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.'"

Comments

Who really built Silicon Valley?

[Baldrson]

People like Judge Faith Hochberg ignore the obvious fact that Silicon Valley would not exist without the Midwestern middle class WASPs. As Tom Wolfe documents in his Forbes article: Robert Noyce and His Congregation,[August 25, 1997] virtually all of the essential inventions upon which Silicon Valley was founded were created by the much-derided, non-"vibrant", "white-bread", "middle class" of "fly-over country".

Last month I asked the aging Bob Johnsonâ"former CTO of Burroughs Corporation when it was a leading mainframe company in Minneapolis where he developed the magnetic ink you see on the bottom of your checksâ"what he thought caused the loss of the Midwestern high tech leadership to the coasts, and he said it was the financial dominance of the coasts.

That squares with what I observed while at Control Data Corporation/Cray Research, Inc.

The reason Bill Norris and Seymour Cray were able to start CDC thence Cray Research was because they violated SEC regs and went around selling stock at PTA meetings, making a lot of middle class people retire very comfortably. My late father bought some Cray stock early on which helped greatly with his retirement.

When I was at CDC in Arden Hills, MN attempting to deploy the mass market version of the PLATO network with Internet-like capabilities (the system that Ray Ozzie (Bill Gates' replacement at Microsoft) cut his teeth on) in 1980 the primary resistance was from a middle management that, due to the financial press' hostility toward Norris's vision of a society disintermediated by computer networking, small high-tech farms and locally produced and consumed essentialsâ"had itself grown hostile to Norris.

My proposed solution is simple to state but will perhaps require a war to institute:

Replace all taxes on economic activity with a tax on net-assets, assessed at their in-place liquidation value, at the risk free interest rate (which according to modern portfolio theory is the short-term US Treasury rate) so as to extract all economic rents from the private sector, and then, to prevent public sector rent-seeking in pork-barrel politics, disperse those funds evenly in a dividend to all citizens, as the beneficiaries of the land-trust called the United States.

That will not only stop the vicious centralization of power in the private and public sectors, but it will clarify the role of immigrationâ"it is a dilution of the benefits intended for the Posterity of the Founders of the land trust called The United States of America.

Less H-1B's, more and faster citizenship

[Brian Stretch]

Instead of H-1B indentured servitude, gilded as it may be, we should fast track such people for citizenship. Any country that can make America's marginal tax rates look good or otherwise sufficiently pisses off their people DESERVES to lose their best and brightest. America has traditionally been the common meeting place of the world's best and brightest and I'd hate to see that change.

But the big corporations that give $megabucks to the Democratic and Republican parties, slightly more to whichever is dominant at the time, really like the H-1B system so I don't expect much to change. The fast-track citizenship idea is from National Review.

Re:FAIL!

[jcr]

the suit failed to show how the plaintiffs would be harmed and to what degree

More like, she rued that "they took our jobs" isn't a complaint on which relief can be granted under the law. The last time this kind of issue arose was when black laborers were competing for jobs with white laborers, and were willing to work for much less, and the upshot was that the unions demanded the minimum wage laws.

-jcr

B.S.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's not hogwash.

I've worked for employers who do this routinely.

But let's talk about the process. If a visa holder wants to leave, he must first find another employer willing to accept (a) H1B's (which eliminates all but large businesses (b) H1B transfers (which eliminates even more companies).

If you are an H1B, and you make noise about leaving, your employer simply calls the IMS and you have a few days to leave the country.

Let's be real here... if H1B visa holders had freedom of movement, then their wages would be no different than prevailing wages. The fact that you have skilled professionals from overseas working for $25-50K (I made more than that out of college 30 years ago) either says that (a) the wage supply is too large (which undercuts the arguments for H1B's) (b) there is an economic barrier people with H1B's that prevents them from exercising their rights.

I don't have an ax to grind here, and I think that there really should *not* be a barrier for skilled people to come into the United States, but I think it benefits everyone to eliminate the H1B and simply allow any highly skilled person to enter the United States. I don't see the downside, provided they have the same ability to negotiate wages as people who live here.

Re:B.S.

[vk2]

As a manager who hires H1B on a regular basis, I can attest that its not as easy as you say to get INS/USCIS to deport an H1B. 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. Once a H1B is an employee he is/has to be treated in a similar way as any other employee - failing to do will be inviting discrimination lawsuits. Almost all midsize/large corporations do not go all the way up to USCIS/INS to get a visa cancelled just because of trivial work/life balance mismatch between employee and job requirements. Off course serious misconduct is always pursued to see that the employee returns to his home country. This is done to maintain good company image with the INS/USCIS. When the wheels in HR turn to get the visa canceled, its already being transferred to another employee.

Re:Protection of the tech jobs market

[Mr. Slippery]

If the latter is good for everyone (except the domestic producers of that product) then how can the former be bad?

When "free trade" includes a race to the bottom in wages, working conditions, environmental standards, product quality, and the maximization of external costs, "free trade" is not good for everyone.

When folks in Germany or Japan can build a better car for a lower price then U.S. automakers, while paying employees a good wage, giving them good working conditions, and keeping the environment relatively clean, that's competition making for better products. It can be rough for workers when the company they work for comes out on the losing end, but with appropriate legal and social structures to provide some padding there, the result can be good.

When China can produce cheap crap at a price that puts American industry out of business while using prison labor and polluting the environment, that's not good.