
India's tech industry panics over U.S. plans to change high-skilled visas - sizzle
http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/31/technology/india-h1b-visa-trump-tech-companies/index.html
======
RestlessMind
As an Indian who spent a lot of years on H1-B visa, I welcome this move.
Though while talking about this subject, one should bear in mind that "Indians
on H1-B" are not a homogeneous group.

There are those, employed by the likes of AmaGooFaceSoft / Unicorns or
graduating from mid-top tier universities, who will benefit by the proposed
changes and who were indeed the "target audience" in mind when H1-B was linked
to "getting high skilled immigrants in the US".

Then there are those who are transferred here in bulk by
TCS/Wipro/Infosys/TechMahindra, who are paid the minimum H1-B wage possible,
who jump from client to client across different states every now and then
(true first hand accounts of my close friends) - these people are still mostly
happy (cannot generalize though) to have the opportunity to work in the US for
a few years and save, considering Indian salaries back home. While the
individuals in this category might be getting a better deal, overall they
become a pawn in "gaming of H1-B system" by Indian outsourcing companies.

Auctioning H1-B visas based on salary is a step in generally right direction.
It may hurt low-paying industries relying on H1-B, but we can assess the
impact on them and implement targeted fixes later if needed.

~~~
gmarx
I've never understood why it is okay for outsourcing companies to "own" HIB
visa people. A colleague told me long ago that it was like indentured
servitude unless/until you could escape to a regular company that was willing
to sponsor.

~~~
CodeSheikh
Imagine living under the fear that your visa can be canceled the next business
day and you have to leave US soon before you have enough time to make
alternative plans. Especially when you are a newcomer in the USA, a
overwhelmingly unknown land. If this happens, then you have I believe 30 days
to find another company who is willing to sponsor you and then you have to go
back to India to reapply for another H1-B visa with new employer. Also, your
outsourcing company keep a close eye on you in terms of if you are job
hunting, in some s=cases there is some sort of collateral kept backhome as
well. Also, if you are an average skilled employee then you don't have much
leverage to jump ships.

------
cloakandswagger
It's about time.

Say what you will about Trump's other policies, but it's high time someone
took an ax to the H-1B program. The level of abuse I've witnessed from it over
the years is heinous; foreign workers essentially working as indentured
servants, with the only beneficiaries being corporations using their cheap
labor and the foreign consultancy firms that farm them out.

I'll be interested to see what changes get made to the program to move it back
towards its intended purpose.

~~~
beachstartup
this culture of abusing your workers spills out into the US workforce as well.
i've known people (us citizens) who have had to send lawyer letters to get
their invoices paid by these consultancy firms, who aren't used to getting
pushback from their servants. sometimes in the tens of thousands of dollars
for high end work.

of course the bad behavior stops immediately when they get a nice little
letter with an american law firm's name at the top of it.

they're scumbags.

~~~
nulldevz
Yeah ... these measures don't really address the underlying issue of scumbag
executives. They're just going to find another way to pay for cheap labor,
e.g., shifting revenue to countries with cheap labor. This move may actually
expedite a major shift of software engineering to other countries. In turn, it
could help improve other countries' infrastructure creating a positive
feedback loop for outsourcing.

Unintended consequences caused by government regulation.

~~~
coredog64
Actual offshoring is a lot more difficult to manage than H1B candidates who
sit in your office.

For the former, the big names are well versed in churning out billable hours
regardless of actual work performed. The 11-12 hour time difference can
sometimes be a boon, but more often than not leads to both your remote and
local employees being unhappy. Local employees because they're asked to stay
late or come in early, and remote employees because access to transit is more
difficult if only US business hours are an option.

------
sudhirj
Heh. Depends on which part of India you're referring to. The younger me would
have found it more difficult to get foreign assignments that form the
foundation for a lot of the house buying and marriage making here, but I think
the slightly more experienced folks like present me welcome the change - that
is the low end of the salary range I'd expect if I was going to jump countries
with a family, and now I don't have to compete in a lottery with tens of
thousands of fresh graduates wanting onsite assignments.

The bodyshops like TCS, CTS and Infy will suffer, though. Their exorbitant
margins on shipping obedient and freshfaced barely-post-teenagers off to
projects where they're mostly expected to punch the clock and do bits and
pieces of what the Architect says / tech support are over. They'll survive,
though - the Leads, Pricipals and Architects will just have to travel up and
down a bit more. I expect they'll lay off a lot of people, though. And the
long tail of salaries here will likely go down. But if there is an increase in
off-site outsourcing, it'll balance things out. They'll just staff more people
at the home base and freeze salary hikes citing this.

Dowries will also likely go down. There's going to be a sudden dearth of
grooms with the cachet of foreign work experience and a cache of saved
dollars. It's also possible that if this sticks a lot of the shady engineering
colleges that have sprung up here like weeds will see reduced demand. Entry
fees at medical colleges will probably spike.

~~~
tootie
These Indian body shops are the bane of my existence but I know a bunch of H1B
holders that were FTEs and I would be horrified to lose them. I don't know
what they get paid, but I know it's below the rate for non-Visa holders. If
you're an architect in NYC (which a bunch of them are) they probably top the
$130K margin, but a bunch definitely won't.

------
titomc
ex-H1B Indian here, now permanent resident of Canada. Left US for good,
because I was being exploited by tech firms taking advantage of my H1B status.

This is a welcome change in my opinion. H1B workers were exploited by the
Indian body shops as well as American employers. Raising the minimum wages
will prune the bad apples and make H1B a visa system for the truly skilled
candidates.

Quirks:

1\. Find & shutdown fake employers running fake payrolls to match the
increased wages. A search for *consulting.com will bring up many 'one-room'
body shops in the US.

2\. Stop the lottery process and award visa to truly skilled candidates who
can provide proofs for their skills.

3\. H1B LCA process should be changed and made similar to the PERM process, so
that it will be a true test of the market.

4\. Giving preference to Master degree holders is not a good idea, having a
Masters degree from an American University is not an indicator for "highly
skilled". Most of the students from India obtain these Masters degree just for
the purpose of getting an OPT visa to improve their chances of getting
selected in the lottery for H1B.

Many of these 'master' degree holders show fake experiences & do 'proxy'
interviews to get into companies. These fake experiences are backed up by
experience letters from bogus companies setup for this purpose from India.
Many of them also provide 'bonus' services like proxy candidate interview
services on Skype.

5\. Stop 'future GC'. Many body shops in US do this by taking a huge deposit
from the candidates for their 'future GC services'.

~~~
chrisbennet
What is "future GC"? I googled it with success. Thanks.

~~~
chrisbennet
I meant without success...

~~~
guard-of-terra
I imagine that's Green Card.

~~~
chrisbennet
Thanks you. Obvious now... (slapping forehead)

------
throw345hn
I actually think this will result in accelerating India's growth in the tech
sector. There might be slight downturn in the shorter term for the services
sector but this will be compensated by the product companies.

Once the above happens, I actually think it will have a net negative effect
for the US tech sector. Yes you can still find the best engineers to come to
the US, however once salaries start rising in the developing countries, people
will not want to flock to the US.

A clear example is the aviation sector. Pilots from the developed countries
flock to fly for the airlines in the Middle east and Asia. Look at Emirates,
Etihad, Air Asia etc. Many of them are expat pilots.

~~~
DamnYuppie
This is because of the seniority system put in place by the unions. They
pilots fly over seas as there are not a lot of jobs at major airlines flying
the big planes domestically.

~~~
throw345hn
Yes there are not a lot of jobs because the airline sector doesn't have much
growth in the US. Compare that with the the economies of developing countries,
they are growing rapidly. Another example from India is Indigo (which is a
major domestic airline) recently ordered close to 200 A320 airplanes which a
massive bet on growth.

I would think the same thing will happen to the tech sector in the longer term
where the demand and growth will go to Asia.

------
Lord_Yoda
Trying to play a devil's advocate, I might be downvoted here right away.
Disclosure: I am not going to be affected by this, but I do work in tech
industry.

1\. With the decline of low-wage tech workers, where do you think the
mundane/non-value added work they do will go? Not everything will/can be
outsourced, and you don't want to your USD 130K employee to do that. There is
a real scarcity of tech skilled workers in the US. This may be filled
gradually in the future, but in the short-term, there will be some
consequences.

2\. This will affect small companies, non-SF/NYC/Seattle area start-ups, and
companies, non-tech companies. Not everyone can pay this salary. These
businesses are not going out of their way to pay for H1Bs.

I may be wrong, and that's why I have a genuine question. Is there a credible
research about the loss of jobs due to H1B and it is not just an availability
heuristic? I agree that outsourcing causes loss of local jobs, but that is not
what this is trying to solve.

~~~
VLM
"There is a real scarcity of tech skilled workers in the US."

That is a blatant falsehood it only exists due to "culture fit" where you can
only hire a skilled tech worker if they're also a 20-something white male
Stanford grad living in SV or maybe NYC.

Try just considering hiring a person of color or a woman. There's a hell of a
lot of them, they're not much worse at their jobs than the young white boys,
but on the coasts they are not allowed in the industry at this time.

No matter how far left wing tech people socially signal, that kind of person
will never ever hire a woman or PoC. Yet here in the TrumpenReich rural
heartland far from the coasts I've worked with a cool (South AFAIK) Korean
dude and a Jamaican and I know some awesome female IT professionals.

If you want to hear about how great women and PoC are, you have to move to the
coasts, but if you want to actually get a job with women and PoC you need to
go right wing heartland, which sounds weird but is so true.

I live in one of the most segregated metro areas in the country far from the
coasts, yet my neighborhood has a higher percentage of blacks than Google
employees has a percentage of blacks. Huh. Klan-land is more diverse than
coastal tech, you wouldn't guess that from how far left they talk.

I know I sound harsh but PoC and women are wasting their time trying to get
jobs on the coasts; tech industry is far too racist and sexist to hire them.
They can get jobs away from the coasts and in my experience they do really
well.

My experience with decades of corporate speak indicates that corporations
always talk the opposite of what they do. In the heartland we don't have
"womens coding classes" and PoC outreach because we don't need them, instead
of providing lip service we actually hire them instead.

~~~
mhurron
> Try just considering hiring a person of color or a woman. There's a hell of
> a lot of them, they're not much worse at their jobs than the young white
> boys

Why do you believe women and minorities are worse workers than whites?

~~~
VLM
That was sarcasm. If read with an emphasis on the 'much' not the 'worse', even
if you give the coastal tech employers the benefit of the doubt WRT the
direction of the greater or less than symbol, the absolute value of the
difference in performance observed has been unmeasurably small over the last
couple decades.

The coasties seem to claim its just a cost of doing business that companies
will fall apart if a woman is hired or a black is hired, but my personal
experience far from the coasts is they do just fine.

I just find the whole situation comparing coastal culture and midwest
development culture frustrating.

Endless coastal complaining about how there's a shortage of skilled employees,
because they only hire 22 yr old white boys. The heartland away from the
coasts is not experiencing that crippling lack of talent, because we don't
have crippling levels of racism and sexism.

Endless self congratulatory crowing from the coasts about having outreach
programs to get women and PoC into coding, not that it matters, because
coastal tech companies only hire white men. Meanwhile they denigrate the
heartland away from the coasts for not being liberal enough and not having
enough "programs" to get women and PoC into coding, yet we have the only
employers who actually hire women and PoC so we don't need the programs to
being with!

There should be a bot on HN where any time someone complains about lack of
skilled employees it replies with "STFU and hire some PoC and women instead of
white frat boys"

~~~
dhoe
So this is intriguing, I've never heard of the heartland as a great place for
diversity. Do you have any evidence for this situation you describe?

------
muninn_
"Preference given to H1-Bs that pay the most".

Sounds like a win for workers all around.

~~~
tn13
What happens when the employers run a fake payroll to pay more money on paper
but low in reality ?

~~~
LyndsySimon
This seems irrelevant to me. What's stopping them from doing that today?

~~~
sudhirj
The Justice Department, I suppose? [http://www.ndtv.com/indians-abroad/two-
indian-americans-arre...](http://www.ndtv.com/indians-abroad/two-indian-
americans-arrested-in-us-for-h1b-visa-fraud-1466742)

~~~
titomc
Just a drop in the ocean.

------
univalent
This is actually a good step. Eliminate cost arbitrage as motive for hiring
foreign workers. Hire to fill genuine gaps in the labor pool. I don't see any
downside and I'm an Indian in the US.

~~~
laughingman2
I have 2 years exp in medium sized product company (which has global market)
in India. I have developed iOS apps, react app, web app in django (basically
full stack). have experience in python, java, javascript and swift.

I applied for few good colleges (UCSD, UT Austin, Carnige Mellon, GATech,
Arizona state) to specialize in Machine Learning in US.

Should I change my plans (I have to spend anywhere from 40-90 lakh RS to get
MS in these colleges), is 130,000 $ too high for guy with my profile to work
in a good product based or research oriented companies in US after graduating?

~~~
titomc
ex-H1B here, You have good skills, once you graduate, you will have to depend
on your luck to get into the H1B system currently.

Why don't you get MS from good universities in Canada and enter the express
entry immigration system which values your skills unlike H1B system which
depends on luck ?

~~~
klipt
Yeah Canada seems like a safer place for foreigners right now. US visas and
even green cards are no longer worth as much because Trump has demonstrated he
is willing to invalidate them at his whim.

Trump just now barred from entry (effectively deported) all visa holders
(including H1-Bs) from 7 Muslim countries who happened to be outside the US
for vacation when his Executive Order hit. He also tried to do the same to
green card holders (but the courts stood up to him so he backpedaled).

------
ChrisBland
I'm not sure I understand the outrage from India. If you look at their
standards to receive a visa to work there:

The applicant should be a highly skilled and/or qualified professional being
engaged or appointed by a company or organization or industry or undertaking
in India on contract or an employment basis at a senior level, skilled
position such as technical expert, senior executive, or in a managerial
position, etc.

There should not be a qualified Indian available to do the job that the visa
holder would be performing.

The employee's salary must be in excess of U.S. $25,000 per year (seems small
until you put it in perspective: $3,168 is the average household income in
India.)

Meaning it is almost 8x avg household income for a salary requirement in
India. If you equate that to the us average household income of $51,939, the
H1B should be at $402,000 here

------
sandGorgon
nobody is freaking out. Infosys and TCS are NOT India's representative
companies anymore. They are the Flipkarts and the Olacabs and Paytms now. Or
even Freshdesk, Zoho and Helpshift.

I think most people welcome the move - we have lost many good potential
employees who were headhunted by outsourcing companies by showing them the
American dream and then chained to the yoke in some dreadful job.

The services business is not going to be affected that much - most of the work
was happening onshore in India anyway. This is a delta of a billion dollars at
worst. In the long run, this is going to be much better for both economies.

~~~
bruceb
Infosys has market cap 34b, Flipkart valuation is tumbling and now at 5b.

While not as cool as startups, Infosys and TCS are still much bigger and more
stable companies.

~~~
sandGorgon
by that measure all other startups suck and only microsoft or yahoo/alibaba is
worth anything.

I'm talking about aspirational reach - a H1B+TCS is not aspirational anymore.

~~~
kamaal
Sorry. That companies you mentioned are cool and hip not because they are
great but because VC's are currently pumping money into them through a
firehose.

Let the tide die. These companies aren't even a shred of dust compared to
operational, financial and execution discipline of outsourcing firms.

My guess is round about the next US recession most of that start up people
will do anything for a job in outsourcing firms just to keep them fed and pay
their bills.

------
rurban
130k is indeed too high. To fight the most egregious abusers 100k would have
been enough. Not everybody works in Silicon Valley IT, and even there the
indian bodyshops offered only <50K for the H1-B abusers.

Many other industries rely on foreign talent, and many cannot pay 130k, but
100k would be fine IMHO.

~~~
bobosha
130K in Kansas City >> 130K in SF. Hope they take geography into
consideration.

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
Why? This is great for programmers in areas like KC.

~~~
tetromino_
Are there _any_ programmers earning 130K in KC? Depending on where you are in
the country, the new H1-B pay floor may be above the local pay ceiling for
non-managerial positions.

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
I'm sure there are a few but isn't that the point? If all the H1B's are in
CA/NY/WA maybe KC (and cities like it) will become more attractive to
programmers as they raise their wages.

------
transfire
Considering that foreign counties are providing free tuition to qualifying
students and then sending them here to get better paying jobs, I can only be
supportive. Although, in the long run I'd prefer to see tuition be free at
public schools here as well.

We seem to have gotten things all around ass backwards these days. We get
high-end candidates from Asia and low-end candidates from Mexico, so Americans
are being squeezed on both ends.

~~~
klipt
No such thing as "free tuition", it's just paid through taxes instead of
through student fees.

------
webwanderings
CNN now uses words like "freak out" for their headlines? Amazing.

------
mzs
here's the actual draft of the executive order: [https://cdn0.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7872567/P...](https://cdn0.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7872567/Protecting_American_Jobs_and_Workers_by_Strengthening_the_Integrity_of_Foreign_Worker_Visa_Programs.0.pdf)

------
neil1023
130K is far too high in my opinion. Maybe that would be reasonable in Silicon
Valley but nowhere else. This policy should account for the cost of living of
where the businesses are located. A large amount of businesses will not be
able to afford employees at that proposed salary - even the if the potential
employees are highly skilled.

~~~
vkat
I used to work in mid-west tech and 130k was something a development manager
would get which was was 4 levels above an entry level engineer.

------
known
Zero-sum for Indian IT firms [https://qz.com/899306/will-the-h-1b-be-worth-it-
for-indian-i...](https://qz.com/899306/will-the-h-1b-be-worth-it-for-indian-
it-firms-if-the-us-overhauls-its-work-visa-programs/)

------
known
Indian IT firms are making money by selling software engineers, not software
to US;

------
codesternews
I think it will affect US more in negative way. I may be wrong but it's my
perspective. The companies will do more outsourcing and the companies like
TCS, Infy will not bring people in US. We are living in communication age and
their is nothing can be done remotely. So why I need to pay double when I can
do same work with 1/4 of salary.Many captive companies already sending less
people to US.

In other words US will get less talent and less benefit of talented engineers
from India, China. More and more work go outside the more loss of US.

------
tn13
On the long term this will help Indians even more and various US businesses
might be willing to outsource even more operations out of USA to India.

~~~
dominotw
People have been saying this ever since late 90's. Is there any specific
evidence that tighter visa rules result in more outsourcing?

------
virtuexru
Is "freaks out" really appropriate for a news piece title? Did a seventeen
year old girl write this? Yikes.

~~~
diN0bot
I don't mind critiques of language formality or effectiveness, etc, but no
need to police or denigrate young women. Keep misogyny out of it.

~~~
libria
Are you not the one dragging mysogyny into the conversation? There's nothing
wrong with a 17 year old speaking in this fashion and GP didn't say there was.
They only said journalists shouldn't.

They also implied it's more commonly found among females. Again, only a
comment on what they perceive; there's nothing illegal or unexpected with a 17
year old saying "like, omg, freaks out".

