The problem with H1B and some of the other employment visas is its really difficult or impossible for the worker to change jobs. JD Vance calls them indentured servants. I suspect the situation for actual indentured servants is a bit worse but in any case the workers dont have a lot of options at their disposal. They cant just leave without losing their visa. So their “choice” to work for less money isn’t really a choice at all.
Now is the answer to make things worse, as they’ve been doing (removing the 60 day grace period after losing a job)? Or is it to liberalize the program. Maybe increase standards but make it easier for workers to move jobs?
If it were me, I would make companies "bid" on the visas, where their bid is the salary (including all benefits, minus ALL expenses) they will pay the employee.
Employers who really need employees for high-skilled work would thus get visas. Employers who want to underpay their foreign labor will not.
Auctions are great because it's harder to game than a lottery. If a company truly believes there is a shortage of rocket surgeons and they need to access to the global market of these specialists, they can bid high. No hand wringing about not being able to find American rocket surgeons (willing to work for low income country pay scales). No stuffing a lottery with tons of entries - bids incentivize applicants to not waste slots. No worrying that a Federal department made the wrong decision on total supply, price, or who the recipients are - auctions self-adjust and update.
Auctions are bad because need is not entirely measured in money. Highest bidders win is not egalitarian. Sometimes we do want to subsidize rocket surgeons visas for disadvantaged parts of the country.
My concern with such approaches is around the "all skilled labor is lumped into the H-1B visa", be it needing fluency in French and a teaching certificate or a PhD in data science with a focus on economics - its the same pool of visas.
Within the H-1D which is for tech jobs (just like H-1A and H-1C were for healthcare while they were active), it can have a different pool size and requirements and for that one could require a certain base pay and have an auction on top of that.
This could allow for regulating tech job immigration differently while minimizing the impact to French teachers or medical professionals in rural America that have no way to compete with Big Tech salaries.
The reason I think this is more likely doable is that it works the same way that the H-1A and H-1C visas did before to address one section of the skilled labor visa applications.
is it because you personally would benefit from having tech jobs visas regulated so that your own wages don't get pushed down?
I think skilled labour import is, on the whole, beneficial. The bigger issue isn't this, but that they're legally bound only to that single company (and would need to reapply for the visa when they would change jobs).
If this condition could be changed, then it fix the issue.
Because jobs with the BLS classification of 15-0000 are the ones that have the current H-1B dependent employers and make up the majority of the applications in the lottery.
Most employers that submitted petitions to Homeland Security were
approved, and most were approved for one H-1B worker, but a small
percent of employers garnered over one-quarter of all H-1B approvals
between fiscal year 2000 and fiscal year 2009. Over the 10-year
period, about 94 percent of all submitted petitions (initial and
extensions) were approved, with a high of 97 percent in fiscal year
2006 and a low of 84 percent in fiscal year 2009.[Footnote 33] With
respect to the number of approved workers per employer, 68 percent of
employers were approved for 1 H-1B worker and about 99 percent of all
employers with approved petitions (627,922) were approved for 100 or
fewer workers. However, over the decade, less than 1 percent of all
employers with approved petitions were approved to hire almost 30
percent of all H-1B workers.
During FY2022-FY2024, approximately 13% of employers
indicated on their LCA filings that they were either H-1B
dependent or were willful violators. However, most of these
employers planned to hire only exempt H-1B workers. Less
than 1% of employers filing LCAs indicated that they were
required to comply with the additional attestation
requirements.
The system that works for most other employers is being abused. Changing the system that helps staff rural schools and hospitals to one that benefits Big Tech because of body shops hurts everyone else.
Again from the GAO:
Restricted agency oversight and statutory changes weaken protections
for U.S. workers: Elements of the H-1B program that could serve as
worker protections-—such as the requirement to pay prevailing wages,
the visa’s temporary status, and the cap itself—-are weakened by
several factors. First, program oversight is fragmented and
restricted. For example, the Department of Labor’s review of H-1B
applications from employers is cursory and limited by law to only
looking for missing information and obvious inaccuracies. Yet a recent
Department of Homeland Security study reported that 21 percent of the
H-1B petitions they examined involved fraud or technical violations.
This is where the changes should be addressed. Making sure that the DoL has the funding, staffing, ability to audit.
Strengthening those abilities for BLS classification 15-0000 jobs rather than trying to rewrite H-1B for everyone is likely easier to accomplish.
That's a fair argument for it being akin to indentured servitude but it's worth remembering that there are people of any number of races both in- and outside the US, and this surely applies equally to all of them.
Well it does impact h1b because h1b has a maximum time of 6 years unless the visaholder has an approved green card application. So, by blocking new green card applications (at least the most common path) this effectively puts a ceiling on the number of H1B visaholders.
H1B visa's are a modern form of indentured servitude. The employer knows you can't quit, and if they fire you, you have 6 weeks to somehow find a new job (which is already hard if you are a US citizen or green card holder) or you have to leave the country.
Because of this, H1B workers have no choice but to accept bad pay and working conditions.
Half my days are spent on calls with people trying to understand accents, phrases, and metaphors between people who speak different first languages and have different cultural backgrounds. The cost isn't measured, but the extra time, effort, and re-work (due to misunderstandings) is huge.
Paying people less because they came from somewhere else and can get away with it, sounds a bit exploitative to me.
The employer knows full well that they can pay workers on a visa for less and they have them on a metaphorical leash (in the UK it was 5 years before they could apply for permanent residency).
I've seen this happen personally, I've seen an English engineering manager keep the Indian employees behind by telling them they couldn't leave and he wouldn't have dared said the same thing to me and didn't.
One of the Indians (who I think lived in the UK for a while) said to me in the morning after the incident while we were grabbing a morning coffee "You can see now why the British had India for so long", I took that to mean that he thought that Indians are more placid. I have no idea if that is the case generally, but he certainly thought so.
Unrelated to immigration but not for stupid managers. Friend of mine was promised a raise which was basically an adjustment of compensation.
He was fed up and he went to a meeting and he had to hear "what are you going to do about it?"
Manager knew his wife was pregnant and wanted to use it, or I suppose it was it.
He told he would pack his stuff and leave.
So he did. He packed his stuff, shared the news and another senior manager rushed after him to bring him back to his team with the raise.
I left the company few years ago but now and then I think about it. How someone can be so opportunistic with to the point of trying to abuse someone about to be a father for few thousands of dollars that do not even belong to him. And EVEN if he got a bonus or something it would have been much much less than that to the point that, if it was me, I would be so ashamed to admit that.
Possibly he would have done that with anyone in a special situation.
And I am sure this is more common than not, but how f'up it is to hide behind "it is just business" cover to act like this.
The most racist part of the program is the per country quotas. Right now they are granting EB3 for Indians who applied in 2014 while EB3 visa for the French from 2024. So that's an extra 10 years Indians are stuck in limbo. And, no, this is not just because there's more Indian's immigrating.
It is not based on race, but nationality. If you are an Indian but are a citizen of Singapore your quota will be based on Singapore quotas, not based on you being ethnically an Indian.
It's actually based on country of birth. If your parents were French but were living in India when you where born, you will be in the India quota, even if your nationality is French.
Country of birth is a protected characteristic. You cannot discriminate against people on the basis of country of birth, but the government has a sanctioned policy to do exactly that.
So, yeah, it is not about race, but is very much discrimination that should be illegal.
why is it racist to find workers willing to accept a lower wage to do the same quality work?