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H1B Tech Visa Workers Being Deported From U.S.
John Murdoch writes "Tens of thousands of programmers, database specialists, and other technical workers come to the United States each year on "H1B" visas--temporary visas for workers with in-demand technical skills. The key word in that sentence is temporary. Congress began the program six years ago, and the H1B visas have a six-year time limit--meaning that thousands of H1B holders are reaching the end of their visas, and they do not have any hope of getting permanent resident status. The Washington Post has an excellent story about the problem (click here for story as posted on MSNBC).
These H1B residents have invested six years of their lives here--they have homes, families, and careers here. There is a generally acknowledged (or perhaps, generally alleged) shortage of programmers and other tech workers in the U.S. The federal government is presently working with Congress to approve legislation increasing the number of H1B workers that can come to the U.S.--while simultaneously sending currently-employed workers home.
"
I have worked with people on H1 visas. Thanks to them we were able to get extraordinary talent, which we couldn't otherwise get at any price. They are still crap. There is no reason to withold real green cards from these people. The company held their visas over their heads like some ComBlock country from decades ago. I was ashamed to be an American and face these people.
1Alpha7
Live to be Moderated
The fact is, most tech jobs (sysadmin, programmer, web developper, etc.) are not 40hr/week jobs. They're demanding 60, 70, 80 hour per week jobs. And they're all "salaried" jobs, which means no extra pay for extra hours.
Now young people fresh out of college, and immigrant H1B visa workers have little else in their life to occupy them. Thus they are able to accept the abusive work hours employers expect them to put out.
But now something new has happened. The first BIG wave of IT industry workers are just now starting to reach their upper 30s and 40s.
What happens when a 70 hour/week employee gets married or has a kid?
Suddenly he or she has to cut back working hours to 50 or 40 hours per week as a responsibiliy to their family.
The employer sees this as MAJOR SLACKING OFF BY SOME OLD GRAYING BASTARD. So he's either FIRED. Or sees his salary cut 40% and quits because he can't support his family on a pay cut like that and is forced to QUIT.
The employer then puts an ad out and discovers that lots more older IT workers are applying than years ago when he put that last ad out. These older workers suffer from the same problem... having a life.
So suddenly the employer screams that there is a "shortage of IT workers" and demands the government allow more H1B visa workers in so he can continue his abusive employment practises.
Well, IMO, it's time employers are FORCED to play fair and give up their extremely abusive practises. Naturally they won't want to as screwing people over is highly lucrative and profitable.
Well, it looks like the party may finally be almost over. Can't say I'm not glad to hear it. And I can't say I feel any pity for poor staff strapped IT shops.
These workers got exactly what they bargained for. Having worked here, their skills will be in greater demand when they return home--leading to higher salaries.
Yes, there are crummy employers out there. Maybe we should reform the system to make it easier to sweitch employers mid-visa. But I find the suggerstion that the workers have been wronge to be, at the least, odd.
hawk, economist at large
When I was looking for a job in Indiana, with a few years of HP3000 Cobol & Powerhouse experience, I was very fortunate to find a manager who gave me a chance in an AS/400 shop - my background was with HMO's, but this was a distribution & retail company. This manager realized that I had a history of learning new packages and languages as required, so he knew that after a few shorts weeks I'd be a good fit for his department - and he was right. Too often, however, headhunters & managers base their searches on criteria such as x years of Java, or y years of C++ experience. In doing so, they are blinding themselves to a vast number of programmers out there who want to develop new skills, but aren't getting the opportunity to do so. The other skills they may bring to the job (experience with the development process, etc.) can more than make up for any learning curve they may have to go through on the technical side.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
...let's face it, programming in the USA was rapidly approaching the status of "doctor" or "lawyer". In the late 80's, a hot programmer could freelance for a fortune.
This made life very tough on Sun, Oracle, Microsoft and IBM. The last thing they needed was having to pay $40-$100 an hour for programmers.
Thus, immense financial pressure begat H1B. I knew it was a lie from the start, intended to hobble the wealth and status of American Software Engineers, Developers and programmers.
I would have far preferred we let in a mix of people from a variety of backgrounds, on a permanent basis. Lawyers, Police, Doctors, Nurses, Politicians, Pilots, Teachers, whatever. But the various unions would have stopped it cold. Thus, the congress had to target geeky programmers -- highly paid, but no organizing skills.
Now we're stuck with the result. H1B Programmers and Technicians only; many of which will not be granted permanent residence and thus have to return home.
IMHO, this is one of the most egregious actions that the congress of the USA has ever taken, and that's saying a lot since they generally fuck everyone on the globe on a daily basis.
The downturn in the economy, the global corporatists (GE just opened a $100M engineering facility in Bangladore), stagnation of the platform have all contributed to this situation.
All I can say is, take a look at the local want ads. There are a fraction of the programming jobs that existed just a few years ago. My brother works for a massive aerospace company which has 100s of job openings on their website. The resumes pour in, but the jobs are never filled, and only rarely is anyone even interviewed.
Why? because the company uses vacant engineering slots to pressure the government in a lot of ways -- more time to complete projects, more pressure to expand H1B, etc.
Hate to say it, but for many H1B people, this was your vacation in America. Some global corporation got to pay you a fraction of what he would have paid me. Now, it's time for the next crop. Sooner or later, most programming will be done in China and India, and you will make more than the guy down the street.
Who really wins? The big shareholders in the Globals. That is, the top 1-5% of the US population. Many will do well in India/China, though. Personally, I think you got a pretty good deal.
Who can say Linus + family wouldn't have an enjoyable life back in Helsinki? I seriously doubt he'd have trouble finding a job!
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
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Most employers and employees therefore had to start taking a different approach: they would apply for H1B visas first and then apply for a green card while the employee was working on the H1B. That approach worked fine for a while. However, over the last few years, INS processing has become so inefficient that it can take three or four years to process a green card. If the H1B visa expires before the green card application has been mostly processed, the employees face deportation. Because the INS processing times skyrocketed so suddenly, many employees were caught by surprise: they thought that two years would be ample time to get their green card application through and were planning for that, and then were left without enough time to complete their application. Because of the baroque nature of US immigration law, there are no exemptions. Once the H1B has run out, people have to leave the country. There is no other status to convert to.
US immigration law is also rife with other outdated rules and bizarre notions. For example, it talks a lot about "intent": you can't travel on a visitor's visa if you have some "intent" to immigrate. Family reunification (even of more distant relatives) is preferred over any kind of skilled immigration. And dual citizenship is recognized by the US only if a US citizen acquires another citizenship, but the US still expects immigrants to renounce any former citizenship (although in practice, that isn't enforced much anymore). The immigration procedures themselves are a bizarre mix of rules and questions pertaining to 19th century immigration by boat, puritan notions of "good moral character", McCarthy-era concerns about communism, and modern day concerns about terrorism.
Perhaps the most important problem is that even if the delays are the INS's fault (as they usually are), the applicants are not protected from deportation. If the INS sits on someone's application for two years and their current visa expires, that person is subject to deportation.
Altogether, I don't consider the US very welcoming to skilled immigrants anymore. In addition to visa issues and processing delays, there are numerous other problems immigrants face in the US. For example, immigrants must pay full taxes but cannot take advantage of the social safety net (such as it is) and entitlements they have paid for. Legal protections for immigrants are also limited in some important ways. And even after becoming citizens, naturalized citizens are always potentially subject to denaturalization, in which the INS can challenge and reverse the naturalization process until the day an immigrant dies. The statute of limitations for denaturalization was abolished about 10 years ago, another instance of what looks like a fairly hostile attitude towards immigrants.
In a social and business sense, Americans are very welcoming to immigrants and foreigners, and that makes this country a special place to live and work. And the US will probably always remain attractive to immigrants from economically disadvantaged countries. But the US government and the US Congress have become so hostile to immigrants and foreigners that I think anybody coming from another first world country should very carefully weigh the tradeoffs involved. If the US wants to continue to be attractive skilled workers from Europe, Japan, and Australia, US immigration law will need a major overhaul.
The currenty implimentation of the H1B visa is kinda like the Death Penalty: nice idea, the way it's done sucks.
So what's wrong with the current H1B? Three things:
If the intention was for short-term help for an industry, six years is way to long. Fundamentally, on this one, the AFL/CIO is correct: companies use H1Bs to import cheap labor rather than retrain US citizens (the IT shortage is so bad that they retrain US citizen anyway, but look at other industries (like Civ Eng) that don't do this). "Temporary" is a joke. If people were serious about this, the term would be 3 years, max.
Remaining in the US after the 6 years is up is nigh-on-impossible, no matter how important you are to a company's wellbeing. When it's up, out you go. Getting a subsequent H1B to come back again is alot harder than getting the first H1B. This is stupid.
If you are here on an H1B, there are only 2 circumstances that I know of that allow you to remain here (ie, convert your H1B visa to some other sort of visa): (1) you marry a US citizen, in which case you get to apply for permanent residency (Green Card), or (2) apply for asylum/refugee status (which is horribly torturous). Companies can sponsor you for a Green Card if they want, but the rules require you to return to your home country while they consider your application. Which can take 6 months or a year (or alot longer). And there is no way you can stay on your own without a sponsor.
Fundamentally, H1Bs should be for 2-3 year, "work-and-leave" use, kinda like a contractor. We should create another type of visa which allows us to have people in for a period of time (several years) and then convert it easily to a permanent resident status. That way, we keep the smart ones here.
This is the worst part of the current H1B - we bring in lots of talented people, train them up in our stuff so we can make use of them, then send them back to their home country, full of knowledge on how we do business. Dumb! The U.S.'s major competative advantage is it's brainpower - if we don't try to keep our brainpower, then where does that leave us? For years, the U.S.'s immigration policy has been such that we skim the cream of intellectuals from other countries (e.g. get them to imigrate to the US) so we keep our brainpower as the top. The H1B actively defeats this idea. Stupid.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
I keep hearing about this shortage of IT workers. What is really happening is that corporations are watching a health US IT labor market eat up a fraction of thier profits and are lobbying heavily to allow more forign workers into the country to try to bring the salaries down.
I think that the competitive salaries and frequent job hopping are not only good for most IT workers, but good for IT in general. Knowlwdge is sperad more quickly, more people have access to the knowledge and it is difficult for one company to hold on to a competitive edge for long. They must contiune to innovate (except maybe M$)creating new competitive advantages. The market grows, consumers get better products faster and smart motivated workers are rewarded with a better more flexible and lucritive work place.
This is not to say that we should shut the door and not allow any forign IT workers in. We should just be sure that the Government and Corporate America are not fixing the numbers to hurt IT workers.
-Dan Rode
> Otherwise, how's your Hindi, Chinese or Korean doing?
They're doing great, thanks!. I have a new pair of Nikes, a new hat, and a new CD player. Made right in my basement.
Ian Stuart Donaldson
Unfortunately, over the last two years, INS processing has slowed down more than tenfold (!). As a result, people who had an expectation of being able to get their green card in time now face deportation because the INS didn't finish processing their green card application before their H1B ran out.
So, the problem isn't that people knew that their visa was temporary, but that the INS fails to process green card applications in a timely manner. This caught everybody by surprise: visa holders, consulates, and immigration attorneys.
But I agree to this degree: while in the past, H1B visa holders could expect a fairly painless transition to a green card, that is clearly not the case anymore. People who are considering coming to the US now should expect that the situation with the INS will further deteriorate. I think that makes the US considerably less attractive to skilled immigrants.
European friends of mine were always quite pissed about that point. They could not believe how any of the Asian grad students could have passed the required verbal & written English tests required to get a student visa (according to them). To prove their point, one of them would periodically ask the lab TA if the lights were on. The TA would usually respond with a different answer (point them to the current chapter in the textbook, 'I do not know..ask Prof X', etc.).
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
I can't figure out what's unfair about this.
I agree that it's unethical for employers to pay people less just because they can. I also agree that it's not very cool of the United States to send these people home. But what's unfair about it?
These people agreed to the terms of the work permits, or they wouldn't have come in the first place. Nobody forces them to take any job, they agree to take the jobs. When the work permit runs out, they have to go home. Nobody should EVER operate under the assumption that their contract won't be enforced just because it hasn't been in the past, or other people aren't having theirs enforced.
The US government and companies do a lot of unethical things, but it also takes two to tango. Something feels really wrong about people willfully and knowingly entering into contracts such as employment and visas, and then getting upset when the terms of those contracts that they agreed to suddenly aren't 100% in their favor.
Again, ethically, some of this isn't all that cool. But where is it unfair?
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Okay, the subject's only half joking. But it's a good question - I'm not sure on the details of our (and by 'our', I'm referring to the Kernel developers, of which I am not a member) benevolent dictator's immigration status except that it was excruciatingly difficult to get him into the US. If he's on one of these sort of visas, we here in the states will have to bid him farewell in a few years.
Something tells me that neither Transmeta, nor Linus himself, will be pleased at this. I can imagine the sudden rash of letters to congressmen this might provoke. And it'd work, too, because the slashdotters have managed to get all sorts of things done by writing to their congresspeople, right?
Right?
Okay, plan B: Someone put Linus on Freenet -- and get 2600 to link to him, while we're at it!
-Denor
The same side of this same coin has rendered some older information workers unemployable: they have sufficient breadth of experience and seniority that makes them too expensive to hire. Or retrain.
We need to make sure that imported labor does not leave our citizens/green card holders out in the cold by making sure that the H1-Bs are paid a competitive and fair salary.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
This is a case of the American government doing what they do best, screw things up. Yes, illegal immigrants living on welfare is bad. No, visa holders who give needed skills, and help to add to the country are not bad. It is very simple, where the problem is, and it is not here. If the people have a good job, are comfortable, let them stay.
(Had to state the obvious, flame away)
-- the computer doesn't want any beer, no matter how much you think it does. NEVER, EVER feed your computer beer.
I'm amazed at the number of people who didn't seem to read the article before commenting on it (but I probably shouldn't be).
First, the article is very clear that most H1B's expect their stay to be permanent: get an H1B, start working in the US, get a green card...
The reasons that so many of them have to leave are (which would have been very difficult for them to anticipate in 1994):
(a) The INS cannot process their green card applications fast enough.
(b) There are caps on the number of green cards that can be awarded in a given year and there are further caps on what percentage of that number can be awarded to citizens of a particular country, and, as I recall, these caps are frequently treated as a political football.
I'm also surprised that no one has commented on the detail in the article that I found most startling: The couple in the article has a child, that, as far as I can tell (and, to be fair, the article was not clear here), was born while they were living in the US. Unless there has been a Constitutional amendment after the 14th that I don't know about, that child is automatically an American citizen. I really don't see what business the INS has deporting the parents of an American citizen. I thought one of the principles of immigration law was to keep families together.
You know, that really smells like indentured servitude to me, just in a more obscure way. The company bound her as surely as with ball and chain.
:)
Yes, there are probably a lot of H1B people who are treated fairly, but there are also a lot of them who are maltreated in various ways. On the one hand there's a certain Finnish kernel coder on an H1-B visa who drives a German car and wears an Italian suit (when necessary), on the other hand there's the Chinese woman in McKwant's example, and then there's also the whole spectrum inbetween.
Point is, a ruthless company could easily take advantage of H1-B people, bog them down in procedures, mire them in paperwork and work them to death for a low pay, while honest companies will treat them the same as any other employee.
Regardless of whether it's legal, that hardly seems fair...
Of course, not everyone's from mainland China...
Well, according to the latest demographics, it's not very far off though
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
When CEOs go around complaining that they are "desparate" to find good programmers, what they mean is they are desparate to find cheap programmers who are willing to work 80 to 90 hours a week for a below-industry-average salary. That's like me going around saying, "I have been looking all over for a brand-new Ferrari for under $25,000 -- I'm desparate to find one!"
Of course, I'm not saying anything new. People who actually know what's going on in the computer industry have been saying this for years.
Free Hans!
There is no shortage of tech workers. There simply isn't a surplus. Companies with positions to fill don't want to pay any more than they have to for qualified people. Tech workers are in high demand, meaning wages will be high. But if you can bring someone in from somewhere else who is equally as qualified, and pay him less, well wages just went down. Personally I think we should encourage intelligent educated people to emigrate to the US. We should accept them with open arms. Why? Because they will be the basis of our future, both economic and politcal. In the future human know how will be the most precious resource. If most of the people with above average minds live here in the US, what would that do for our position in world affairs? When our people can literally out-think people from other countries what will that do for our ability to compete with those countries? America is a nation of emigrants and children of emigrants. Right now we are the dominant nation on this earth. But that can change. Once upon a time the British Empire covered 3/4 of the world. Today Britian is simply another country in europe. So the question becomes, what can we do to help maintain and improve our position in a world which is increasingly hostile towards us? I'd say draining our future competitor's most precious resource is one damned good way to do it. Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Before everyone spouts their opinion, here are some background facts which may help you understand this better.
/. posts).
First, green cards. These are a Kafkaesque nightmare.
* An employer can sponsor a green card (permanent residency) which takes about 3-6 years. An employee may quit, but this stops his green card processing and he has to start from scratch at the next company. (In case you're wondering, most employers are eager to sponsor. Guess why...)
* If the H1B expires at the end of 6 years, the green card process can be continued overseas (Consular Processing). OTOH, if the process is at the final stage, the employee may file for an "Adjustment of Status" (AoS) and continue to work in the US (for the same employer) until he/she obtains the green card - generally 3 more years.
During this time, US law prohibits the person from leaving & re-entering the country unless he obtains INS permission after stating the cause, even for short trips. (Land of liberty!) They are literally treated as prisoners in some sense - the word the INS uses to describe a software engineer allowed to go visit his home country is advanced parole (this is a DOJ site) Violating this is extremely serious.
Some people forget this rule and visit canada for a holiday, which pretty much fucks up their weekend and much of their life.
* Green card processing time varies dramatically from state to state, sometimes by years. So a PhD in California might take longer to get it than an agricultural worker in Washington. In short, if you are planning to get one, spend some heavy research poring over tables of figures on avg. timelines.
H1Bs
-----
* H1B is a non-immigrant visa, so those who hold it are "non-immigrants" (if you can imagine that); green card folks are "applicants for immigrant status".
* An H1B takes about 3 months to obtain. You are not obliged to work for one employer, and can change.
* An employer can't "send them back". This is a HUGE misconception. Even if the company fires someone, he is legally present with a valid work permit, which normally doesn't expire until a yr or two. So long as the programmer has another company apply for a new work permit, he can continue to stay in the US (but cannot work until he gets the new visa.)
* You can start > 1 H1B visa applications. For instance, a programmer agrees to join companies X and Y, both of which apply for visas. X gets it first, and the programmers says bye to Y. This happens sometimes (see above scenario) - I know more than one person who's done it, it's a tough world - and companies can't do anything about it (can't have much sympathy for them, really).
* Big slashdot error - H1B people are NOT being deported. The article does not mention it. Deportation is a legal action taken by the INS against unlawful aliens, which is fought out in the courts. In this case, what they are describing is a case of programmers voluntarily leaving BEFORE their visa expires.
* H1B law allows an unlimited number of employers, but a max cap of 6 yrs in the US. After 6 years, the person must spend 1 yr outside the US, at which time the counter is ROLLED BACK. He can then come to the US for another 6 yrs.
* Inspite of the mass hysteria, employers can't pay anything they want - they have to legally state how much they pay and this has to be approved by the DoL (dept. of labor) BEFORE they grant it.
* H1B folks can apply for a green card at any time during their employment. From the frying pan into the fire.
* They can also apply for Canadian permanent residency while in the US. This takes about 6 months and you need not have to be in Canada for even a day. They have enough trouble keeping their own people.
* H1B law is equally ruthless to all nationalities - it takes several weeks for everyone. Equal opportunity rocks.
* One consequence of a 3 month processing time for H1B is that companies are unwilling to hire people to start so far into the future, instead of a 15 day period.
* When H1Bs took 15 days to process (they used to some yrs ago) there was little disparity between conditions for citizens and visa workers, since people had to give a 2 week notice anyway, during which the visa was processed. This whole fuckup began due to overloading of under-budgeted INS offices.
In short, immigrant programmers face enormous hurdles - inspite of having legal status, they are trapped between the govt., corporations, and a xenophobic population (read some
I've noticed a regrettable trend. Many Americans tend to take out their anger against immigration policy on their H1B co-workers or anyone who looks like one (visa status isn't exactly stamped on people's foreheads), which creates an unpleasant, racially hostile situation in many offices. Oddly enough, they tend to discard this attitude when they themselves have to go thru a bureaucratic nightmare to work in Europe or australia or Asia.
Party on.
w/m
To prove their point, one of them would periodically ask the lab TA if the lights were on. The TA would usually respond with a different answer
:)
/. crowd revels in amusement from clever remarks about the Hitchhiker's guide and the babelfish. Very wise and understanding about the tapestry of human culture and thought - all that makes us what we are, and how we live together. But when it comes to the real world, and people traveling and working in different countries and speaking with a different accent, there is so much veiled hostility and underlying scorn towards "them".
This doesn't prove anything. Maybe this happened because *their* communication skills were just as bad.
It is largely a matter of accent. Once an American complained to me about the English not being able to speak properly. The irony of this was a bit too much for me. I've also had Asians complain about Americans not being able to spell or master rudimentary English.
Once I saw an American tourist ask an Australian at an airport to repeat himself because she couldn't understand him. Naturally, you'd think - thick Aussie accent. Imagine if you'd seen her do the same to a Chinese person - would your opinion of his communication skills differ a lot from that of the Australian? Think about it...
There's no reason why an American or European accent is the "correct" or default way to pronounce English.
I find it strange how the
w/m