in
US and instead hires them in other countries, these are the reasons why this
will happen

\- Companies increasingly have a global presence, almost all Tier 1 (AMZN,
MSFT, GOOG) and Tier 2 (CSCO, JNPR, HP) firms have an office in Bangalore,
Dublin and Vancouver these days. \- Work can be done from anywhere really. At
least the kind of work that H1B's are hired to do. A majority of these roles
are not client facing. And you can always fly in and back on business visas
when you need some face time with the team in US. \- And you don't have the
hassle of dealing with a non working immigration system. I can hire a guy from
anywhere in the world and have him working at my Dublin office in a month. It
takes a year of planning to get the same person in the US if I am lucky. I
won't even consider it if the prices are too high. \- As a precedent, Almost
all of the Tier 1 companies and most Tier 2 companies, move workers from US to
India, Ireland and Canada routinely if they cannot secure a H1B visa in the
US. If the prices are dramatically increased this will just become the default
behavior.

~~~
codeonfire
That does not compute. The US is already the most expensive place to move
employees even with H1B scams factored in, so if employers were price
sensitive they would just hire those people in Bangalore, Dublin, and
Vancouver right now. What motivates employers is the use of presence in the US
as a perk as people badly want to get out of those other places. Individual
managers also like H1B because it gives them a high level of power and control
over those individuals.

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maplechori
Not a lot of people talk about this but the non profit organizations and
schools don't have a cap for H1-Bs.

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laurencerowe
Note that cap-exempt H1-Bs are not transferable to cap-subject commercial
employers.

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tommoor
The H1B process already has a mechanism built in to prevent this 'abuse' \-
employers have to pay the prevailing market wage for the position. Perhaps the
existing rules just need to be enforced better?

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bostoncutem2
This article's idea will immediately makes everything worse. The only good
outcome from this program is higher revenue for the government. Good companies
will suffer. Foreign workers will suffer. American economy will suffer. All
this revenue you collect from higher H-1B fees, you lose out in tax revenues
because many companies will fail. The best way for government to enjoy healthy
revenue is to have a super healthy economy! There is no other way around it.

The spirit of H-1B program is such that foreign workers get equal pay for
equal work compared to their American counterpart. Assuming that is true,
employers are already paying a premium for foreign workers because they have
to pay thousands more dollars for the visa. The only reason they would do this
is that they cannot find enough American workers. If they have to pay the same
salary, why would any company in the right mind hire foreigners instead of
Americans? If this very fact is not enough for you to show there is shortage
of qualified American workers, read on.

Foreign workers will only hurt American workers if they cost less to companies
and out-prices American workers. This could be the case for companies that do
not follow wage requirement established by the H-1B program. However, if this
is the case, then enforcement of H-1B wage requirement should be the thing
that needs to be addressed. A new program based on H-1B auction is really
addressing the wrong problem, in the wrong way.

Making H-1B fee auction-based will simply drive up the cost of hiring on H-1B.
Yes it will become a disincentive to hire foreign workers, however given the
same H-1B quota, companies that is able to get away with lower wage for
foreign workers are more likely to be willing to pay more for the right to
hire H-1B. Companies that are paying foreign workers competitively has no
incentive to bid up and will just give up and suffer from under-staffed
engineering team. So this program will reward employers who are fraudulent and
who depress wages for H-1B worker and punish good companies who provide equal
pay for equal work. And guess what, those employers who uncut pay for foreign
workers will now undercut their pay even more because the foreign workers have
fewer choices of good employers and all the potential employers remaining are
the ones who want to pay foreign workers less to justify the higher cost of
hiring them. Alas, you have the exact opposite outcome one would expect.

The shortage of highly skilled tech workers in this country needs no further
proof. Do you really believe if you kick out all the foreign workers or making
them really expensive to hire, then all the Americans who can't find job
because their skills are irrelevant can suddenly find a job? They still won't
find a job until they learned the things necessary to make them relevant
again! Do you know why coding bootcamps are so popular? It is because the
Americans who attend these programs know that they need to learn the new
skills that will make them relevant in the tech sector.

If anyone works at one of those bootcamps, let's do a survey among your
students and publish the results on the Internet. Do your students feel they
are disadvantaged from foreign engineers/workers when it comes to finding a
job? Which is going to help them more in finding a job they want and like?
Attending a coding bootcamp, or sending all foreign engineers home.

The notion that foreign workers are taking jobs away from Americans is an ill-
informed one. Illegal Mexicans are doing dirty work that many Americans don't
want to do. Foreign tech workers are doing work that many Americans don't have
the capacity to do. The pampered Americans(just some of Americans, not all)
need to stop whining about their job being taken away and start to up their
game and think about how they can contribute to this economy. To quote JFK, My
fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can
do for your country. Ask not what easy job your country can hand out to you,
ask what you can do to stay relevant and useful for this country's economy.
Take a coding class, become a uber driver. If you really want to work, you
will find a job. If you just wanna find scapegoats, you will find many but it
won't help you become a better and more useful person.

I welcome comments at bostoncutem at gmail dot com

