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Many people are still under the impression that H1B visa holders are sort of stuck, finding it difficult to change employers. This is certainly not the case now, as a FAQ on the new law shows. A highlight:

Q6. Does the law make it easier for an H-1B worker to change employers?

A. Yes it does. Section 105 allows an H-1B worker to change employers as soon as his or her new employer submits a "nonfrivolous" H-1B petition to the INS. Prior law requires that a worker wait until the petition is approved before changing employers.

I don't have the INS letter that Shusterman posted a while ago, but it is clear from that letter that this provision has already been implemented. A company has little incentive to recruit H1B workers -- and deal with the paperwork -- with the intention of underpaying them, since the visa-holders can easily jump to another, better-paying company with little difficulty.

Guys, the author didn't seem to pay close attention to the law and is now getting your hopes up. There are some details of that law, which you should know. Go here and follow the NEW H1-B FAQ link in the center of the page.

It will be interesting to see the response of companies who are now in a lot more danger of losing employees on H1Bs if they don't pay the market rate. Then it will become a lot more apparent whether or not there really is a shortage (though if you're trying to hire in Silicon Valley at the moment it's obvious there is).

A good summary of the bill can be seen at http://shusterman.com/s2045sum.html.

will allow H1B holders to keep the status beyond the six years, if they are waiting for a green card

will allow persons from "oversubscribed" countries (e.g. India and China) to receive Green cards beyond their per-country yearly quota, if there are any left in a given fiscal year. Right now about half of the employment-based green cards that can be awarded in a year go unclaimed while people from India and China wait 5-6 years to fit in their country's quota.

will allow persons, who have filed the paperwork for adjustment of status to permanent residency to change employers (in a similar job), if they have been waiting for more than 180 days.

will allow H1B holders to switch jobs more easily - as soon as their new H1B petition is filed, as opposed to waiting for it to be approved

For a summary of the bill, take a look here. (Warning - a lawyer site).

Please note that this is not just about increasing the annual number of H1B visas, but also makes some important changes about premanent residency, changing employers, etc. You can read a very short FAQ, the full text of the bill (as introduced), and much more at this site.

Also note that this is a bi-partisan bill, with Sen. Lieberman (Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate) a co-sponsor of the bill.

Please note that this is not just about increasing the annual number of H1B visas, but also makes some important changes about premanent residency, changing employers, etc. You can read a very short FAQ, the full text of the bill (as introduced), and much more at this site.

Also note that this is a bi-partisan bill, with Sen. Lieberman (Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate) a co-sponsor of the bill.

Please note that this is not just about increasing the annual number of H1B visas, but also makes some important changes about premanent residency, changing employers, etc. You can read a very short FAQ, the full text of the bill (as introduced), and much more at this site.

Also note that this is a bi-partisan bill, with Sen. Lieberman (Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate) a co-sponsor of the bill.

The two issues that get intermixed here are the IT labor shortage and the temporary workers H1-B visas.

I believe the labor shortage is real - look around and tell me how many of your companies are not hiring constantly (Novell excluded :-(? My company is, and has been since at least 1994 (when I started). Our customers seem to be generally understaffed in the IT department. I have been getting unsolicited job offers since at least 1996.

H1-B visas are not specifically for IT workers. They are also used for all other kinds of skilled workers (most requiring a college degree), including models (obviously not requiring a college degree:-). While H1-B holders can only work for the employer who petitioned for their visa (including multiple employers), changing employers is not hard - the new employer can get a transfer H1B, which is not subject to the yearly cap, and it takes about 2 months to get it. Many H1-B holders change employers within the first or second year of their employment.

I believe that solving the shortage with H1-B visas is the wrong approach. The only reason H1-B visas are used for this is because of the inefficiency of the INS and the Labor department in processing employment based permanent residency applications (close to 6 years in many places, which is also the time limit of the H1-B visas). This is also the chain which holds many foreign workers with the same employer, not the H1-B visas. There should be a fast-track way for companies, who have shown constant need for qualified people, to get permanent residency for foreign workers. The current requirements for employment based green cards are good (they include provisions like the company must not have laid off workers recently, etc.) but the time it takes can be easily cut down to 6 months.

Some of the bills currently in congress and in the senate try to deal with these issues - go read about them at this site.

> There just isn't enough employment to go around

Then why are US high-tech companies chronically starved for talent and hiring foreigners? Why are the 115,000 H-1B visas subject to the cap used up in the first 6 months of the fiscal year? Surely it's not because companies want to file paperwork and wait for 3-6 months for INS to authorize them to hire these people?

We are in a period of record low unemployment - when even burger flippers with no experience are demanding $10-15 per hour. When Denny's is resorting to recruiting from Canada, fer fsck's sake, you can't expect to be taken seriously when you say something like "there just isn't enough employment to go around".

My beef with US immigration policy is threefold:

• Emphasis on amnesty for impoverished illegals in order to get votes -- but nothing to service legal, taxpaying nonimmigrants (TNs and H-1Bs), and active measures to delay immigrant (Green Card) processing to render it impossible for people getting green cards through work. You can come into the country poor as dirt and marry an American, and you can apply for the green card in a matter of weeks. But actually contribute to the economy? Have skills and get hired? Your application passes through four bureaucracies (SESA, DOL, INS, DOS) for years, during which time your temporary visa expires or your company ceases to exist. You're skilled enough to get another job the next morning by walking across the street to the next .com, but you have to start the paperwork over again. Got a good job and get paid six figures? We don't want your kind.

  You think I'm making that up? I'm talking about Linus fscking Torvalds fer chrissakes.

• A labor certification process that, at least in California, takes 3-6 months for the labor cert (or three years if you fill the paperwork out wrong), a year (!) for the I-140, where the employer asks INS for permission to apply for a green card, and either "another 6 months for processing by the State Department" or "3-5 years for processing by INS". That is, a system in which green card applicants tend to have their H-1Bs expire before the company can hire them. The US wants TNs - because they have to leave the country when the job goes away and applying for a green card makes it easy to reject a TN renewal. They want H-1Bs for the same reason - you still gotta leave when your time's up. But US immigration policy is heavily stacked against anyone coming here with the intention of working permanently in the US.

• A budgetary structure where INS' "enforcement" arm (mission: imprison and deport legals and illegals alike) is funded from Congress, but their "service" arm (mission: process forms from businesses seeking to exercise their rights under the law) is funded from service fees. Guess which arm actually has a hope in hell of fulfilling its mandate? Guess which arm is underfunded to the point where the fastest transactions are measured in weeks, and the slowest are measured in years?

Bottom line - I'm strongly in favor of requirements that ensure foreigners can't be underpaid relative to US workers. But especially in high tech, where there are Simply Not Enough skilled workers, if a company wants to hire a foreigner on a permanent basis let 'em. Geeks make companies grow. Geeks pay taxes. Geeks rarely consume social services. They're about as low-drag as it gets on the economy.

When a governmental bureaucracy can't move fast enough to let someone like Linus Torvalds into the country in a sane timeframe, their game plan is made pretty fscking obvious. We live in an environment where our companies come and go in two years - any process whereby it's expected to take 2-3 years to hire a person permanently is obviously designed with the sole purpose of keeping people out, and it's plain to see that INS doesn't give a rat's arse about the damage they're doing to our economy in the process.

How about creating an immigration HOWTO?
There are already quite a few resources on the web - many of them belong to lawyers. My favorite is Carl Shusterman's web site.
One thing to remember is that personal experiences usually don't transfer to other people's circumstances. The immigration laws are sometimes so obscure that you either need a lot of free time, or a lawyer.