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Judge Rejects H-1B Visa Injunction
theodp writes "Judge Faith Hochberg has denied a preliminary injunction sought by the Programmers Guild to put a hold on a controversial 'emergency' rule change by the Department of Homeland Security to permit foreign students to work continuously in the US for two-and-a-half years after graduation without an H-1B visa. Hochberg indicated she failed to see how an increased labor supply could result in wage depression for engineers and computer workers. That seems disingenuous, since in Andaya v. Citizens Mortgage Corporation, Judge Hochberg recently saw first-hand how a US employer got away with paying an H-1B computer engineer as little as $15,000 to do a job with a 'prevailing wage rate' of $41,000. In that case, Hochberg ruled against Filipino H-1B visa holder Almira Andaya, arguing that 'nonpayment of wages as listed on the H-1B visa petition ... does not raise a substantial question of federal law.'"
Read the links. It was a year.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
As a H1B visa holder, let me just squash this myth right here: H1B visa holders can quit and change jobs at will. If you quit, you have 60 days to find a new job before you are asked to leave the country. Most people I know find a job first and then leave. And there are no binding contracts or such associated with the visa. And there's only minor paperwork involved when changing jobs. So yeah, your above-mentioned scenario is total hogwash.
But hey, don't let me and my facts get into your way of perpetuating anti-immigration propaganda.
In New Zealand they have a pretty reasonable solution solution; the minimum salary for a foreign worker on their equivalent of an H-1B visa is $55,000. Since your salary is usually a pretty direct measure of how scarce people with your abilities/training are and how much demand there is, anyone who is coming into the county to fill a shortage in a particular field should almost by definition be getting a relatively high salary.
Your post is almost 100% bullshit political conjecture about 'illegals,' corporate american, and employment. BTW, RN salaries here:
http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_compresult_national_HC07000001.html
Yeah, they make 60k, not 10-20k.
I'd mod parent down, but I'd rather explain why I disagree.
Good. Moderating a post down simply because you disagree with it is an abuse of the moderation system - you may notice that there are no "-1, Wrong" or "-1, I Disagree" options.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I seriously disaqgree with my conservative collegues and liberal union folks who argue against immigration to the United States. I am the descendant of immigrants, as is nearly everyone else in the USA, and our ancestors came when there were no rules to immigration.
I would argue that people who are motivated enough to leave their homelands to come to the USA are motivated enough to work hard and succeed and I have 200 years of outstanding economic growth and opportunity to back me up. Every time this country has opened its borders, we have gotten increased opportunity, increased social dynamism, all pumping the engine of capitalism and driving the USA to ever greater success.
Clamping down on Phds and graduate students from American universities is about the stupidest immigration policy that one could ever devise. If someone has come to this country to study and obtain a university degree, I would think that proves that they are the stuff we want our citizens to be.
The issue of immigration has split the Republican Party right down the middle, but I for one think that Bush and McCain were on the right side of the issue and it is a shame that the odd coalition of labor activists and xenophobes combined to bring what would have been an outstanding immigration bill dead in its tracks. Regardless of who is elected, I hope that saner heads will prevail in both parties, this time around, and America will once again live up to the promise of the statue of liberty, "Give me your poor, tired huddled masses yearning to breath free."... or, in the very least, "give me all of your phds in mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering, in fact, just give me all of them and your undergrads too."
This is my sig.
Try looking around anywhere in the South. It's a different story here.
Of course, we have hospitals in the red left and right due to abuse by illegals, too. Parkland Memorial in Dallas is being abused, over 70% of their maternity-ward births to illegals now - and that doesn't even count the unpaid bills of all the OTHER abuse of the system.
I've worked with offshore programmers in both China and India. Time zones make it difficult, but the Indian company moved their working hours so there'd be more overlap. China had swing shifts going. Getting someone to talk to wasn't hard.
Understanding them was difficult. I found the Indians to have better English, both in terms of grammar AND accent.
Both produced working code and very, very good technical documentation.
--Mike
This is partly true. There are 3 stages in the Green Card process - PERM, I-140 and I-485 (a.k.a. Adjustment of Status). The day the PERM application is filed is called the priority date and roughly decides your place in the queue. Roughly because the USCIS frequently processes out of order.
After the I-485 has been filed and pending for over 180 days and the I-140 has been approved, the employee can switch jobs as long as it's in a similar position. It's also possible to recapture the priority date by having another employer file for PERM and I-140 if the old I-140 has been approved and not been revoked by the previous employer.
As long as you have an approved PERM and/or I-140 it's fairly easy to keep extending the H-1B indefinitely beyond the 6 year period till your I-485 gets approved. You can also choose to work on EAD instead of H-1B if the I-485 application is pending.
The biggest hiccup in the Green Card process is the per country limit of 7% of the quota which keeps applicants from large countries like India and China waiting in line indefinitely while applicants from most other countries get approved a lot sooner because they are not affected by the per country quotas.
Myth: H1-Bs are the "best and brightest"
Reality: If that were true then the typical H1-B would a Nobel prize winning scientist. The truth is, the typical H1-B is an average student, hired right out of college with only a four year degree. The typical H1-B is no more qualified than the US graduates who are not getting jobs. The H1-Bs are just cheaper. And because of the lottery nature of the H1-B process, employers do not even know who they are getting. So how do employers know that they are getting the best and brightest?
Also, isn't it funny that almost all of the "best and brightest" come from countries where people earn as little as $1 a day? If it's really about the "best and brightest" then why aren't there more European H1-Bs?
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Myth: H1-Bs are needed because of the critical shortage of US technology workers
Reality: Serious academic studies clearly indicate that skills shortage is a myth.
> These studies done at Duke aren't alone in their assessment that there is in fact no skills shortage. They're backed up by other studies conducted by RAND Corporation, The Urban Institute and Stanford University, among others, all of which settle upon the same conclusion: There is no shortage of educated IT workers.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1081923#PaperDownload
This according to a well researched article at baselinemag.com:
http://tinyurl.com/yoy2rw
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Myth: H1-Bs do compete unfairly, because H1-Bs are paid the prevailing wage
Reality:
> According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) as the measurement of U.S. wages, and the H-1B LCA disclosure data to measure H-1B wages, 90% of H-1B employers' prevailing wage claims for programmers were below the median U.S. wage for that occupation and location, with 62% of them falling in the bottom 25th percentile of U.S. wages, said Miano [founder of the Programmer's Guild].
> Ron Hira, an assistant professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology (currently on leave) and a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, pointed to USCIS's most recent report to Congress, which shows that the medium wage in 2005 for new H-1B computing professionals was just $50,000 -- even lower than the entry-level wages that a newly graduated tech worker with a bachelor's degree and no experience would command.
http://tinyurl.com/4bvwyh
According to the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Service's (USCIS) annual report to Congress in 2005, the aggregate data for computing professionals lend support to the argument that the practice of paying H-1Bs below-market wages is quite common.
http://www.sharedprosperity.org/bp187.html
H1-Bs are hired at four different skill levels, "4" being the highest. But most H1-Bs are hired for the lowest "1" level jobs - regardless of what kind of work the H1-Bs actually do.
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Myth: In the USA enrollment in technical disciplines is declining. Proof the USA needs to hire more foreign workers
Reality: This myth is designed to confuse cause and effect. Employers are not forced to hire offshore because enrollment is down. Rather, enrollment is down because of aggressive offshoring by employers. But even with enrollments down, there are still more than enough US workers.
> Due to both outsourcing and insourcing, many young people are concluding that technology is a bad place to invest their time," said Mark Thoma, a professor of economics at the University of Oregon in Eugene.
http://tinyurl.com/4bvwyh
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Myth: Critics of the H1-B program are xenophobic
Reality: This "argument" is nothing but name calling. These allegations are offered without any s
I'm a Linux programmer from the US. I don't do programming anymore because the pay is crap, hours suck, no job security, and whimsical companies. The truth is, I make more now teaching English than as a programmer with 13 years in IT. Can you guess why? Because I suck at programming? Nope. Because I don't have experience? Nope. Because there are no jobs available? Nope. It's because any company can go get an H1-B worker who will work for beans, overtime without pay, etc. Of course, many of those companies call me to come in and fix the screw-ups made by their cheap labourers but I just tell them "too bad, I no longer work for corporations like that". It's like I'm on strike... As are a number of my friends who have gone on to other occupations as a direct result of the H1-B visa scam.