
Commentary: The H-1B Visa Problem as IEEE-USA Sees It - teklaperry
http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-work/tech-careers/commentary-the-h1b-problem-as-ieeeusa-sees-it
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untog
Fixing this would be quite possible, if the government had the appetite to do
so. Mandate that H1B workers must work in the office of their employer and you
remove a large market for outsourcing companies to "rent" employees to others.

It's absurd that these companies are allowed to abuse the program, and also
take up as many visas as they do. I know both startups and foreign workers who
have attempted to use H1B to work in the company but been denied because there
aren't enough available.

~~~
tn13
This makes H1B worker more restricted who is already screwed up pretty bad.
Government can not track where people work. Can the person work from home ?
Can the X Inc. rent out their 4 cubicles to Infosys?

The obvious solution for H1B is to increase the cap from 85K to 200K or so
while giving instant green-cards to all the pending applicants.

------
vparikh
The problem with the H-1B is that you are basically tied to the company that
sponsored you. The one fundamental change that needs to happen is that the
H-1B is issued for a period of X years to work in the country - not X years to
work for Y company. This is would give H-1B holders the same level playing
field to actually receive fair compensation as Americans have.

If the companies were truly hiring H-1B because of a lack of talent, then they
would be happy just to be able to have the required skill sets to be
available.

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
How is this true?

You are not effectively tied to your employer in an H-1B visa (unlike in L-1,
where you are).

If you work for say Google, and want to shift to Facebook, FB can just apply
for the H-1B for you and while the actual paperwork takes time, you can move
jobs in a couple of weeks. And if you clear the lottery once, you are not
subjected to it again. So, modulo the $2-3K that FB will have to spend to
apply for your H-1B, how else are you tied to Google?

~~~
ganeshkrishnan
>You are not effectively tied to your employer in an H-1B visa

yes and no. The H1b petition is effectively held by the employer. You cannot
be jobless if you are on H1b or if the company fires you then you have to
leave the country within 30(?) days. Emotionally this is a big factor. Even
transferring H1b takes 6-8 months and premium processing has now been shut
down. You cannot leave the country during transfer and even shifting companies
is not straight forward. A couple of my colleagues had their visas rejected
during transfer and had to leave US in few days; they could not even sell
their car.

The parent poster is more correct than IEEE pragmatically. Allow H1b to hold
their own visas. This would fix most of the non-discrimination issues that
people have with H1b.

IEEE wants to hand out green cards instead of H1b which is highly impractical.
It takes 10-20 years to get a green card and you want the government to start
handing out to guest workers?

~~~
tn13
10-20 years is not the time taken by government. It is essentially anti-asian
discrimination where the application is simply kept in cold storage. Take $10k
from the person and give him green card in 1 month.

------
geebee
I'm glad to see IEEE take a principled stand against expansion of the H1B
program, and I'm particularly glad to see them take on the claim that support
for the H1B program is equivalent to support for immigrants or immigration.

Unfortunately, they get it slightly wrong when they claim that the UC was
built by green card holders rather than guest workers. I think I know what
they mean here - that the immigrants we celebrate who did amazing things came
here as free and full members of the workforce, free to choose their own path
in life, rather than as "guest workers" forced to work in a field dictated by
their employer. Unfortunately, a grim look at US history will make it pretty
clear that the a decent chunk of US was built on the backs of people who were
not free. But I certainly would agree with the IEEE that freedom of choice is
a much better guiding principle than coercive programs controlled by
corporations who control their employee's rights to live and work in the US
(we can disagree about test first development, but I don't like the idea that
the person who insists on it can have the person who questions it deported).

While it's may be good politics not to question the $138k a year salary paid
to a Facebook employee, I hope that here on HN we can agree that $138k isn't a
remarkable salary for highly skilled, critical technology worker in Silicon
Valley. This is a place where a house costs well over a million a year. In San
Francisco, the median salary for a registered nurse is about $133k a year

([http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/registered-
nurse/s...](http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/registered-nurse/salary)

I absolutely am not complaining, registered nurses are talented people who
deserve excellent salaries. But it does kind of put it in perspective, that
Facebook, a multi multi billion dollar corporation, is dealing with such a
critical shortage of high skilled technologists that it is forced to pay them
about roughly what a registered nurse earns in the region. Sounds to me like
if people choose to become registered nurses rather than Facebook engineers,
the market is working exactly as it should, and I see no reason to create a
visa program that denies immigrants the right to make that choice just because
Facebook thinks it knows best for them and their lives.

~~~
jogjayr
> While it's may be good politics not to question the $138k a year salary paid
> to a Facebook employee, I hope that here on HN we can agree that $138k isn't
> a remarkable salary for highly skilled, critical technology worker in
> Silicon Valley.

Important to point out that the reported $138k doesn't include (AFAIK) RSUs,
stock grants and stock options. That could easily add another $70-100k to the
compensation.

If anyone knows otherwise, please feel free to correct me.

------
NumberSix
One issue that the article overlooks is how many jobs the Microsofts, Googles,
Apples, Facebooks, etc. outsource to the H1-B outsourcing companies such as
WiPro, Cognizant etc. I have met many consultants in the Silicon Valley who
work for Apple through a firm such as WiPro. These contractors salaries
presumably would not show up in the salaries for H1-B employees working
directly for these large, high-profile companies.

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matt_s
They didn't really call out what a fix would be, but maybe the legislation of
the visas could require sponsorship by host company for green card and a
timeframe for them to get that as well as an expedited route to attaining
green card.

This would make the H-1B visas exactly for specialized skills that might not
be able to be sourced in the US or at least be for skills that are in high
demand. It would fit the current administration's nationalistic agenda and it
would reduce the half-pay visa's that the body shops bring into the country.

~~~
cmurf
They're directly arguing in favor of putting skilled foreign workers on a path
to citizenship, and not even mess around with H-1B's. If the argument is
America lacks enough of certain skilled workers, recruit these workers into
becoming Americans.

This is in contrast to the Republican position which is to set a minimum wage
for H-1B holders, which is rather ironic that they'll support a minimum wage
there as a form of protectionism, but won't support a federal minimum wage
increase. But that's typical Republican classism. Between that, and the
current administration's blatantly anti-immigrant stance, I'm unconvinced
we're going to see a good policy change in the near term, and instead it'll
just be a rearranging of the deck chairs with a lot of red cape action to
distract people from the issues.

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reacharavindh
Problem explained well. I would have loved to hear their take on how to solve
it...

> We oppose the expansion of H1-B program. > Greencard holders are not bad,
> they add to labor. - Good.

Are they suggesting that high skilled labors should be given green cards
instead of the visa? The problem of identifying who is a high skilled labor
and who is not still remains.

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PaulHoule
It is taking stands like this that is the reason why I am a member of the IEEE
Computer Society and not of the ACM.

