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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.
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
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?
Seriously, 15k for skilled labor is crazy. If the US wants to offer wages like that, all the best workers will be going off to a first world country like India.
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
That's because you don't understand differences between labor and commodity. More oil means lower prices; more workers means more jobs and more work done.
The more workers you have, the larger is your economy, and EVERYBODY is better off.
If you don't understand the concept at least compare our economy in 2008 with that in 1492 (pre-immigration).
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
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...)
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.
Seastead this.
This says it all: http://img367.imageshack.us/img367/7628/helppack8hw1oh.jpg
That's because you don't understand differences between labor and commodity. More oil means lower prices; more workers means more jobs and more work done.
Maybe overall and eventually, but it takes time for things to adjust.
The more workers you have, the larger is your economy, and EVERYBODY is better off.
That doesn't work if the new workers are all in one field, you end up with high unemployment and/or low pay for a while until people get displaced to other lines of work ("I just can't find a job as a programmer any more, I think I'll learn how to farm switchgrass instead.").
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.
I am for a reduction of ALL immigration, not just the H-1B.In my opinion, the the H1-B is just stupid. We should just train and hire our own people. We should also ban sending our jobs overseas just so corporations can give their CEOs 20 million dollar a year bonuses.
Speaking as a computer professional who lives and works outside the USA[0], I strongly agree with you[1] and would encourage all US citizens to lobby their politicians to adopt the above position (to paraphrase Randy Bush).
0. I guess, given your parochial view of global economics, that that makes us competitors, in your mind.
1. Seriously: I strongly disagree with some of the indentured-servitude aspects of the H1-B programme. They're unfair on the workers, and they're economically counter-productive to your country.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
I've seen the complaint many times. The problem is that in the US their is a shortage of IT education. Most universities have CS programs but as you said yourself CS is not about programming or IT, and yet we encourage people who want to program or do IT to get CS degrees. What we really need are vocational IT degrees.
No one would hire an Electrical Engineer when all they wanted was an Electrician, so why do companies hire Computer Scientists when they want IT people? When I was an undergraduate I saw three kinds of people in CS generally. Good CS people that could program but didn't really care about IT and software engineering, Good IT and Software Engineers who couldn't quite grasp CS, and people who were crappy programmers/IT/Software Engineers who didn't really grasp CS and just squeaked by on brute force. The first group went on the grad school like I did, the second group tended to end up in semi-abusive programming positions where the company overworked you or at companies with no future. The third group minored in business and got high paying jobs on BS and are now in management positions many of them working on MBAs.
Currently as a CS doctoral student I have dealt with alot of people out of the Indian universities and a large percentage of these people are what business want -- people with a vocational IT background who churn out code, and yet they make lousy CS grad students. The MCS (as opposed to the MSCS and PhDCS) degree has become a way for foreign programmers and IT professionals to get a foot in the door and get hired by an American company.
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.
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.
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
--The FNP
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.
Let's start accepting H1B's for lawyers and judges. I guarantee she will change her tune then.
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."
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.
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."
Justlook at the way unemployment is going. The last thing we need are more workers.
The Programmers Guild has proposed a superb idea. Put the H1-B visa up for aution, rather than a lottery. This is a much more fair system, for a system that is supposed to bring in talent that isn't here in the U.S.. And it generates revenue for the U.S..
It's funny that the so-called "Free Market" advocates are against such a free market idea.
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?
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
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.
You're not wrong. Everything is as bad as you say it is, and you are one of the last boy scouts.
But we need boy scouts.
We need people who will still point out how flagrantly wrong and self-serving decisions like these are, even though doing so seems pointless. No, pointing this stuff out will not chance a thing. But having people recognize that things like this are wrong, is the necessary pre-condition for even the possibility of change to exist. If no one speaks up, then evils such as this would become the new standard of what "right and normal" is. And if that happens, then it would never occur to anyone else that things should, or even could be different.
Yeah, fighting against the tide rolling in seems utterly pointless. But at least the tide knows that you did not consent, you did not give in, and you went down fighting. Sometimes, that's enough to let a future generation pick up those ideals later on, and start the fight anew, and maybe even win next time.
"to the detriment of the customer."
Maybe -- but do you know something? *I* am the supplier, and NOT the customer. As to the customer -- they get the benefit of dealing with professionals.
I would love to organize.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
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.
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?
http://blog.noslaves.com
'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.
As a native Brit living in America on a green card, I don't like sending payment to the IRS to pay for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Ah, the cycle of life.
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.
However, there is the nebulous "Overrated" which is basically used the same way. Overrated is generally used by Slashdot mods as the "your opinion sucks and I'm modding you down for it" option.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
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
We really didn't fix immigration as a part of our national identity until after the Civil War. Prior to that time, most Americans traced their ancestry to Britain. Irish, Germans, Poles, etc, didn't start coming here until well after the country was founded, and didn't kick into high gear until after the War between the States, which, consequently, is also about the time anti-immigrant sentiment really took off. And that "nation of immigrants" identity hasn't exactly been static since then. After World War One, we locked down draconian limits on immigration that stayed in place until the early 1960's. I think eventually those draconian limits are coming back. Our attitude towards immigration seems to swing back and forth over the generations.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
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.
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?
---
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
According this back-door legislation, the shortage of tech workers was so sever, that it constituted a national emergency.
But, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics:
August 06, 2008
Almost 50,000 IT positions lost in last 12 months
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/08/06/Bureau-of-Labor-Statistics-reports-big-drop-in-tech-jobs_1.html
Of course an increase in supply will decrease demand. Duh and obviously this judge did not take Highschool economics 101 or use common sense.
If she wants to argue its not the government's job to make competitive salaries then I would agree with her. Something doesn't seem right about this ruling and the fact that federal government already has dirt on her as another slashdotter pointed out might have something to do with it.
Well I am about 100k in college debt and was told to expect to make 12/hr when I graduate! Why did I go back to school? The economic climate is not favorable to employees right now and I would not be surprised if alot of laid of I.T. workers banded together and become more pollitically involved. I majored in B.A. and gave up in I.T. An MCSE, A+ and 2 years experience is not enough to keep a job anymore and I do not want to keep getting outsourced and shafted.
\
CPAs and accountants are going to be outsourced next and lawyers. If you want a lawyer for new York state law you go to New Jersey. Why can't you fly to an Indian lawfirm where they are alot cheaper? All hell will break loose when this happens as most politicians were lawyers.
http://saveie6.com/
Try working as an illegal mexican in a potato/tomato field in California or Idaho (they are in the U.S., by the way) under the scorching sun for $2/hour and then you'll see what's slave labor.