
Silicon Valley Is Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants - known
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-h-1b_us_5890d86ce4b0522c7d3d84af
======
lazaroclapp
The problem with suggesting that the salary bar be set at the median of the
lifetime salary, is that it does mean closing the door to current
international students in the U.S., and to recent graduates recruited from
universities abroad. The _minimum_ bar for an immigrant should not be that
they are better than half the people already employed here in their field,
regardless of their stage in life. And, of course, most people immigrate when
they are young and without kids.

If you truly believe that H-1B should exist only for truly extraordinary
talent, not available in the U.S. at any salary, this might be a reasonable
proposal. But the thing is, there is already a program for extraordinary
talent, the O-1 and EB-1 categories. If you instead believe that it should be
possible for companies to get the best talent, regardless of where they happen
to have been born, and for people to work abroad from their nations of birth,
then the H-1B program can't be quite that stringent. It is a skilled workers
program, and H-1B workers _are_ skilled. It is not a genius engineer only
program.

Now, if your proposal is to change green card process so that employers can't
hold people hostage over it, or to institute controls that companies can't
underpay H1-B workers on average, that's one thing. But in the current
political climate the suggestions seems to be "all foreigners must go!
exceptions made for super stars". If the U.S. is truly becoming that closed, I
genuinely think that, over time, it will find the best technology being
developed elsewhere (maybe not at the research lab level if it keeps the
O-1/EB-1 programs, but at the industrial/software innovation level for sure).
Either in the countries that welcome immigration of skilled professionals
(e.g. Canada, Germany, Singapore) or those with large pools of human capital
to being with (e.g. China and India).

~~~
stupidcar
You're ignoring the fact the US already produces a _surplus_ of skilled and
qualified STEM professionals. Freedom of labor movement is a nice–to–have, but
not some ideological priority that must be placed above all other
considerations. The size of the pool of human capital is irrelevant if there
simply aren't enough jobs on offer.

The government of a country should be first and foremost advocates for, and
protectors of, the welfare of its own citizens. If a large number of those
citizens are being encouraged to accumulate massive debts gaining an education
that them leaves them unable to find a job, then that is a social problem that
needs a solution. And if the government can help the situation by putting
reasonable restrictions on the number of foreign workers competing for those
jobs, then they absolutely should do that.

I really do not understand how so many people came to view these kind of
theoretical, free-market niceties as more important than the practical
wellbeing of their fellow citizens, but it's an incredibly dangerous attitude.
If you support free-markets and globalisation, then you should want them
implemented in a way that doesn't cause major social damage that ends up
creating hostility to them. Otherwise, you end up with the kinds of populist
movements we're seeing now, which feed upon the resentments of people who've
watched successive governments refuse to place their own citizen's welfare
above that of an ideology that harms them.

~~~
danenania
Why are people born inside the imaginary lines of my country more important to
help than those born outside of it? Someone from Bangladesh or Mexico is not a
fellow citizen of my country, but they are a fellow citizen of my world. Why
should the smaller and more arbitrary geographical division come first?

You can talk about culture, but I'm sure I have more in common culturally with
a phd student or entrepreneur in Dhaka than a Christian fundamentalist in
Kansas.

I understand that there is a lot of complexity in these issues, but it's hard
for me to see nationalism as anything more than a form of widely accepted
bigotry.

~~~
YooLi
Because being born inside those imaginary lines means people pay ($ + other)
and therefore expect the group they contribute to to put them ahead of an
outsider.

~~~
kelnos
That doesn't follow. My friends who are not US citizens and are here on H-1B
visas (and have similar jobs as I do) pay significantly more in taxes than I
do. And many of the programs those taxes pay into (like Social Security) are
closed to them because they're non-citizens.

Given that many US citizens don't start paying much if anything in the way of
taxes until post-education (18-22), a non-citizen coming to the US right after
college will be paying roughly the same.

But ok, let's say that's not persuasive. I was born in New Jersey, and grew up
in Maryland. I moved to California when I was 23 to start working. My family
had of course never paid CA state taxes. Should CA have placed artificial
"preferences" on workers who were born in CA, preferences that would have put
me at the bottom of the hiring pile? Should I have been excluded from a job
because other Californians were unemployed at the time? If that sounds
ridiculous, then applying the same reasoning to a non-citizen sounds just
about as ridiculous.

~~~
YooLi
Re: H1-B friends

They pay taxes because now they are here within the imaginary lines and even
if they don't get Social security, etc they are still benefitting from being
here where they have all the other niceties of being here.

Re: citizens don't start paying until 18.

Their parents paid for them.

Re: California

Still part of a larger imaginary piece where everyone contribute.

You're stuck thinking in terms of just $. And no one is saying no one should
be able to come here. You simply asked why do people think negatively about
H1-B and I explained it to you. What company wouldn't hire workers that cost
them significantly less and can't easily leave over someone local, and hence
the position against. It's not difficult.

~~~
kelnos
>> Re: citizens don't start paying until 18.

> Their parents paid for them.

Quite the opposite. Their parents got a tax deduction simply because their
children exist.

>> Re: California

> Still part of a larger imaginary piece where everyone contribute.

Exactly! Just as the entire world is part of a still larger imaginary piece!
Borders are just squiggly lines drawn on a map. I have more in common with an
engineering student in India than with most people in middle America:
socially, culturally, etc.

> You're stuck thinking in terms of just $.

I was replying to a post of yours wherein you were making an argument about
solely $.

~~~
YooLi
Negative. You can very easily go back to my posts and see where I explicitly
say $ + other and mention the H1-Bs benefiting by being here even if they
don't qualify for SS. Trying to frame what I said that way is just
disingenuous.

Parents absolutely pay into the system when they have children even if they
get a federal tax credit. The extra food they buy is more sales tax, etc. just
think about it.

------
scdoshi
Okay, so obviously, an employment based visa program does create conflicts of
interest and in general, is not good for the immigrant employee, compared to a
non employment based visa.

However, the claim that immigrant employees are somehow not as good as their
American counterparts is based on shoddy logic.

The criteria he uses in his paper to measure this:

\- high salary \- high rate of patent production \- Ph.D. dissertation awards
\- doctorate earned at a top-ranked university \- employment in R&D

Because of issues with the employment based visa, he himself argues earlier in
the article that immigrant employees end up with a lower salary.

Top ranked universities don't always admit people based on merit. Being in the
country when applying to school and speaking the language have huge
advantages. A lot of graduate admissions are on a case by case basis, and
getting an in person meeting with the professor can make all the difference.
Also, top graduate schools tend to be a lot more expensive.

Employment is R&D is also hampered by the fact that immigrants don't have
comparatively fewer choices when looking for a job, again because of issues
with employment based visas. This is especially true is you want to do
research in aerospace or materials because of security clearances.

Overall, this doesn't give me a lot of confidence in his other analyses.

Disclaimer: I'm an immigrant, so I'm not without my biases here.

~~~
jordanb
The argument isn't that they're not as good as their American peers. The
argument is that they're not exceptionally better than their American peers.
The stated purpose of the visa program is to bring people in who can do work
nobody else can do. But what happens is that companies bring in tons of
perfectly ordinary people to do perfectly ordinary work because they want
people who are cheaper, younger, and easier to abuse.

~~~
lazaroclapp
But is the H1-B really for "exceptionally better than"? Isn't that what O-1 is
for? H1-B is for "highly skilled workers in an area in which there is strong
demand for highly skilled workers". Where, at the time the program was
created, highly skilled probably meant anyone with a college degree on the
same area as their work.

------
wdcgu
As usual, these rants treat "Silicon Valley" as a single entity.

[http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2016-H1B-Visa-
Sponsor.aspx](http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2016-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx)

There are some companies that underpay, while other pay quite well. Conflating
the two is like throwing out the baby with the bath water.

~~~
mpoloton
The statistical expectation from the dataset that you link to is $86,328.67
[1]. I no nothing about US salaries, but I don't consider this value a
competitive salary. Therefore, I believe the premise of the article is
statically correct. Citing a few example with large salaries (Apple, Google,
...) is misleading.

1-
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f0iZ7VZkA7Th2dCE6rgD...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f0iZ7VZkA7Th2dCE6rgDdStoo0qC_DDCrfHJa_YV4hs/edit?usp=sharing)

~~~
dogma1138
86K may not be a competitive salary in heart of SV but it's damn competitive
in the US, and around the world.

Unless you are living in NYC/SV your cost of living in the US is lower, you
tax burden is lower. 86K$ is more than the vast majority of highly paid
developers in Europe get.

I don't understand why Amazon/Google paying 50-60K Euros in Germany or even
lower than that in other EU countries with a tax burden of nearly 50% of
income is fine by some guy from India coming and working for 85K+ in the US is
somehow exploitation.

Do companies take advantage of the fact that they relocate people from
effectively developing nations and pay them below market rates, sure, that's
business but honestly do you think anyone complains? The average indian
developer with 5-10 years of experience earns between 350-500K RS a year, with
the 350-400K being more common this is about 5500-6000$.

If you think that the cost of living in India is so low that it can offset the
discrepancy in income then you clearly haven't spent much time in India.

Some employers might abuse H1B too much, some might even do illegal things
with it, but that's the case those things are illegal, just offering a lower
than average salary isn't illegal, it's not even amoral.

~~~
mpoloton
The point is not that is 86K is low. In fact it is an interesting salary if
you consider all salaries in the US among all jobs. The point is that it is
lower than US software engineer average salary. This leads to wage compression
for the local population whom or their parent have been paying taxes hence the
prosperity and attractiveness of the US.

Nobody says that the fault is with the Visa holder who happily work for less
than average wage. The problem is with companies exploiting this law which was
designed to attract best talents who wouldn't work for less than average
because they know their worth.

As a foreigner, I say this is not fair to local population (including those
immigrant after they obtain their permanent residency) whose wages are kept
low by companies who abuse these laws.

------
webmaven
As headlines go, this one elicits a "Duh."

However, the HN version of the headline omits "Trump is Right:", which I
suppose _is_ attention grabbing, especially from an outlet like HuffPo.

~~~
Terr_
> As headlines go, this one elicits a "Duh."

Well, whenever something isn't being done about X, that implies headlines
saying "X!" probably aren't quite "duh" enough.

~~~
webmaven
Not really...

 _" It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary
depends upon his not understanding it!"_ \-- Upton Sinclair

And also...

 _" News Flash: Water is Wet! Government Has No Plan To Deal With Issue, Forms
Committee."_

------
theparanoid
Matloff has written about this in many other places over the years,
[http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1bwritings.html](http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1bwritings.html).

He was my CS professor as an undergrad.

------
alextheparrot
Does anyone else consider immigration a significant part of US foreign policy?
Wouldn't offering visas to "rising" countries allow us to pick off much of
their best talent, thus boosting the US and lowering the other countries? The
global power struggles of today, I believe, will be won by countries who can
dictate the technology that refocuses which resources are needed.

~~~
shard972
> Wouldn't offering visas to "rising" countries allow us to pick off much of
> their best talent, thus boosting the US and lowering the other countries?

I haven't seen H1B visa's used like this in my personal experience. At the
last company I worked for they were mostly used to fill our testing team with
people from India.

Maybe they were all guinness, the problem was all but one of them could
speak/write english fluently.

I can also look at my boyfriend's current employer who recently took a trip to
india in order to hire a team of indians "on the cheap" only to fire all but 1
within a month after they didn't really get anything productive done.

~~~
mildbow
Guinness? Are you calling them stout? :)

Anyway, the point should be you want to get people who are skilled.
Maybe/maybe not that means English fluency. But, that's another matter.

It seems most abuse[0] happens due to random Indian body-shops. Since Trump is
so carte-blanche maybe he can just blacklist the ones we know to be obvious
abusers.

Maybe a better answer is to require all H1-Bs be actual full-time employees of
the company, rather than being under contract through a third party?

[0]I define abuse as using H1-Bs primarily for cheap labor vs skilled labor.

------
daveFNbuck
It's a bit weird that the article takes several paragraphs at the start
explaining how H1-B visas are a problem largely because they prevent job
mobility, but says nothing about how this is supposed to be addressed by the
executive order.

------
nostrademons
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13579226](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13579226)

------
Ceezy
I'm glad that here the comments section is not full of Trump trolls like it is
in huffingtonpost. First it's true that HB1 visa holder are not free agent and
can't contest for the best wages. But I trully don't understand how can
ANYBODY say that, tech in general is NOT in shortage of ingineers. Median wage
in SF for dev is around 110 000. But even outside SF buble it's around 70
000$. With no downward pressure, How can you complain that foreign worker is
taking your job?

~~~
geebee
The median salary for a dental hygienist in San Francisco is also about
$110,000 a year. That salary level qualifies for direct housing subsidies for
a family of 4 in San Francisco. So why are we taking claims of a desperate
shortage of developers more seriously than claims of a desperate shortage of
dental hygienists?

Just to be clear, immigrants should be welcome to become devs. And dental
hygienists, drywall installers, real estate agents, and sandwich shop owners.
What I don't welcome is a program that specifically uses the immigration
system to increase the number of developers relative to other professions.
That should be left to the market and freedom of choice for the individuals
who participate in it.

I just see absolutely no reason whatsoever to give tech employers the power to
determine who is allowed to come to the US, what jobs they are allowed to
work, and the circumstances under which they are allowed to remain in the US.
This is immensely harmful, and doesn't have much to do with immigration. It
has to do with corporate control over the immigration system.

~~~
Ceezy
I agree with you, i think immigration should be controled more by communities,
neither central government or companies.

------
oculusthrift
Feel like many think this is the only use of H-1B. They don't ever hear about
how the best employees at Microsoft, Google, and Facebook are also H-1B's.

~~~
digitalzombie
> Feel like many think this is the only use of H-1B. They don't ever hear
> about how the best employees at Microsoft, Google, and Facebook are also
> H-1B's.

Because H-1B visa is broken. Just cause there's a good side to it doesn't mean
we can ignore the broken parts.

Take the good parts and fix the bad one.

Worker exploitation is not going to help native workers nor helped
international workers.

> They don't ever hear about how the best employees at Microsoft, Google, and
> Facebook are also H-1B's.

Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc.. have caught colluded in wages before.

~~~
mavelikara
> Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc.. have caught colluded in wages before.

Nitpick - if you meant the "no cold call agreement" case, the defendants were
Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay. Microsoft was
not accused.

------
ungzd
Is it really bad? Usually immigrants anyway get much better wages than in
their hometown and escape from repressive regimes.

~~~
dukeluke
Yes, it is bad. It lowers the wages of Americans and makes finding an entry
level tech position for Americans a lot harder. The purpose of the H-1B visa
program was to bring highly specialized workers to the US, not cheap labor.

~~~
jza00425
At least you still have a job. What stops companies get jobs outsourced to
other countries?

~~~
dukeluke
Not much currently. Most jobs that could be outsourced have been.

------
rodionos
The numbers you're seeing maybe somewhat inflated because of how the average
salary is calculated for this report:

    
    
      Sometimes the visa sponsors(employers) does not enter a specific salary, but a salary range. 
      Our algorithm uses the middle point of the range to calculate the average salary.

------
amarant
if companies was only after cheap labor, why not move software production
overseas? it's not like officespace is cheaper in the valley than in ex.
India.....don't think this article makes a whole lot of sense tbh

~~~
angry_napkin
Because being in the Valley is magical for your company, or something.

~~~
aaron-lebo
They want to have their cake and eat it, too. Or: live in California, hire
from Calcutta.

------
guard-of-terra
My co-workers raised a note that H1B no longer relevant so much for the
purpose described in headline.

It's much easier to bring workers on L visa - they have even less opportunity
to skip jobs or aruge for a raise than H1B holders, and there's no lottery and
no limits. Just bring as much people on L as possible.

As far as I know, Microsoft did this with Canada long ago. They hire you and
relocate to Canada, then after a year they make L visa for you and toss over
the border to Redmond.

~~~
wdcgu
Don't forget the TN visa. Those Canadians are stealing American jobs. Really
surprised that everyone likes to complain about the H1B/L1 but not the TN
visa.

~~~
mavelikara
Or the E-3 visa [1], which give citizens of Australia 10,500 _indefinitely
renewable_ visas each year.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-3_visa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-3_visa)

