
Temporary Visas, Meant to Import Talent, Help Ship Jobs Abroad - hwstar
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/30/us/temporary-visas-meant-to-import-talent-help-ship-jobs-abroad.html
======
falsestprophet
"When Congress designed temporary work visa programs, the idea was to bring in
foreigners with specialized, hard-to-find skills who would help American
companies grow, creating jobs to expand the economy."

This is a common misconception. The H1B visa laws are generally used to hire
very low wage workers. (I doubt the authors of the legislation are surprised
by this result.)

Companies are required to pay a prevailing wage, but this wage can be one of
four levels. And _of course_ most H1B applications are for the lowest levels.

Here are levels for software developers in Chicago [1]:

    
    
      Software Developers, Applications
      Chicago-Naperville-Joliet, IL Metropolitan Division
    
      Level 1 Wage:$24.45 hour - $50,856 year
      Level 2 Wage:$33.14 hour - $68,931 year
      Level 3 Wage:$41.84 hour - $87,027 year
      Level 4 Wage:$50.53 hour - $105,102 year
    

For context the 25th percentile wage in Chicago is $68,670 and average is
$88,630.

Of course, more ambitious companies may file applications under job titles
with even lower wage levels like "system analysts".

You should also know that if a H1B worker is fired, he and his family are out
of status that day and must leave the country unless a visitor visa is granted
(which is not guaranteed).

How would you like working here if you could be fired and your whole family
could be sent packing at will?

If you were an employer, do you think you could you hack this system to your
advantage? I'm pretty sure I could.

[1] [http://www.flcdatacenter.com/](http://www.flcdatacenter.com/)

~~~
parennoob
As an H1B, I whole-heartedly agree with you. The H1B gives American employers
disproportionate power over their foreign employees.

The ideal solution which has been proposed by several people, but will
probably never see the light of day in legislation due to entrenched lobbying
interests is very simple – separate the visa from the employer. If an employer
sponsors an H1B once, that person should be automatically be free to work for
any company he/she pleases for six years. This will make H1Bs more of a
realistic "high skill level" visa and less of a captive labor pool for the
industry.

~~~
jordanb
I completely agree. My ideal H1-B reform would be as follows:

1) The visa holder has no obligation to the company whatsoever as soon as the
visa is approved. If the only thing keeping an employee at the company is the
threat of deportation then maybe the company shouldn't be employing people at
all.

2) The company can not extract any fees whatsoever from the employee, not even
for training or relocation. The employee is not obligated to pay anything to
the employer under any circumstances, even if he immediately leaves the job.

3) The Visa program is a reverse auction on salary, down to, say, 150% of the
median wage for the NAICS code. The auction ends when the cap or the salary
limit is reached.

4) The company must hold the first year of salary in escrow and forfeit any
unpaid salary to the government if the employee leaves early. This is to
prevent hiring an employee and then firing and rehiring immediately after the
visa is approved at a lower salary.

Of course you're right that no real reform will happen, because as far as the
Zuckerberg/fwd.us crowd is concerned, the only problem with the current system
is that the cap is too low.

~~~
mavelikara
President Obama's executive action proposals[1] for improving the state of
legal immigration was torpedoed last week by the latest USCIS Visa
Bulletin[2]. This affects many engineers in Silicon Valley. The silence from
fwd.us on the topic has been particularly telling.

(edited to include links)

[1]
[http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/14_1120_...](http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/14_1120_memo_business_actions.pdf)

[2] [http://www.natlawreview.com/article/regrettable-and-
sudden-d...](http://www.natlawreview.com/article/regrettable-and-sudden-dos-
issues-revised-visa-bulletin-october-2015-leaving-many)

------
aianus
I hate the racist and nationalistic undertones whenever this is brought up.

Why _should_ Americans make more money than Indians for the same work? What is
so intrinsically great about Americans that I should pay more for an American
to do my accounting than an Indian and why am I wrong if I don't do that?

Edit:

> The 36-year-old accountant said the young Indian assigned to shadow her
> appeared to have no extraordinary knowledge of accounting. His expertise was
> in observing and mapping what she did.

> At the close of business, the recording was transmitted to India, where
> workers practiced mimicking his tasks.

If this is possible you don't have a real job and the Indian will be shortly
be replaced in turn by a piece of software.

~~~
cryogospel
why should I be able to live in a better house than you just because my
parents left me money when they died?

Our ancestors built this nation. We current citizens are their heirs. Whatever
benefits there are to having been born here, those benefits should accrue only
to citizens.

America is ours, we and our ancestors built it. If there are any benefits to
living here, they belong to us, and not to foregners. Likewise, my nice house
belongs to me and not to you, despite the fact that it was purchased with
money willed to me by my parents.

~~~
NhanH
I take it that you also claim personal responsibility for any and all the sins
that your ancestors and elder Americans have done?

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theshadowmonkey
Why does H1B visas directly relate to Indian consulting companies? I agree
those companies are the ones applying for the largest number of visas. But, I
as an Indian working in the United States on H1B visa and earning more than a
lot of Americans feel offended. I got my advanced STEM degree here from a
reputed university and work for a US company. So, should I not be given the
opportunity to stay and work in this country when I am contributing to the
economy on par or more than many Americans? I work on temporary visas and wait
for ~12 years to get a permanent residency even if I have bigger dreams and
want to start a company. On my visa status, its very hard to do anything
risky.

Create a new visa class then for students and entrepreneurs who come here and
get their advanced degrees. Universities and talent out of those universities
is what builds this great nation.

edit: I personally hate consulting companies from India because they get
employees with a lot of experience and pay them peanuts. Even a new college
graduate would not accept a job offer for their salary.

~~~
sul4bh
I like your point. The government should provide a new visa category for
students who get an advanced STEM degree from US college. Its absurd that
students who got their advanced STEM degree from a college in US has to
complete in the same visa category as the people applying from consulting
companies.

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tenpoundhammer
I think the New York Times and other publications need to put more scrutiny on
the congress in stories like this,

"When Congress designed temporary work visa programs, the idea was to bring in
foreigners with specialized, hard-to-find skills who would help American
companies grow, creating jobs to expand the economy. Now, though, some
companies are bringing in workers on those visas to help move jobs out of the
country."

I think this quote represents what congress claimed to be doing, but instead
were just obeying their corporate masters and knew full well that the program
would be used to erode the us workforce and workers rights in order to enrich
large corporations.

I don't expect journalistic institutions to agree with me but I do expect them
to call out politicians far more than they are, and to question their motives
with poorly thought laws like this one.

~~~
mwnz
Agreed. The abuse of the system is the symptom of a broken system. The real
solution is to revise the policy. Policy regulates. The market seeks to
circumvent regulation.

------
maerF0x0
It seems to me that its best for the free market for jobs to go where the
value/cost tradeoff is maximized. Simply put, first worlder's are not
providing the value that their salaries demand. And if we actually are, then
the companies we work for will have an advantage and will eventually beat the
competitors using cheap labor.

As well local inflation + foreign deflation will change this, it will probably
fix itself due to the crazy printing of money in the US. Eventually, a $100k a
year employee will just be subsistence in terms of real goods.

~~~
Swizec
> Eventually, a $100k a year employee will just be subsistence in terms of
> real goods.

In a certain popular city in the US that starts with S, that is not far from
truth _right now_.

~~~
mywittyname
This is such bullcrap. $6k a month after taxes goes a long way EVERYWHERE in
the US. People that can't afford to live in SF on this salary are just bad
with money.

Even spending $3k/mo on rent leaves you with $3k to spend on everything else.
$3k/mo after taxes is like a $50k/yr salary. If you can live in Nebraska on
$50k/yr, then you can live BETTER in SF on $100k/yr.

The SF tech crowd that can't get by on $100k need a lesson in managing money.

~~~
maerF0x0
Firstly, it goes fast in SF. $3500 a month for a 1 bedroom is more realistic,
unless one wants a >45minute commute (just checked with padmapper). Food
($350/mo), fun money($160 per month), clothes($50 per month), haircuts($30 per
month), utilities($150 per month), healthcare copays, transit and other random
crap probably eats $1k. Someone saving for retirement should roughly put $1k a
month away (makes about $80k a year retirement income). So now we have $500 a
month left for things like saving for a house, ring, wedding, visiting family
once a year, maybe buying a car or a trip somewhere. So yes, of course, its
livable but certainly not as intense as you've put it. ("such bull crap"...
"just bad with money")

Secondly. The marginal price on a room is about $1000 so if you perchance want
to have a family then you're looking at more like $4k- $4500 for your rent.
Everything is more expensive in SF as well, not just your rent.

My bias is that I do not consider it a healthy society if a couple couldnt
have a family of 2 (roughly replacement) on 1-1.5 incomes (some blend of
parents have some time off to raise the kids) .

End result: $6k a month after taxes (roughly $110k before) is enough such that
you still have to make sacrifices, either live far away (1 hr commute each
way), live in a terrible place (tenderloin), have roommates or give up on a
family.

~~~
mywittyname
Saving $1000 a month towards retirement and an additional $500 for anything
else is actually doing very well by American standards. Saving $1,500 is no
small feat for most families, that's more than half of the take-home pay for
the median family in America. Plus, you have the copays+transit+random crap =
$1000/mo bucket that has a lot of obvious savings.

Your post solidifies my point. Saving that much money in the midwest would be
difficult on $50k/yr, but doing so on $100k in SF requires a little self-
control.

------
ecobiker
NYTimes is identifying the wrong problem here. What if Toys R Us sends an
employee to India to train the team there (that's not uncommon). I'm
struggling to understand the key takeaway from the article.

~~~
jzwinck
One could also complain about Americans who choose to live abroad. They often
end up training foreigners either directly or indirectly. Companies understand
that outsiders can be used to gain understanding more quickly in some areas,
and they'll pay above the domestic market for it. America discourages this by
taxing its citizens abroad; this would be even more punitive if not for the
foreign earned income exclusion. True nationalists might consider its repeal.

------
bko
Jobs aren't what make people wealthy, its access to markets. Jobs are an
expense, not an end in itself. Politicians and now even economists always talk
about jobs as some thing to strive for. This article talks about outsourcing
but freeing up human resources to pursue more meaningful work should be
applauded. Eliminating menial work for people to perform (usually replaced by
machines or in this case outsourcing to low cost countries) has led to
furthering human achievement. That is of course only true if you believe
people aren't mindless sheep.

~~~
tomohawk
The only mindless sheep here are the people allowing this travesty to occur.
There is absolutely no way that the US Government should be incentivizing the
offshoring of work.

Instead of H1B, we should update our immigration laws and policies to prefer
educated people of means who have a desire to come here and contribute to our
country.

~~~
aianus
> There is absolutely no way that the US Government should be incentivizing
> the offshoring of work.

And why not? The offshoring of work reduces the cost of goods and services and
frees American time up to do meaningful, better compensated work instead.

The eventual conclusion (perhaps even in our lifetime) of automation and
offshoring will be that Americans will not have to work for the necessities of
life at all, just for self-actualization and luxuries.

~~~
Jogyn
Play that through to the end though, having access to cheaper goods means
little when you can't afford said goods due to the offshoring collectively
lowering wages across the board. The part your ignoring is the downward
pressure on everyone's wage that would have

~~~
aianus
> collectively lowering wages across the board

It would not collectively lower wages across the board, it would leave many
completely unemployed and the rest earning double or triple or fifty times
what they're making now in real terms.

The solution is a basic income so those that are unemployed don't suffer for
it and have a long runway to work on art, hobbies, retrain, etc.

------
powera
The idea that we can Save American Jobs by preventing foreigners from coming
into the country is pure insanity.

I'm 100% sure that India could find some way to do accounting without sending
people to the US for 4 weeks to learn. This is pure fear-mongering by the New
York Times, probably just because of the political winds against immigration.

------
cwilkes
_A Cengage spokeswoman, Susan M. Aspey, said the company needed to install
higher-grade accounting systems. “To do this quickly and efficiently,” she
said, Cengage sought support from Cognizant._

Thanks, I needed a good laugh.

Outsourcing is great when you have a repeatable process that isn't constantly
changing. The worst possible thing is to take a project that: 1\. is changing
constantly 2\. is new 3\. you can't get your hard around

Think it is hard managing a project when it is in the same building as you?
Try doing that from thousands of miles away.

------
datashovel
I think so many of today's "controversial" topics / issues are related.
Capitalism, if it were generalized and mapped to a function, optimizes in the
same way as the "least squares error" ML function does. The world is just
getting too good at capitalism too quickly and it's causing too many people to
lose out on the happy / comfortable lifestyle they would have were this not
the case.

~~~
mdpopescu
Very good point about optimization, I will remember the analogy.

------
manibatra
Obviously it sucks for people losing their jobs. But if someone's job is such
that another person can come, mimic what they do and take away their job,
aren't they already at risk of losing their jobs to automation in the near
future?

------
srinivasan
Google, Facebook et al should not be campaigning for more H-1B's; that would
simply worsen the offshoring situation. They should instead campaign for an
improved program that distinguishes employees from (effectively) contract
workers.

------
pm90
I think the article has got one major fact wrong. The Visa program that is
most abused is the L1. I don't think those employees here for a few
days/months were on a H1B, they were surely on a L1, because they had to leave
soon after. An L1 has no cap, and all companies have to do is to have someone
on their payroll for 2 years in another country. In fact, if an employee does
get an H1B, they will frequently try to keep them in the US as long as
possible, since there is a shortage of professionals with an H1B.

------
lifesucks1
You will all be shocked if you realize the number of H1B's in the federal
government. Forget about private business your jobs are guaranteed to be
outsourced sooner or later. Just move to management and skip being skilled
labor of any sorts. STEM education is a joke. As a tax payer/citizen there are
no jobs in the federal sector either. There are a tonne of folks on H1B at the
government agencies itself.

I am not making this up....

------
kopter
The real problem is that the same Visa quota is being used for both highly-
skilled workers who _don't_ displace American workers (e.g. Silicon Valley or
high-tech manufacturing), and "body-shopped" workers who are _intended_ to
displace American workers (the example in this article, and the previous
example of Disney).

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kevin_thibedeau
Hopefully this coerced/forced training of your replacement will get captured
at some point on a viral video incendiary enough to force Congress to do
something out of national embarrassment. That's the only way to get the
entrenched players to budge from the status quo.

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dirkdk
It sounds like most of this abuse goes with employees that are here for a much
shorter period than the visa is valid for (2 periods of 3 years for H1B). That
is a clear indicator that they were here for only training purposes

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lanewinfield
Oh, the irony of "Tata" Consultancy Services.

