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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.'"
Welcome to the country of unlimited possibilities ... ... to get ripped off!
Really, both the H1-B Visa holders and US employees are at a loss here.
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I find it interesting that Slashdotters and the posted articles tend to be quite libertarian on many issues, with one of the exceptions being protection of the tech jobs market. Isn't it a bit hypocritical or am I missing something?
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.
A good percentage of you here on /. voted for those chuckleheads. So big surprise when they turn around and dick you by making it easier for your employer to replace you with someone making cardboard slum wages. And even if the next president cuts it off the day they take office, the people already here will be able to stay to middle of their term.
Nice.
Funny how the rules on the war on terror manage to line up with corporate interests, isn't it? Just hilarious.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Do you hate me too, or only people from India and Bangladesh?
(I'm in the process of getting an H1-B visa, but I'm white and British - so does that make it okay? Or are you opposed to all foreigners? I thought the USA was founded on immigration, you know...)
This says it all: http://img367.imageshack.us/img367/7628/helppack8hw1oh.jpg
I like your point about new workers all in one field. But I believe right now most immigrants are actually in the unskilled labor pool, including the 12 million illegal immigrants and most of the legal immigrants in the "family-sponsored" category.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
she failed to see how an increased labor supply could result in wage depression for engineers and computer workers.
She says:
in no sense could "wage depression through the economic forces of supply and demand" rise to the level of justiciable injury, rather than the "conjecture or hypothetical."
Instead of assuming the judge is an idiot, why not favor the much more likely scenario that the suit failed to show how the plaintiffs would be harmed and to what degree. They are claiming they are would be harmed by having their salaries reduced, when in fact they are "employed" or "underemployed". You can't claim you'll be harmed by having you salary reduce if your salary is already zero. It is not the judges job to "see" how harm could be done. It is the plaintiff's job to demonstrate how harm will be done. If they cannot do that, the judge's hands are tied.
H1B's would not depress wages if they made the simple change that the H1B visa holder could change jobs at will. Right now, H1B wages are depressed precisely because the visa holder will be deported if they quit.
"Hey boss! I found out that minimum wage pays more than you pay!
Oh, sorry about that. Let me discuss your feelings with the IMS.
Oh dear, where did my 'valued' employee get to?"
The system right now pits the Visa holder against the Citizen/Resident worker which further benefits large corporations. It's not a question of visa holder versus resident; it's both of those classes of people against large corporations who are (in my opinion) using H1B's to hold low-cost workers hostage and keep the price of resident labor as well.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Do you hate me too, or only people from India and Bangladesh?
(I'm in the process of getting an H1-B visa, but I'm white and British - so does that make it okay? Or are you opposed to all foreigners? I thought the USA was founded on immigration, you know...)
What really upsets me is not the fact that the H1-B people are here. But the comments from some people that use the fact that our country was based on immigration... To say that the US was based on immigration and thus you should be loved by everyone is stupid. Yes, most of the now citizens of the US had family roots (from 1st generation to several generations ago) that immigrated over here. This however does not mean that we still feel that everyone and their family dog should be in the US. So do everyone and favor and stop bringing up that point.
If you bring your H1-B visa self over here and you allow a company to pay you $15,000/yr when any normal sane person here would make that company pay at least $40,000/yr then yes I would agree you need to go back home. Companies (as far as IT goes) need to pay their people a fair market price based on the work of the job. Should a company pay me $50,000/yr to just sit down and answer phones for changing people's password? No. Should a company pay me that for handling and maintaining mission critical servers and ensuring that they running and if they go down I respond rapidly to take care of the problem? Yes.
The difference in the two jobs is that it does not take a skilled person (in most password reset systems) to do a password reset. But for the person who does work on servers they have to know a lot more information.
My thought is this if an H1-B visa person and someone who is here not on a visa has the similar training and background then I would say that the person here in the US should get the job over anyone on a visa. My family paid the taxes to keep this place around. I should be allowed to first get the benefits of my country before someone who is not from here.
I absolutely do not feel sorry for someone with an immigrant comes in and "takes your job" for less pay.
An immigrant, a younger worker, any other person willing to do the job for less, the principle is the same: a job is not a right, it's a business transaction in which either party is free to go and find a better deal if they can.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I can't find a fucking job skilled or unskilled right now, how can this possibly help?
The US has a "shortage" of trained nurses thanks to H1-B abuse for years. The hospitals (strained for money thanks to nonpayment by illegals who use the "emergency room" as standard care) looked for a way to cut wages, so now the average nurses' wage is around $20,000/year with a ton of imported nurses that barely speak the language and were trained in countries where the standard is lower. My aunt is a victim of this, she was forced out of her old job when the hospital she was had to close down due to illegal-alien abuse and then she had to settle for a job at $10k/year less due to the wage suppression effect of the H1-B visa abuse. She was told, point-blank, at three interviews that there was no way they'd pay more than 22k for someone with 15 years' experience and that was "generous" because they were hiring the H1-B's for 18k.
The disparity between skilled industries (and yes, I count health care as a skilled industry, a nursing degree is at least the equivalent of a Masters' degree in resources and time spent to attain it) in the US is staggering, and you can trace the wage depressed ones directly to abusive "outsourcing" setups - whether it's the H1-B or illegal immigrant abuse ("we can't find anyone for the job... at the slave wages we're offering") or the shipping of jobs to places where the incompetence factor is high, like India, and then sticking the paying customer with the nuisance of dealing with crap "customer service."
Go to Monster.com and see how many IT job ads there are compared to other industries, and you'll understand why we have a shortage.
I thought the USA was founded on immigration, you know
It was built by immigrants, but strictly speaking, it was founded on tax revolt. We didn't like sending payment to England just because you were trying to pay for the French and Indian war.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Hold on... there's just ONE thing that's confusing me about your post...
I am a H1-B dev from Europe.....I am here to take your jobs, women and beer
What European would want to drink American beer?
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In order for DHS to change the rules, by law there has to be an emergency. There is no emergency. There is no worker shortage, there is no national crisis and there are Americans who need those jobs. The US just lost another 50K jobs in these areas. So, how does a judge get off claiming there is an emergency? Is our government that hateful of US workers? They declare an emergency to make sure US won't get those jobs? Is our government desperate to not hire Americans and will even break laws to avoid hiring Americans in America? Is our government saying no jobs for Americans at all costs?
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'Cause the shrinking middle class is tired of seeing our funds be sucked up by other Americans because they had the money and connections to rip us off.
Food and gas goes up, who gets richer?
Blar.
The Department of Homeland Security makes a rule change to allow additional foreign workers in the engineering and software fields. No doubt they see areas such as telecommunications, security, aviation and DoD work as being low risk. But try to get some Mexicans in here to pick lettuce and we have to build a wall to stop it.
I understand US industries motivation in this area. But aside from the DHS reviewing proposed visa procedures, I can't understand why they should be the ones to sponsor such a regulation. This would seem to fall more within the charter of the Dept. of Commerce. If DHS has no security work to keep it busy, perhaps its time to pull the plug.
Have gnu, will travel.
Once an H1B gets a job as an employee (not a contractor) his immigration status is kind of immaterial, its only important as an expense for visa renewals and green card application.
Well, that would explain why my current employer only hires H1B's as contractors.
So, its not an issue of labor supply. And, based on the Andaya case cited in the summary, its not an issue of pay.
Hiring an employee for only two years, particularly one fresh out of college is pointless from a productivity point of view. It takes a year or two to get them up to speed. This is interesting. Bring in an employee fresh out of school, but with no guarantee that they can remain in country after 2 years. Essentially, what you are doing is spending money training them. But then, in two years, they are sent home. That would be pointless, unless "home" was a subsidiary of the parent corporation.
This is a training program for moving operations overseas.
Have gnu, will travel.
There is a vast, vast difference between embracing change and causing change for your own purposes. The latter is what the Republicans and big business in general has been doing lately. You cause a problem and then present what follows as "inevitable". In this case, negotiating all these ridiculous "free trade" agreements which open borders to capital but not to labor, and you get Ross Perot's "giant sucking sound".
Think about it: a corporation can be a "citizen" of multiple countries at once. Can you? A corporation can move from one market to another freely. Can you do that?
This isn't "embracing change"--it's deliberate sabotage and looting of the vast wealth of this country, specifically of the now-vanishing middle class because you all have bought into this libertarian econcomic nonsense that you'll do better if you stand alone.