
Trump’s “Hire American” order makes it harder to get H-1B visas - losvedir
https://www.axios.com/trump-h1b-visa-denials-d7e903ab-1dd6-45d8-9df7-29289cda0076.html
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ashelmire
The H-1B issue is a complicated one. On the one hand, we want the US to have
the best talent, and on the other you want American workers to have a better
shot at American jobs, and not to have wages suppressed by cheaper foreign
labor. H-1Bs are supposed to fill talent gaps, but seem to be overwhelmingly
used to pay lower-than-market wages to foreign workers when you could easily
hire an American - if you were offering more money. Despite the law stating
that they must be offered above average wages for their jobs, studies show
they are paid less on average. See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Wage_depression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Wage_depression)

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anonymous5133
It wont help protect american workers though because the company can always
just open a remote office in india to get the talent. If americans want the
jobs then they need to compete in all levels with the competition which
includes wages, skills and so on.

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logfromblammo
Yes, they should do that, if only to learn why that isn't always as simple in
practice as it looks in writing.

If companies are willing to open remote offices in Bangalore or Mumbai or
Shenzhen, they should also be willing to open remote offices in Chicago,
Denver, Austin, Atlanta, Boston, Toronto, London, or Berlin, or to just have
remote employees that are not attached to any office building. And yet, many
of them still want everyone on site in Silicon Valley.

Those companies won't go anywhere. They want everyone to come to them. It
doesn't matter to them if the talent is in Islamabad or Sacramento, if the
talent can't (or won't) relocate. SV is by no means the only place where that
happens, of course. Some companies have gone all in on a single corporate
campus, even when there are no particular economies of scale to be had in
doing so. It makes the org chart simpler.

The problem is not in the workers, really. Most companies are completely
incompetent at remote management and almost anti-competent at distributed
management. Putting together a team that works well without physical proximity
is a lot more difficult than periodically counting butts in seats and doing
the "manager walk" behind everyone in your open-plan office, to make sure your
direct reports at least look like they're working.

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akshayB
Companies want low salaried employees to cut down cost and they use H1 for it
by giving an excuse that there is no equivalent talent in US and we need to
import talent from other countries. When it comes to Tech. it all boils down
to $/per hour for getting things done. These tactics may discourage H1
applications but unless they force companies to hire people in US H1 will
continue to exist.

~~~
jdietrich
If it's purely a matter of cost, surely you'd just outsource it all to
Bangalore? An Indian developer in India is a hell of a lot cheaper than an
Indian developer in the US.

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CompanionCuuube
It isn't all about cost, it's about having a body in an office chair.
Otherwise they would be more open to remote workers vs on-site.

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ProfessorLayton
It seems like a better step towards fixing this h1-b mess is to get rid of the
lottery system, and just move towards making companies bid for each slot, with
the "bid" being a salary that goes 100% towards the employee.

This would be win-win-win:

\- Companies that truly need the talent will bid highly for a slot.

\- H1-b employees will get paid more as quantities are limited.

\- H1-b slots will be better utilized towards jobs that actually need
specialization, not lower wage work.

\- It'll probably be cheaper to "Hire American"

Downsides: Only FAANG and other large companies could afford such a system,
but so what? What entitles companies to hire cheap labor anyway? A fix for
this could also be to make it more expensive for each additional h1-b slot the
company hires, I suppose.

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sharpy
The only downside would be that almost 100% of the visa allocation would go to
IT then. I believe medical field also gets quite a few H1B workers.

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ap3
Are medical professionals needed or only at a certain cost?

I don’t see how the bid system wouldn’t work for doctors and nurses

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codeafin
If you check the official government reports, you'll see it's actually the
other way around.

2016 H-1Bs [1] - 398718 submitted with 53456 denied = 13% denial rate

2017 H-1Bs [2] - 403675 submitted with 37993 denied = 9% denial rate

So it looks like the denial rate has actually decreased.

[1]
[https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/Re...](https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/Reports%20and%20Studies/H-1B/h-1B-FY16.pdf)

[2]
[https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/files/nativedocume...](https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/files/nativedocuments/Characteristics_of_H-1B_Specialty_Occupation_Workers_FY17.pdf)

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jessaustin
[EDIT] Haha never mind. Attack of dyslexia...

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codeafin
Where are you seeing that there were more denials than submitted?

On the first table, it shows the total submitted is 398,718. The number
approved is 345,262, which leaves at most 53,456 denied (398,718 - 345,262 =
53,456).

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jessaustin
That is the intended effect, is it not? Isn't that what he promised to do
before he was elected?

Many problems admit no pareto-optimal solution.

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didibus
In my opinion, they just need to allow H1B mobility. If H1B workers could
easilly switch job once they're here, then they could negotiate higher
salaries.

Part of the trick is that an H1B employee cannot complain about poor
conditions, or low wages, because they're dependent on the sponsoring company.

If that was true, H1Bs would quickly force wages back up, and employers would
once again freely compete for talent.

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dmurray
As I understand it, H1B visas are subject to a lottery system, the number of
places available has not changed in years, and there are always more
applicants than there are visas available.

Do denied applications count towards the cap? If not, then this change can't
be making it meaningfully "harder" to get a visa. If it's harder for one
applicant to get a visa, it's easier for another who benefits from the first
one being rejected.

Ideally this should benefit the really excellent applicants and disadvantage
the body shop outsourcers, which is exactly the H1B reform HN is normally
calling for.

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jonathankoren
The is a strategic blunder. One of the great historical advantages of the
United States has been an excellent higher education system, a strong economy.
It's an environment that has attracted some of the most talented people from
around the globe to come here. Unfortunately, current immigration policy
hamstrings that advantage, and this announced policy just further kneecaps it.

The biggest flaw in the H-1B system is that it's a nonimmigration visa. A very
common path, is to come to United States on an F-1 student visa, graduate,
then get a job on an H-1B. But the H-1B is time limited, and indentures people
to a specific employer. Get a crappy job, get low balled, you're screwed, and
god help you if you don't start your green card paperwork early enough. Couple
this with the limited number of visas, we're simply turning away talented
people and encouraging them to go home and compete against the United States
on the international stage. It's stupid. Instead, we should create a new visa
that's allows anyone that graduated from an American university to stay in the
United States, work get a job, change a job. Allow their spouse and children
to come, and also work. Essentially, give them a diploma and a green card.

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hiram112
The worst thing you could do, as a nation state with a (dubious) _lack of
talent_ , with a long-term view of being competitive, would be to allow your
companies to maximize short-term profits by importing and training foreigners
(many who won't stay and who will not spend their wages domestically),
depressing salaries, and making the field as unattractive as possible for
native citizens.

Do you think smart native students can't see that all the grad students are
foreigners, all the entry level jobs are filled with H1Bs and F1 visa-holders,
and that salaries aren't really that great compared to finance, or medicine,
or dozens of other fields that have barriers to entry, or at least aren't
completely overrun with workers from low wage nations?

Instead of letting the market work as it's designed - where demand pushes up
wages, we flood the industry with labor and depress wages, then throw a few
billion dollars at public school unions to teach kindergartners to program
(i.e. buy IPads), and expect things to work out well. :/

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jonathankoren
I'm sorry but this nationalist rhetoric makes no sense. Are the immigrants
being trained and leaving, or are they staying and driving down wages so low
that Americans don't want the jobs? If the later, then why not keep bringing
in immigrants to do the jobs that Americans turn their noses up at? If they're
coming over here, filling our grad schools and taking our jobs in our high
wage nation, aren't they now high wage earners? Even your "letting the market
work as it's designed" plan doesn't make sense. So if there's no one to do the
jobs, you think that American companies are just going to tough it out for a
decade, raising wages even higher, until a new crop of people get trained up,
and then depress market again? Isn't that horrible because the wages are being
depressed? Why would a company do this? Why wouldn't they just leave, thus
depressing the economy even more?

Immigrants stay when you encourage them to stay. Not only do they get jobs
contributing to the American economy, but they also have kids here.

None of this makes sense through any sort of economic lens. It does make
sense, if all you care about is if people from different places, with
different languages, different customs, and different looks aren't getting
ahead in your society. There's a word for that. In fact, there are several of
words for that, but I'll go with the simple one. It's racist. And just, so
we're both clear, I'm calling you a racist.

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ap3
H1B is not a market - you are locked to your sponsoring employer.

If you switch jobs the other employer has to file the paperwork.

If you lose your job you have 30 days to find employment or you have to lesve
the country- most immigrants would do anything not to be in this position.

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jonathankoren
Agree. It has to do with the fact that the H-1 is a nonimmigration visa. I’d
make it one, or better yet just allow for a quick F-1 to permanent residence
change.

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dominotw
> Interviews with attorneys and companies, as well as other data, indicate
> high rates of denials

Not quite clear how exactly this data was collected and how reliable it is.
Also what is "other data".

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patrickg_zill
I have not interacted much with h1b's.

However a friend of mine has, at several different companies and in general
has not been impressed. Specifically when a quote for single sign on was made
for the customer, that it would take 3 months. He implemented the feature over
a weekend...

This is in the "body shop" consulting side of the industry. I have heard
similar complaints about H1b's in the cell phone and telecom industry as well.

EDIT to add: specialty cases as mentioned elsewhere in the thread, could well
be different...

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losvedir
Does anyone know what the "request for evidence" means exactly? What sort of
evidence is required for an H1-B? Evidence of technical ability?

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bigcostooge
Technical ability alone does not qualify one for an H1b visa. You need to be
above and beyond what is able to be sourced in America. Specifically, the
skills need to be so advanced that you cannot find any American workers to
fill the job.

I imagine this test would discredit nearly every H1b software hire.

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yourapostasy
> You need to be above and beyond what is able to be sourced in America.

One workaround tactic I've read claimed on forums is the requirements
stipulate that the candidate must work with offshore business analyst teams in
their native language, which is not English. I can't believe it would be that
easy, though. If that actually passes muster with federal immigration review,
then these more stringent rules are just a paper tiger and political bluster.

~~~
bigcostooge
I haven’t seen this specifically in our job postings. But we only hire H1bs to
reduce cost.

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nutjob2
There's a simple work around for visa hell in the US: move your (tech)
business to Europe. Lots of talent, lower employee costs, liberal immigration
laws, choice of legal and tax jurisdictions. Really, it's got it all.

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dragontamer
Wouldn't European tech companies be subject to GPDR and other such regulations
in the European market?

I think move to Canada makes the most sense. Similar laws to the USA, close
and a similar set of advantages that you've described.

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delecti
GDPR only applies to data of users who are in the EU. A company with users
solely in the US is no more affected by GDPR if their developers are in the EU
than they are if their developers are in the US or India. Similarly, a company
with users in the EU is already affected by the GDPR even if their developers
are not in the EU.

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DanBC
If you operate from the EU GDPR applies to all your users. (3.1)

If you operate outside the EU GDPR will apply to all your EU users if you are
offering goods or services, or monitoring their behaviour in the Union. (3.2)

[https://gdpr-info.eu/art-3-gdpr/](https://gdpr-info.eu/art-3-gdpr/)

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hiram112
I voted for Trump in 2016 specifically because of this issue, and am glad to
see he is following through on yet another one of his promises.

H1B sounds good in theory, and I'll admit is a valid system for a small
percentage of talented employees and companies working on hard problems.

OTOH, big business and the body shops have ruined it for the rest of us. If
there is indeed a _talent shortage_ , the most short-sighted thing you could
do as a nation is to import foreigners, depress wages, and make the industry
as unattractive as possible for current students.

BTW, I've worked in India and seen how the game is played both here and there,
so I'm not just the typical xenophobe who's crying about _Der took er jerbs_
(as if that wasn't a valid thing to be angry about).

But I know that people from any other country would NOT tolerate training
foreign workers from lower-COL nations as replacements for their own job, and
Americans now need to push back, too. Enough is enough.

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tbenedetti10
Good.

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dang
Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

