This is morally and ethically wrong. If the H4 visa holder has the right to work in the past then you can't revoke it. Those already working should be grandfathered in.
don't worry...this is just trump throwing a sop to his base...pretending to follow through on his campaign promises...this work ban will almost certainly never be implemented
The H-4 expansion Obama did, just like his DACA expansion, was illegal, as the Fifth Circuit has already established. The Trump administration is simply following the law by withdrawing the illegal expansion that the DHS lacked legal authority to do. The H-4 specific lawsuit from Save Jobs USA is using the same principle from the Fifth Circuit decision.
The legal way to have done H-4 or DACA was with appropriate legislation during the time the Democrats held the Presidency, the House, and a filibuster-proof Senate majority... yet they chose to do absolutely no changes in immigration law (DACA or other amnesty, H-4 or other expansion). In fact, Senator Schumer railed against amnesty himself in multiple floor speeches. Now, ask yourself why that is.
1. There is plenty of distinction from the Fifth Circuit decision - for example DAPA and expanded DACA deal with folks present in the country illegally, while H-4 spouses have legal status. Another distinction is that the H-4 work authorization is interstitial - it only applies to those with an approved green card petition, and bridges the gap until the green card is received. That does not apply to DAPA.
2. That Fifth Circuit case was never decided on its merits - it just upheld a preliminary injunction from the district court.
That Fifth Circuit case was never decided on its merits - it just upheld a preliminary injunction from the district court.
That's all the Courts of Appeal ever do; they don't retry the testimony or evidence of a case in search of its "merits". What distinction are you trying to make?
If you're going to bring up the bullshit argument of "but the Dems owned all three branches of government!", at least get the Senate Majority Leader correct.
It would have been much smarter to have spouse visas count towards the H1B quota, while guaranteeing that if one partner is selected in the lottery, the other is picked, too. Right now, if a couple with active careers want to move to the US together, chances are one spouse has to abandon their career for several years and not be allowed to contribute to the economy. Or, the couple will just go elsewhere.
If being married would double your chances of being picked then that would just lead to a bunch of people getting married to get a H-1B. Similar to a green card marriage but neither of the people are citizens already. I agree that this is absolutely a problem but there would have to be a different solution.
Check what happens when you multiply odds. That will mean the odds for any married person to get an H1B take a nosedive or essentially never happens if there is real competition.
If each person has half the chance of a normal person and since if either one are chosen then the other is chosen, wouldn't their odds be (1/2 + 1/2) = 1 unweighted chance of being selected?
Multiplying the odds by 2 (making your chance 2/4) lets you use this analogy: If you had a bag with 2 marbles labeled 1, along with and one 2 and one 3 marble, your chance of drawing either a 2 or a 3 is the same as drawing the 1 marble. This still works if you add more marbles to the mix, as long as they're weighted to be pulled twice as often as the 2 or 3 marble.
H4 work permits are only issued to spouses when the primary H-1B holder has been on the visa for 6+ years or has already been approved for a green card and is stuck in the backlog. Someone who just received a visa or just came to the country can't apply anyways, so this isn't going to help.
Not really. It is usually the case where a lot of young men/women come here for their master's at the age of 22-23. And typically get married around 28-32, so this would be very useful for the spouse who wants to continue their career here.
Hmm, my wife wants to work in education. She filled a role that was open for 10 months so the argument that she took an American's job is not valid. I'd support a rule whereby spouses of H1-B visa holders can only work in fields where there's huge demand for workers that cannot be satisfied by citizens alone. e.g. nursing, teaching, etc.
I find the working visa concept ridiculous. Why would a nationality be a topic in the hiring process? It's ridiculous to have the government involved in the hiring process and the first vetting step towards employment being the immigration office.
Yes, I understand the problems that limitless free movement might create but it's still unpleasant to see that people claiming to be egalitarian or people who say that want meritocracy to discuss only the implementation details of the visa system in the context of exceptions(i.e. you cannot work in this country except if you personally meet the following criteria).
Why not create a system that is fair at the core, something like "your passport countries' democracy score, worker rights, environmental protection standards and human rights need to be in the same range as the country you want to work at". The visa-free travel and visa-free working right essentially boil down to this anyway, why not remove all the exceptions and let people optimize their countries towards these metrics if they want to work in some other country?
In the current form, immigration is painful for the immigrants and doesn't do any good for the countries that send those immigrants.
The populists say all the time that they want meritocracy and complain that those women/minorities/immigrants are hired based on their gender/race/passport instead of their skills.
They are populist probably because these opinions are popular.
I think you'll find that the "America First" crowd and the "Meritocracy" crowd are listening to different parts of the arguments from the same people, and just hearing what they want to hear.
I think there is a strand in their argument that being American is a merit in itself, but this isn't usually stated explicitly except in forms like "Americans for American Jobs".
I'm not arguing this makes any logical sense though - it doesn't.
It's just prioritization. From the available team members (American citizens of all types) the companies are expected to choose those with the most merit. It makes perfect sense if you want your team members to perform well and receive the benefits of that. The sports analogy: put the better players on the field, don't let spectators go on the field, don't score against yourself, and the resulting win should be great for the team.
I see your point. However, even if being an American(or any other nationality) was merit by itself, why would you demand government involvement in the hiring process?
If being an American is a merit, then companies could choose to hire based on this merit.
I'm just trying to understand that way of thinking. Maybe they think it's a merit but are insecure about it and demand recognition for because their experience shows that companies do not value this merit enough?
Maybe the best way to look at this is to recognize that people have concepts of how the world should look like, naturally that usually includes pleasantries for them. And when the world does not match their predictions, they want to correct for this error. Of course depending on cognitive patterns (which depend on exposure to others' cognition, eg. upbringing, peers, and all their previous experiences factor in to path dependence) one might try to look into themselves, look for their faulty base assumptions, look for causes external to their own sphere, and so on.
Normally, people who are not familiar with the problems of borders, the arbitrariness of them, who grew up in a culture that never experienced a downsizing country, a war in their country, stories about how political persecution and/or absolutely bleak prospects drove hundreds of thousands (or millions) of their fellow countrymen away are not going to be very understanding of these problems. On the other hand they will understand that their life is not going as well as they would like it. And they are caught by the meme net cast by whatever lucky political group. (And "blaming the victim" fused with "the outside enemy" is a pretty proven strategy for populists.)
And populists always advocate for more power to themselves to fix things. (Obviously, politics is about power, and populism is pretty much the shit tier direct marketing of politics.)
Hence the thinking of "america first", "make america great first", before we deal with whatever is outside our borders. This also implies that listen to "americans first", and then listen to any external criticism. (This is again always a pretty great strategy to consolidate power - a form of divide and conquer.) And naturally, this has the effect of basically diverting the attention away from global issues.
And since we're living in a global world for quite some time, without at least partially understanding global issues making sense of the local ones is a fool's errand. Because a thinking that tries to somehow understand everything locally inevitably runs into "outside powers caused this to us", and this feeds powerlessness. (It doesn't matter that the USA has and had a very significant factor in shaping that "outside world".)
I didn't use "Sending" literally, of course[0]. I think you miss the point by a yuge margin.
[0] Sending is used quite often in this context, you can google it or look at its usage in this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_by_country
It's used together with "receiving" and it's used to indicate the origin of the immigrants.
Well, I think it's meant to discourage permanent immigration and also protect jobs which are in short supply. The worse you make conditions for immigration the fewer immigrants you have.
As population density increases, it's only natural that countries want to reduce population. Between telling people to not have children and preventing immigrants from entering, politically it's more palatable to stop immigration.
> Why not create a system that is fair at the core, something like "your passport countries' democracy score, worker rights, environmental protection standards and human rights need to be in the same range as the country you want to work at".
How is that "fair at the core" when it penalizes individuals for factors they have no control over?
> "your passport countries' democracy score, worker rights, environmental protection standards and human rights need to be in the same range as the country you want to work at".
Wouldn't that exclude almost all of the current immigrants to USA. Chinese, Indians, mexicans, filipinos ect.
> Why not create a system that is fair at the core, something like "your passport countries' democracy score, worker rights, environmental protection standards and human rights need to be in the same range as the country you want to work at".
Not at all, people don't immigrate only because they are desperate. The desperate ones are actually called refugees anyway.
Think of it as if people from Texas moving to California, I'm sure it happens all the time. Often the right opportunity for you is not in the city, country or even continent you live in. Sometimes it's not the right culture for you and you want to a place with more liberal/conservative/christian/islamic/etc culture.
there is an actual definition for a refugee and its not "be desperate" . There are more than 500 million ppl deseperate to move to usa very few of them qualify to be refugee.
H4 is notorious for not allowing spouses to leave their abusive H-1B partners (because they are dependent). Working is a way to allow them to have some breathing room when it comes to these relationships.
> America is, at its core, a nasty, venal, selfish and racist culture.
No bias to see here folks. Move along.
Trump voters and conservatives rarely care about pissing off liberals. Remember the internet is a crazy place where those who shout the loudest get the most attention. The vast majority of people are relatively sane and aren't out to hurt anybody. I'd encourage you to have an honest conversation with a few Trump voters before making blanket accusations.
People seem to think that all Trump voters care about is the economy. In reality, most of the ones I've met care deeply about their families and their country. They tend to see left wing policies as a threat to their future and the future of their children.
Most people would be surprised at who voted for trump. No one openly declares it for the fear of being labeled a racist or whatever. There are many many people who voted trump for different variety of reasons.
Trump is just a first in a long line of populists yet to come from the right and left. I don't think he can fix much but i can see why someone might think he has answers (He knows how to talk). Answers to pressing problems that are more immediate to people such as growing inequality, drug problems in rural areas, loss of American global dominance, the growing feeling that politicians and the "elites" just fool people to line their own pockets etc... Black and white thinking about the "other" side is a seems to be so rampant that even smart people seem to not be able to avoid. Topics such as these are generally plagued with emotional vitriol. Most people don't vote for politicians because of logic (How could a billionaire be anti-establishment?), but don't go believing all of them are somehow your enemies or racists or bad people, most of them are just decent average people that believe something important to them will be solved by a guy like trump (it probably won't).
No, it’s more complicated than that. The BLS does a robust survey. They also track discouraged workers who have left the labor force. https://www.bls.gov/home.htm
I've been thumbing through their survey methodologies, and am actually hard pressed to find anyone in any social circle who has directly or even indirectly to the best of their knowledge participated in these surveys. Specifically the CPS which tracks the unemployment vs. employment rates.
Given that it takes the form of a monthly survey, I'd expect more people to actually remember having done so.
Now I could understand inferring employment via tax documents cross referenced with unemployment papers, but to my understanding that level of information sharing is not generally done.
Where do the statistics come from? Here's the answer from BLS's Current Population Survey FAQ at w.r.t. where the data comes from.
>Because unemployment insurance records relate only to people who have applied for such benefits, and since it is impractical to count every unemployed person each month, the government conducts a monthly survey called the Current Population Survey (CPS) to measure the extent of unemployment in the country. The CPS has been conducted in the United States every month since 1940, when it began as a Work Projects Administration program. In 1942, the U.S. Census Bureau took over responsibility for the CPS. The survey has been expanded and modified several times since then.
So what do the statistics being gathered actually represent and where do they come from? More digging required...
I'm not super Survey methodology savvy, (more familiar with anti-patterns for it honestly, and figuring out when the Map starts diverging from the landscape), but in terms of what it is actually measuring, and how much divergence is introduced between reality and the convenient model inferred from the survey's statistical finger waggling... I leave that to the more Stats inclined among us. It seems an okay methodology, but it doesn't strike me in terms of being the most accurate measurement, merely getting enough data that someone feels that the divergences can be safely tucked under the rug.
I will say, the folks putting this together seem to have done a great job documenting it.
I wish my developers could be relied upon to do as such.
I think one easy thing to do to ensure that small cos and rural areas still have access is to require all h1b hires to be level 4, the highest level. As it stands now more than 70% are hired at levels 1 and 2 (2018 data), which are essentially "below average" which is weird for a program aimed at bringing in those with hard to find skills.
I was browsing the H-1B data out there. Some jobs seemed like borderline first level customer service jobs when I went looking at what was at the location listed.....way way not the kind of job that is hard to find people for... provided you pay reasonably well.
H1B doesn't really have a job market test. You just need to justify it's a job that requires a bachelor's degree and pays whatever the DOL wage data says should be the prevailing wage for that classification. It's not that difficult to game the system by playing around with job level, title and location and getting away with the lowest possible pay. This is basically the business model of staffing agencies and contractors.
It's also being used by many genuine employers looking for talent and highly specialized skills. Cost isn't a concern here as their business model relies on making the best product.
Unless it's specified to be 120k hard cash, it would turn into 120k total compensation including company accommodation worth 60k/year, various practically-not-claimable options, or others ways.
The current "prevailing wage determination" includes fringe benefits already. There's definitely a way to play with those to redirect it back to the company.
I'm pretty sure this is incorrect, unless you have a citation for this. The base pay has to be more than prevailing wage. You can't count any kind of bonus or stock-based compensation. This is based on personal experience.
Right. I understand that as "H-1B holders can't be offered an inferior health plan/401k plan/commuter benefits/bonus plan/FSA than US employees". But none of those things count toward the prevailing wage calculation. Only base pay is considered when determining whether the employee is paid more than prevailing wage.
The first and second largest public companies in the world by market cap hire a lot of H-1Bs and are not in the Bay Area and pay more than this proposed floor.
This is a silly idea because only a small percentage of professions enjoy such high salaries, so the only thing you would do if you implement something like that is end up with a disproportionate number of people with such jobs. Furthermore, companies in certain geographic areas (e.g. Silicon Valley) would rejoice, because they would be able to hire an even greater number of foreign workers before the quotas get filled.
There are much, much better ways to fix the issues with H-1B visas. The first and most important thing that needs to happen is no longer tying the visa to the employer. Once we make it so that people on H-1B can freely move around in the labor market during the course of their visa, they would automatically gain the ability to command higher wages, which would result in employers rely on foreign labor less (since it would be more expensive), and only hiring foreigners who are actually skilled and exceptional.
The problem is that skill and salary don't correlate as much as it should. As bad as we are at taxing negative externalities, we're terrible at rewarding positive externalities.
As it is we are bringing in folks on H1Bs who appear to be borderline first level customer support (this was something I ran into browsing the online DB a while back).
At least at 120k you know that the company involved really does value this employee to some extent. They're not likely to spend 120k on someone easily hired locally for far less.
> It is supposed to be a program for highly skilled people
No, it's a program for employers.
> but is often abused to just bring in cheaper people.
That's what it is obviously designed for, within limits, and any contrary explanation requires hoping the person you selling it to doesn't understand the relation between supply, demand, and price.
> If they are really difficult spots to fill and important, them the pay should be no issue.
Pay is always an issue; importance just sets the exact level of pay at which it becomes not worth it to hire.
Sigh. Will have to move to Canada or home after 17 years of living here. My kid, an American citizen, doesn't want to move but this is going to devastate my wife who has only recently started to work in the education field and I can't continue living here regardless of how much money I make.
I wish H1-B visa holders from India and China would organize themselves and stage a walkout + protests so that these politicians and companies understand the impact it'd have on their economy.
Oh, affordability is not a problem at all.I make about $500k/yr. My wife cannot work if this change takes effect and it'll take a huge mental toll on her and on our relationship.
With many people, the opposite is the case. Work interferes with the relationship. Suppose work is 8 hours per day, but there is also 8 hours of housework. If you split evenly, which isn't normal, that gives 12 hours per person with you both working outside the home. That goes down to just 8 if only one person works. You then have more time for the relationship.
You might need to make a cultural shift. You'd need to show appreciation for housework. If you're in the habit of looking down on people who do that, or if she herself is, then things won't go well.
I do all the laundry, cook on weekends (and on weekdays if required), etc. That's not the point. My wife wants to be able to pursue a career of her own not just for money. She won't be able to do this without a H4 EAD
If it really isn't about the money, she can volunteer. As long as she gets no pay (including no benefits) there shouldn't be a problem.
It is still strange to me. If she would do the laundry and cooking while you work, then the time you would have spent on those chores could be spent with her. You could go hiking, visit museums, play cards, take flying lessons, take scuba lessons, go dancing, etc.
H1B is the US economy nuclear weapon. especially in tech, science, and research. The US imports top talents while the country hasn't paid any subsidies for their education, development, medicine, growth, childbirth and you name it. And they have to come and spend money to establish their life after relocation.
It is necessary to have a minimum wage to make sure companies will priorities local talents. The "n citizen jobs per m foreign jobs" model sometimes create busy-work but I think that is a fair combination to wage floor.
I believe it is important to do everything to help integrate skilled workers to society. Make them feel they belong. They are more valuable assets if they stay. Of course it has to be in accordance with population and unemployment metrics.
There is this annoying double standard currently. If they invest and spend in the US we complain, and if they remittance to the home country again we complain. And now this work ban is like telling them mine and run because we don't want you here.
There is a major problem with tech employment in this country. I used to support a tech heavy company in St Louis, a city with over 50% black population. What percentage of the employees were black? Guess it depends upon what percentage of employees were security guards.
The US minority population is dramatically underrepresented in tech. Reduce the competition for entry level tech positions, and their numbers will grow.
Such a moronic idea.I appreciate there's an argument on who should be allowed to enter the country and live there legally, however this isn't part of it. What is the benefit for that person not to work? How does the state or Americans benefit from it?This is second only to the UK,where refugees are not allowed to work,even though the applications take years to be processed.
I dont think this will pass and my best guess is this is the administration getting FAANG to play ball.
But... if it does, how will it work? I did read the article but it wasnt clear if current h4 employees would be grandfathered? I work at a place with a few hundred h1b engineers and it seems their spouses fill the product/project management roles. If they arent grandfathered it'd be catastrophic for the company I work for, never mind places the size of FAANG companies.
Don't be alarmed if you don't recognize a good portion of the top companies because they're Indian IT outsourcing/consulting companies that logjam the whole system.
There really isn't that big of a problem with H1Bs. It's a great way for companies to hire additional talent and to keep students that come here for graduate school inside the country where we subsidized their education.
I think we should focus on fixing the abuse first, then lets see where we stabilize, and then do further restrictions. It's too aggressive to curtail legitimate uses of H1B when it's clear that it's being so blatantly abused.
Many if not all FAANG companies supplement their workforce with those consultancies though. It's why I've stopped publishing profit per employee comments -- the denominator is arbitrary.
The truth is more complicated. Because these agencies have gamed the system, they effectively control some fraction of the labor market. To a degree, FAANG has to come to the agencies if they want engineers, no matter where on the experience / skill curve they land. I imagine there's also an element of reputation shielding as well -- people like yourself blame Tata instead of the companies that hire them, but the companies that hire them get cheaper labor that basically can't hop jobs. That has to be valuable, given the policies Steve Jobs shopped around for around no poaching.
I agree that the Fortune 500 are probably the primary clients of these consulting companies. I haven't dug into the problem, but I'm also willing to guess that FAANG doesn't really care about these services as much as the less technologically savvy ones in the Fortune 500.
The primary issue and ultimately the first step in solvency is still these companies abusing the system.
You can't very well stop companies from hiring other companies to solve their problems. I think that type of solution is probably impossibly hard to implement. Whereas if you simply stop these top few companies or create rules around who and how they apply, I think the problem is going to be greatly improved.
Like I said above. Lets push for solving the obvious problems first before applying pressure downstream.
FAANG absolutely are abusing the H1-B system, they’re just doing it through the staffing agencies you mentioned. Google and Microsoft in particular are notorious for their huge shadow workforce of vendors, a lot of whom come from the H1B-abusing body shops.
There's currently a 32% selection rate on the H-1B lottery, regardless of whether your application's even eligible or not. The best case (with OPT extensions right after college, not applicable for already-working people; and also assuming selection rates don't further decline) is 69% selection rate after 3 attempts. I don't imagine hundreds of thousands of H-4 holders like those odds.
Unless there are plans to expand the H-1B to accept more applications, I don't see how further stressing already overloaded VISA program would help.
Without extra Masters reservation, the odds of getting an H-1B are really low. (25%?), That's about 50% of the population on the H4 that would be unemployed for ~2 years.
What company will tentatively hire an employee until they get an H1B in what could be 3-4 years ?
There will not be any grandfathering. That said, spousal work permits typically have a 3-year duration so they might let existing permits stay valid until they expire.
There is no "pass" to it, it's an executive policy change, it doesn't need Congressional approval. Just another example of callous cruelty from the current administration.
I wonder if a viable H-1B reform would be a mix of a much higher cash wage floor (maybe indexed by geography, but $80-100k across the US, and $150-200k in a place like SF or NY), a requirement that they be hired by firms with at least n (=10?) US citizen or PR employees for every H1B (thus solving the Wipro/infosys problem), and then eliminating the quotas, making them H-1B portable across employers with a ~90 day window, etc.
The "n citizen jobs per m foreign jobs" is a common international founder/key employee visa requirement. Maybe make it 10x payroll for citizen/pr vs. h-1b, but there should also be an "n jobs over $x/yr ratio" to prevent the single investor/owner having a $30mm/yr salary, and then 30 x $100k H-1B jobs)
Otherwise, I'm in favor of scrapping H-1B in favor of an explicitly loosened O-1 which largely meets the same purposes as above.
The administration had been making some cautiously encouraging noises about fixes to this system. I wonder now if those voices were drowned out or the administration is just schizophrenic and this is the work of another part of the administration.
This right-to-work for H4s isn't the problem. Don't get me wrong: it sucks for those affected and it's arbitrarily capricious but it's not the problem.
Oh and BTW the US immigration system as a whole is arbitrarily capricious. This is some combination of "they're stealing our jobs" and an effort to discourage immigration in general, psychologically lumping those that sneak across the border with highly-skilled workers into the same bucket.
Some examples:
- If your green card is lost or stolen it costs $400 to replace it but, worse, it takes 8-12+ months at current queue times to get a replacement. The US government can get a US citizen a passport in a day if it needs to.
- Lose it while overseas and you're in for a world of hurt to re-enter the US (and then go through the above process to get it replaced).
- Your Labor Certification ("LC") can get audited. This sounds fine but it's really not. USCIS has a stated goal of not having applicants figure out their auditing criteria so they RANDOMLY audit a some applications. The total number of audited LCs is estimated to be ~30%.
- If your LC is audited, this just randomly adds 12-18+ months to your process depending on how many times USCIS can send you Requests for Evidence ("RFEs"). Yes this can happen more than once. Personally I know of one case where there were 3 separate RFEs for a FAANG engineer that added >2.5 years to the process.
- Green cards have quotas by country of birth. H1Bs do not. This, primarily, is the cause of the massive logjam particularly for India but, to a lesser extent, also for China, Mexico and the Phillipines (depending on the visa category).
- It is common for applications at various stages to get stuck where nothing happens for months for no real reason. This is so common that there is a procedure for dealing with it: writing to your local Senator or congressman and having their office file an inquiry with USCIS. Not everyone knows this but this tends to unstick things within a week. Why it gets stuck in the first place is a mystery.
- Once your case is assigned to a particular examiner, you're stuck with that examiner. They will process their applications on a FIFO basis and one examiner may be particularly slow compared to another for no readily apparent reason. Worse, different examiners will apply the same rule differently in that in a given situation one will ask for an additional form where another wouldn't. And yes that adds another 3-6 months to the process as your updated submission goes to the back of their queue.
- There are several time windows you need to be aware of. With sufficient delays some of your supporting documentation may be out of date. And bingo, that's another go around.
- Getting married on a green card won't really help your spouse at all. There are years long delays for sponsoring your spouse and they'll enjoy no relevant status before then. The general advice is you'll start this process and finish it probably after naturalization (which is a far quicker process).
So what is the core problem that needs to be fixed? Easy. The abuse of the system by Indian IT outsourcing companies. For these companies, the 10+ year delays in getting a green card for Indian-born people is a feature not a bug because that's longer they can keep them in what is not that far from indentured servitude.
These people aren't highly-skilled and aren't highly-paid. They're taking spots that could otherwise go to highly-skilled and highly-paid people at FAANG type companies.
Other commenters are right in that a simple minimum pay could have a lot of loopholes. Being "total compensation" with inflated values on "benefits" is just one way. Another is, say, overcharging for services that are described as optional but really aren't, like food or accomodation.
Want to see examples of how desperate people are trapped by these sorts of "fees" into essentially perpetual debt? Look no further than India's brick kilns [1].
Considering that 93 percent of the approximately 100,000 H4 spouses are women from India, its clear at whom it is targeted. And the changes in h1b seems to be working as indented.
>The US is no longer seen as a plum posting by senior IT services employees (of Indian IT companies).
>IT giant Infosys recently blamed the denial of H-1B visas by United States (US) for part of its growing employee attrition and said that it would introduce a "new value proposition" to help retain employees.
I don't think they were blaming the government. Just citing it as one of the issues in their quarterly shareholder report.
One of the main ways these companies retain people was this: give the employee promise of onsite deputation if you work for 1-2 years in this project. Now the companies are forced to give them a decent raise or promotion or better projects.
It sucks for 2 people I know who had been working like that for the last 3-4 years. Their work day usually ends at midnight and sometimes 1 am-2am (instead of 6.45 pm). They stayed in that project because they thought one day they could go to US. Their employer applied for their visas, but got denied.
this only make sense if we also remove 'is he stealing american job' verification step (LCA) for h1b.
otherwise its just weird to do you bunch of checks for h1 candidate and not do any checks for the spouse when they are potentially doing the same job. If someone is working on h4 then they should be able to get own h1b otherwise they are "stealing an american job" by definition.
Well that's the way green cards work. Only one spouse needs to pass the Labor Certification (LC) but both spouses get green cards and can work any job.
The H4 work permission was basically a stopgap for Indian citizens who should have gotten green cards years ago but didn't because of processing backlogs.
It is far from being mendacious. I'm doing exactly that, with a family of 13 people (12th kid due soon!) on one income.
Yes, it is expensive, but aren't these H-1B people supposed to have rare and special skills that are worth a lot? All I have is a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science. If I can afford 11 kids on one income, surely these people with advanced degrees can afford more. At some point... how fertile can you be? One income should do.
I assume you don't live in the Bay Area? My wife and I both have high paying jobs and we currently live in a 2 bedroom apartment with just one baby. Can't imagine affording anything big enough to fit 11 kids in the Bay Area right now...
Right, I left the Bay Area as a child. I still have a grandmother and 5 of her 7 children there. Things were more affordable back in 1963.
I think it would be possible for a non-beginner Facebook employee willing to live in a 3-bedroom. It's not something I've seriously considered.
I've grown to like Brevard county, FL. It's cheap and peaceful. Walking to work is often possible, and for driving there isn't much traffic. Out here it is a long commute if you drive more than 20 minutes. You'd do that if you wanted 5 acres of land or an affordable beachfront property.
Initially they weren't. Then there was an obama era executive order that allowed work authorization for dependents of H1B, provided they have an approved green card petition. Mostly only Indians use it because they have the biggest backlog in getting green cards.
The current administration plans to revoke it so its going through its procedures.
I will throw a different perspective here on why tightening regulations on H-4 spouse work is important:
- Fact is everyone comes to the US to have a better economic life.
- Even asylum seekers, would want to move to the US over any other progressive European nation , because, American Dream, easy upwards mobility, diversity. This is a personal observation.
Let me shed some light on how it works for Indian people. You can extrapolate it to other entities too.
- Indian girls in general conveniently marry a US living
husband of their parents choice(not all but many), and
compete for the same jobs with kids who finished their
Masters Degrees here.
- H-1B visa system is fucked up. Infosys and Wipro and
TCS ship tons of their employees to the US.These people
work at a price less than the current market price.
- This is bad for three reasons:
- Kids don't want to come to the United States to do their Masters because, job market
is tight. Its bad for schools and kids too. Schools for those foreign dollars, for kids- its important to have
an exposure to outside world - this helps shape world view in a tremendously good way.
- These people are employed mostly to replace existing American workers.
- From my observations, the reason I am biased in favouring kids coming here for
Masters is because, with in the time it takes to finish their education, and the
time it takes to find a job, they imbibe American culture. This may sound silly, but
it is very important. These people at some time will become citizens and will become
part of national discourse.
- Contractors shipped by Infosys and Wipro and TCS could never be part of that. It is
hardly possible. Again , its a personal observation.
- So , how do all these things tie together
- Someone who finishes his Masters in the United States is expected to find a job with in three months of his
OPT(Optional Practical Training) start date.
- Now these people are mostly by themselves and invested heavily for their education. No reason why these people
flock to so called 'consultancies'.
- Compare that to the spouses of existing H-1B visa holders, who never invested anything here. No cultural
investment, nor education. They have a security to live here for as long as their relatively smart husband is
allowed to live. With unlimited amount of time compared to some one with a Masters degree, they are at a
disproportionate advantage.
- People finishing Masters should be given precedence over H4 spouses and H-1B's(for reasons above) hired by
outsourcing companies.
- There is more to it than we know.For all the xenophobia, this administration is displaying there are times,
they are not wrong.
These kids who come to do masters essentially live in "Indian" or "Chinese" enclaves. Not sure how much american culture they absorb. I've also seen many cases of rampant cheating on homework and exams. I'm not sure how qualified many of these so called "Masters" students are. My cousin who went to Columbia for masters also complained about this in most of his classes (If this is done at the highest level of education, i could only guess what happens at mid tier or lower tier universities).
> Kids don't want to come to the United States to do their Masters because, job market is tight.
US has lowest unemployment in decades. The tightness is on employers.
Sorry, I think , you misread my comment or rather may be I wasnt clear enough.
I meant kids don't want to come , if the job market is tight.
The students who come to US for MS spend 2 years of their studies. They are not going to magically follow American culture all of a sudden. If one goes to any Hindu temple in US, you will find a huge number of these students.
Another thing is H4 is not something unique to the Infosys crowd. The Infosys crowd usually gets sent back to India once their deputation is over, they don't even get a chance to apply for h4.
An h1b spouse gets h4 only after the h1b's employer files for their green card and they complete the i140 stage. Companies usually file this towards the end of 6 years so that the h1bs are forced to continue with their employer for as long as possible. So the spouses would be waiting doing absolutely nothing during that period. Compared to those working in American consultancies, the Infosys crowd rarely gets a chance to stay in US for that long. So majority of h4 beneficiaries are not working for the likes of Infosys.
>Now these people are mostly by themselves and invested heavily for their education. No reason why these people flock to so called 'consultancies'. -
The reality is these US students are one of the biggest groups who flock to the consultancies. They are desperate to get a h1b before their time runs out, so they settle for anything they get, which means usually a level 1 salary. Some also resort to scams such as faking experiences in their resume, paying consultancies money in return for keeping them in status and so on.
> The students who come to US for MS spend 2 years of their studies. They are not going to magically follow American culture all of a sudden. If one goes to any Hindu temple in US, you will find a huge number of these students.
Nope they do. No Indian kid ever worked in a petty job(at least ones that I know of) until they started at a US university.That teaches a lot about value of work and value of people. They get weaved inside the fabric of Murrican society.
> Another thing is H4 is not something unique to the Infosys crowd. The Infosys crowd usually gets sent back to India once their deputation is over, they don't even get a chance to apply for h4.
I am not pointing out Infosys alone. I am using Inofsys to exemplify the likes of it. So, does the crowd really go back once the tenure is over ? Not really. Every one I knew, once they landed here jumped to a different employer and became a contractor for them. Thanks to H1B. Their H4 spouses got a free ticket to live with them. I am not saying its wrong. I am saying H4 spouses are disproportionately at advantage over other immigrant groups in gaining employment.
> The reality is these US students are one of the biggest groups who flock to the consultancies. They are desperate to get a h1b before their time runs out, so they settle for anything they get, which means usually a level 1 salary. Some also resort to scams such as faking experiences in their resume, paying consultancies money in return for keeping them in status and so on.
True. Thats what I said. If we do not curb H4 based immigration, this is only going to increase.
I think a bit of background is in order here. H4 EAD's are only issued for People with pending Greencard applications, that is for someone with an approved Greencard petition.(I-140). So, for some one from the countries you have described, there is no greencard wait times. Which means, a spouse on H4 visa would not have to wait-forever to get work authorization as the primary petition holder can quickly get their Greencard. Not the case for someone "Born" in countries like India, where the wait-times for Greencard is currently at a minimum 10 years and at a maximum 120 years. So, yes this really looks like it is being targeted against people born in a single country.
(I am going to assume you are genuinely curious and will answer sincerely. Also, this topic has enough easy to Google sources for my claims below that I am not bothering to cite them, primarily because I am on my phone. However I am happy to add them later if that becomes the only point of contention)
Actually there aren't (white people being affected). This primarily affects Indians and to a lesser extent, Chinese immigrants.
For every one else, if you are here on a H1, and your spouse wants to work, you apply for a green card and get it in about a year. Now you and your spouse can work (and NOT WORK without consequences) for the next 10 years, after which you have to renew your green card.
If you are from India, your green card queue is currently estimated to be 30-100 years long. This is because green cards have country of birth quotas that ignore the population of countries. During this wait time, your spouse cannot work unless they can find another employer to sponsor an independent H1B for them. Also, you have to renew your H1 every 3 years, and if you lose your job, you have less than a month to find a new one, else you have to leave the US.
The Obama administration started the H4 work permit for the above situation, for people whose spouses are stuck in an insanely long green card queue. The number of people actually on H4 work permits is a miniscule percentage of the US labor force, such that it is not going to change any economic dynamics. But it is a massive blow to the unfortunate spouses who rely on it.
At which point, the most likely logical explanation for this step is that the Trump administration thinks that it will please his primary voter base, and the actual distribution of the affected people suggest (even if it is hard to prove) that racism played a role.
> Visa is not a right, it's a privilege. "Please be aware, entering the United States is a privilege, not a right."
100% correct, and nobody is saying otherwise.
What people here are saying is that it's a two-way street. The alien agrees to leave their lives behind, leave their friends, their families, their jobs back home and come work for an American employer to the benefit of the US and the US economy over that of their home country. In exchange, the government agrees to allow them to enter into and reside in the United States for a period of time and affords them certain rights and privileges. That's the deal.
Reneging on your end of the deal half way through is dealing in bad faith. It makes America look bad. It diminishes America's brand, it's standing in the world, its reputation and the value of its word. Make no mistake it's entitled to do that. What we're arguing is breaking your word is bad and you could argue that's true regardless how you feel about the H-4 program.
It's just like backing out of the climate accord, backing out of the Iran deal and demanding concessions on NAFTA. America's word should be its bond. Every single one of these deals is time-limited, including H-4s. Change it on expiry. Don't renew it. Update the program for the next wave. Don't pull the rug out from under the world, especially those that depend on you. It's not a good look, and doing it enough times may leave America without a seat at the table.
> It diminishes America's brand, it's standing in the world, its reputation and the value of its word.
Spot on. The amount of damage done in the last couple of years is incredible, the long term damage is going to have major effect on America's ability to effectively develop its foreign policies.
I'm trying to be very specific in not arguing about the merits of the program but in how the change was implemented and what that means. You made promises to these people and now you're breaking them (assuming you're an American, as the government acts on your behalf). You can choose not to make the promises again in the future, but that's totally different. I'm not opining on the merits of the decision but in how it was made, and that's equally important if not more so.
Just to address some misinformation -- again without opining -- I don't think the H-1B program has a $60K minimum wage as you assert. The program requires your employer pay you at least the prevailing wage for your job in the geographical area. This information is maintained by the Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration National Prevailing Wage Center (DOLETA NPWC), I kid you not. A prospective employer of an H-1B worker is required to file an LCA (labor conditions application) with the Department of Labor showing that they are paying at least the prevailing wage. The form is here [1].
Frankly if you search [2] you'll see a software developer would need to be paid between $95K and $175K in San Francisco depending on seniority. Sounds about right, tbh.
Everyone is pretty aware that most H1-b visa holders aren’t exactly highly-skilled labor.
"Everyone is pretty aware" seems like a way of avoiding examining the facts. H1-B visas are explicitly designed for skilled labor, and most non-US citizens working in the US at places like Google and Facebook come under a H1-B visa.
So.. maybe "most" aren't high skilled labor, but 90% of applicants are jobs requiring high STEM knowledge[1], so it seems like a bit of evidence to support your view here might be useful.
It’s been heavily abused at this point.
This is possible, but it seems like the solution would be to attack the abuse problem rather than banning the spouses of people who are doing the right thing.
I have no idea why you're citing a government website on an ethical question. You realize that law and policy is just something a bunch of people decided was a good idea? The distinction between rights versus privileges, insofar as it is defined by law and policy, has nothing to do with ethics.
So "law and policy is just something a bunch of people decided was a good idea". What do you think ethics is? If we're going to be really strict, then everything about humans is "just a bunch of people decided was a good idea".
Do you believe, as I do, that the foundation of ethics is supernatural? If not, then ethics is also just something a bunch of people decided was a good idea too in your world view. And a democratically elected representative legislative body is as good a bunch of people as any to do so.
Edit: this really is the cultural differences thread
I would expect commenters here to have better reading comprehension skills. I explicitly allowed that one could have ethics based on arbitrary consensus.
That said, your discomfort is natural. After all, if the foundation of ethics is purely natural, then what is it? Logic perhaps? What logic tells us that murder is wrong, when logically murder is sometimes advantageous? Is it science then? What science tells us that rape is wrong, when evolution tells us fitness is propagating genes? Then is it aesthetics? Are goodness and beauty the same? Or is there an objective standard of right and wrong that isn't dependent on any human being's whims or self-interest? If so, what is its source?
I would suggest that rather than critiquing the reading skills of the people commenting on HN to start off from the position that maybe what you wrote was not un-ambiguous.
The way you write is suggestive (including the reply you wrote) and that is why I asked for your clarification.
Driving is a privilege and if the government arbitrary removed it from a certain class of people it would be considered unjust. Here an example. California revoking all drivers license to people who moved to the state in the last 5 years. It’s perfectly legal and could have a good justification with easing congestion but is pretty unjust to people who need a car to get to work.
Even if the administration does actually issue a ruling (which they have been sitting on for years now), it will immediately be challenged in courts and remain there indefinitely. Like everything else it's meant to be a talking point for Trump at his rallies, nothing more.
