Microsoft & Intel Get a Pass On Higher H-1B Fees

theodp writes "Criticizing companies that outsource high-paying American jobs, Senator Charles Schumer described Indian IT company Infosys as a 'chop shop'. (Nine Indian companies accounted for 20,000 H-1B visas as of 2007. In 2008, Infosys held 4,500 of the visas; the number was down by a factor of 10 in 2009.) The comments came as the Senate scrambled to fund the $600M Mexican Border Security Bill by hiking application fees for H-1B and L-1 visas. The Senate measure increases H-1B visa fees by $2,000 per application on firms that have 50% or more of their employees on this visa. Schumer pointed out that the bill would not affect high-tech companies such as Intel or Microsoft 'that play by the rules and recruit workers in America,' although they are among the biggest beneficiaries of the H-1B program."

Comments

did i read that right

[TheRealQuestor]

why do the words Intel and Microsoft just not sound right sitting next to "Play by the rules"?

Re:did i read that right

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes you read that right. Playing by the rules means campaign contributions, Microsoft and Intel payed theirs.

Re:did i read that right

[Arimus]

In this instacne they do... does not help them to break these rules so they'll play by them.

And apart from that its simple: =50% you do. So not exactly a hard rule (and a bit of work with HR, outsourcing/sub-contracting/contractors can help reduce you below 50% without doing any rule breaking; same as any tax - evasion of the tax would be illegal, avoidance isn't)

Re:did i read that right

[shriphani]

Despite all the bad press they get, MS and Intel have very good hiring practices. They believe in hiring anyone who displays talent - regardless of nationality. They really don't have anything to gain by trying to game the H1B system. The shady stuff happens at smaller companies working on mostly insignificant stuff.

Re:did i read that right

[davester666]

Yes, it's just an incredibly huge bonus for them if they can hire the person really cheap [vs hiring a non-import].

Re:did i read that right

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting as an AC due to the high number of H1B's in my office. But they don't work for us. They work for the contracting company we hire. The contracting company will get the bad press, slightly increase the per hour fee and the big company will point out that they're hiring American and not mentioning that they're contracting a lot more jobs than they hire and the contractors are rarely (if ever) American.

Re:did i read that right

[Whatshisface]

That's the whole point...they aren't really getting them cheaper.

Speaking from personal experience, I graduated from a US university a few years ago and applied for a job at various tech companies, including Microsoft. I was competing with everybody else who had graduated, and would be paid the same as any entry level developer (which was about 65k at the time).

The only difference was that, as a foreign national, if they decided to hire me, they would have to provide me with an H-1B visa.

A large number of the H-1B professionals who work for MS and Intel and other tech companies, have come in the same way, by competing against other qualified candidates, including Americans, for the same salary, and proving themselves to be the best candidate.

There is a big difference between them and the "sweatshop" candidates being brought in by the outsourcing companies.

Re:did i read that right

[anagama]

While the starting salary may be $65k under our present system, it can't be said that in the absence of the H1-B program, the starting salary would still be only $65k. It used to be that when labor was short wages would rise, and that when labor was abundant, wages would fall. Since the whole globalization craze, that sea-saw balance of power between between labor and industry is gone, because with a whole world out there capable of living on dollars/day (something completely impossible in America), there is never a chance for labor to be short and for workers to get their payoff for suffering through the times when labor is abundant. In essence, we've created a system that always has a labor surplus leading to lower wages (or no wages) for everyone -- from the low skilled workers in the textile industry, to highly educated people in technical fields.

Re:did i read that right

[BBF_BBF]

Yes, it's just an incredibly huge bonus for them if they can hire the person really cheap [vs hiring a non-import].

If indeed, Microsoft and Intel are following the rules, they must pay AT LEAST the average wage in the local area, so they're not going to save all that much. Abusers don't follow that rule, they "report" that they pay the average or more, but then don't pay that amount to their H-1B employee aka Slave labor. However, one could argue that the companies can get top rung foreigners for average US worker prices, thus are really underpaying the foreigners.

Re:did i read that right

[NormalVisual]

A large number of the H-1B professionals who work for MS and Intel and other tech companies, have come in the same way, by competing against other qualified candidates, including Americans, for the same salary, and proving themselves to be the best candidate.

The mere fact that they're competing against qualified American programmers is indicative of a problem. The H-1B program is predicated on the fiction that there aren't enough qualified Americans to fill the open positions to begin with.

Re:did i read that right

[AnonymousClown]

Intel?!? The same Intel that shipped most of their R&D jobs overseas because "they couldn't get enough qualified Americans" - that Intel?

Uh huh. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Re:did i read that right

[trickyD1ck]

As much as you (and I) want to get paid more by excluding competition, other people want to buy products of your labor for less by respectively encouraging competition. In a world of competition and (relatively) free trade, to demand oneself a unique position that is protected from competition is dishonest, i think. Lest of course you also don't buy any of the cheap products that became available due to international cooperation and competition. This probably includes virtually all consumer products.

Re:did i read that right

[shadowofwind]

Of my EE classmates at an American state university, I only know of two who got into Intel. One got in as an IT tech and eventually worked his way into an engineering position. Another got a job from his dad. I had nearly perfect grades, and later I had additional education, a successful work record, and good references, but despite dozens of attempts I've never even gotten an interview. I had 7 years of engineering experience before I reached $65K. A lot of that is just me of course, but the system and some of the claims made about it still pisses me off a little.

Re:did i read that right

[Anonymous Coward]

No one is arguing that Intel, Microsoft, et. al. cannot start up divisions in foreign countries using the local labor pools and import the goods. The argument is that they are importing foreign nationals for the sake of undercutting local salaries under the false premise that skilled labor cannot be found in sufficient quantities locally.

Re:did i read that right

[Bill_the_Engineer]

If indeed, Microsoft and Intel are following the rules, they must pay AT LEAST the average wage in the local area, so they're not going to save all that much.

You left out the part where Microsoft and Intel are keeping the local average wage low by using H-1Bs.

Also, what determines the local average wage and how often are the companies audited for compliance? I think you'll be disappointed by the answer.

However, one could argue that the companies can get top rung foreigners for average US worker prices, thus are really underpaying the foreigners.

Why ignore the top rung US workers or were you implying that US workers can't be top rung?

Re:did i read that right

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, the "chop shops" bring in people from India at 35k/yr. The fee should be raised to 10k/yr and all proceeds should go towards expanding IT training programs at Colleges and Universities.

Re:did i read that right

[hibiki_r]

How could one know that the standard would actually raise, instead of the work being offshored?

When a company actually plays by the rules, they aren't bringing a random programmer to the US: They bring one that, in his home country, would probably be at least leading a team and making them a whole lot more competitive, while the lack of said programmer here makes his firm less competitive.

Make the salary requirements for H1-Bs more stringent, and facilitate the Green Card process, and you'll have a far healthier system than we currently have, where not only are H1-B hitting the cap every year, but there are tems, if not hundreds of thousands of H1-Bs that have applied for Green cards and wait in line over a decade, with a more limited ability to switch jobs looking for a better wage.

Re:did i read that right

[Bill_the_Engineer]

H1B visas get a bad reputation because Microsoft and Intel lobby congress to increase the yearly quotas on the premise that there aren't enough skill US workers to fill the positions. As part of their lobbying (aka bullying) they threaten to relocate outside the US unless they get what they want like an increase in the quota and exemption from the H1B fee hikes.

Giving companies a free pass on the H1B application is violating everyone else's right to equal protection (ie 14th amendment). I know when I was in the forest products industry, my clients had to pay the same plant quarantine application fee as everyone else regardless of the size of the business.

H1B visas are necessary. They allow foreign scientists and other skilled labor to work along side US workers in most University settings. Like anything else, they can be subject to abuse.

Re:did i read that right

[hibiki_r]

And if they left, they would compete against qualified Americans from another country with a cheaper standard of living. Claiming that wages would go up if they left is forgetting the other side of the coin altogether.

I'd also argue that, outside of a few companies that have HR departments that are more than ready to exploit the weaknesses of the program, hiring an H1-B is such a hassle that you'll still pick a comparable American instead if the salary is remotely similar.

Re:did i read that right

[bsdaemonaut]

There are very few degrees beyond computer science and engineering, unless your simply lucky, which can expect such high wages. The honeymoon is over, we have more competent people in this sector every year, it's natural for us to want wages to go up, but as our skills become more common place we have less to fall back on. It's funny really, it sounds like in your instance you went on to get another degree, but there is no shortage of people on here actually complaining about struggling to find 65k with a bachelor degree and no experience -- a number which, at least where I'm from, people graduating with degrees in veterinary medicine and law are also aiming for. Perhaps its time we, as a group, get over ourselves.

Re:did i read that right

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah the old cheap myth. So, as a recipient of an H1B this year from MS (hence posting anon *grin*) my situation is as follows.

• My starting salary is at the high end of one of the bands. As band/level has a range of around +/- $5,000 cheaper doesn't really enter into it because ...
• The costs for the H1B were around $4k, so even if I were placed at the bottom of the level, despite my experience placing me at the top) they'd be saving around $1k, except ...
• They paid for the contents of my house in Europe to be moved, and temporary housing and a hire car.

There's nothing cheap about hiring an H1B, at least not the way MS do it. Now the likes of InfoSys, sure, they bring over lots of people, with little benefits and set them up 4-10 to a house. That's pretty scummy, especially as they're viewed as cheap labor. MS have already started the green card process on my behalf - they're treating me like a permanent member of staff and will do what it takes to keep me.

Decry MS's business practices all you like, or the software quality, but one thing they don't do, or at least didn't where I was concerned, was use an H1B as a way of getting cheap talent.

Re:did i read that right

[BVis]

Perhaps its time we, as a group, get over ourselves.

Try supporting a family on 65k/yr in one of the highest cost-of-living areas in the country. 65k is practically poverty level for a family of three here, let alone four or five.

And before you tell me to move to somewhere where the COL is lower, you have to remember that the salaries are correspondingly lower, the standard of living is lower, and the COL is lower because nobody wants to live there. Plus, my job is here, my family is here, and I like it here.

Re:did i read that right

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, although I expect they'll squeeze the FOBs for the higher fee as well.

Re:did i read that right

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, they are paying lower wages, yet they still offer really high incomes? I wonder what would be the salaries of the people working there if they were all Americans!

Re:did i read that right

[Bobzibub]

So the .1% of the US work force that are on h1-b are the movers and shakers of the whole market eh? I find that difficult to believe.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Management/H1B-Visas-Less-Than-01-Percent-of-US-Workforce-Report-559488/

Re:did i read that right

[nashv]

I agree. My only confusion is that a Infosys with an equity of 6 billion plus USD and a revenue of 1.5 billion per annum isn't exactly a "small company working on mostly insignificant stuff".

Re:did i read that right

[OnePumpChump]

They sound alright...I mean they probably wrote the rules.

Re:did i read that right

[tompaulco]

Even if they report correctly, there are enough games out there to skew the statistics. How many out there have been made into a manager with no one reporting to them and they still do their same old duties, all because the HR department has set an artificial limit on the salary for Title X. So now you are a title Manager of X, but doing job X all because they are trying to keep the salary of Title X artificially low, while in reality, people who DO X are making more than that.
As an example, I am a Director. No one reports to me. I write programs and support production. I make more than a person with the title of programmer or production support. Now, what is the average salary? The average of people whose title is X or the average of people who perform the task of X? Which is reported to the government?

Re:did i read that right

[OnePumpChump]

H1-Bs are a unique position protected from competition. If you aren't allowed to freely leave your employer without serious consequences (other than the unavoidable possibility of not finding another job quickly), no one else but the employer who sponsor is allowed to compete for your labor.

I'm sorry, but while that argument might work generally, this is a special case where it does not.

Re:did i read that right

[Anonymous Coward]

[QUOTE]You left out the part where Microsoft and Intel are keeping the local average wage low by using H-1Bs.[/QUOTE]

Given the extremely small proportion of local workers on H-1Bs and the relatively high starting salaries in those regions, you'd need to back that up.

[QUOTE]Why ignore the top rung US workers or were you implying that US workers can't be top rung?[/QUOTE]

He was arguing that top rung foreign workers get paid middle-rung US salaries and are thus competing against middle-rung US workers.

Which, honestly, sounds pretty close to how the system is *supposed* to work (hire qualified Americans first, then qualified foreigners; forget the unqualified Americans), but there's an implication that this is wrong.

Re:did i read that right

[Your.Master]

If you read the article, neither Microsoft nor Intel are getting a free pass on anything. There's no free pass. The proportion of H1Bs at these companies isn't even close to the threshold beyond which it costs extra.

Re:did i read that right

[Bill_the_Engineer]

If you read the article, neither Microsoft nor Intel are getting a free pass on anything. There's no free pass. The proportion of H1Bs at these companies isn't even close to the threshold beyond which it costs extra.

From the bill:

SEC. 402. (a) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act or any other provision of law, during the period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act and ending on September 30, 2014, the filing fee and fraud prevention and detection fee required to be submitted with MDM10642 S.L.C. 7 an application for admission as a nonimmigrant under section 101(a)(15)(L) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)(L)) shall be increased by $2,250 for applicants that employ 50 or more employees in the United States if more than 50 percent of the applicant’s employees are nonimmigrants admitted pursuant to section 101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) of such Act or section 101(a)(15)(L) of such Act.

Fifty percent of the total number of employees are a poor measure of compliance. I can see 50% of the employees for a given job title applied for on the H1B, but not 50% total employees. Especially for companies whose number of sales and customer service employees would offset the number of high tech employees under H1Bs.

For example, I can have all my customer service, clerical, sales, and janitorial jobs done by US citizens and have all my higher paying skilled labor done by H1B applicants and not be penalized by this rule as long as I have less than 50% of my total number employees with a H1B status.

The bill does get around the "Equal Protection" clause by applying the 50% rule uniformly across all applicants.

Re:did i read that right

[bsdaemonaut]

It is getting harder, part of the reason why more-and-more families are two income families. The large variation in COL in some areas makes it hard to relate, I'm just stating that a neophyte is setting themselves up for disappointment if they are demanding Doctorate-level pay on a Bachelor degree or less. 65k is quite literally what many desirable Doctorate-level jobs around here start at -- veterinarians, lawyers, pharmicists, you name it. Your area may be completely different, in which case you should probably raise the numbers to a level that makes sense.

Re:did i read that right

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Given the extremely small proportion of local workers on H-1Bs and the relatively high starting salaries in those regions, you'd need to back that up.

If you are saying that the starting salaries in those regions are higher than the rest of the US, then you are correct. This due to the salary adjustments needed to overcome the high cost of living in those regions. This affects the absolute minimum of what it would take to pay a salary worker, meaning I can take the national average salary for a given profession and then apply the required adjustment to offset the cost of living and voila you have the "relatively high starting wages". Since average wage is floating (non-fixed) it can lower each year and thanks to the cost of living adjustments these regions will still have a relatively high starting wage. So you made an accurate statement while masking the effects of the H1B program. I'll also point out that you qualified your wages as "starting" which equates to the lowest salary range of a given profession, and presumably below the average career wage.

I'd like to know where you came to the conclusion that there is an "extremely small proportion of local workers on H-1Bs". Did you mean proportion relative to the general population of workers, or relative to local workers of a given profession?

I think anyone who asks for citations, should at least back up their assertions to the contrary. Otherwise, its a lazy attempt to make your assertions seem more valid while at the same time asserting that the original poster is making stuff up.

There is a staggering amount of material searchable on Google that supports the theory that H1B is being used to keep wages low and being used unnecessarily. This is due to the fact that H1B is such a hot topic in the IT sector.

Anyway I googled for a hard number to give you and right off the bat I see studies citing that 9 out of 10 new jobs in the tech field during 2003 were being filled by H-1Bs.

I also found an essay written by John Miano whose conclusions included:

• Since 1999, the United States has approved enough H-1B visas for computer workers to fill 87 percent of net computer job growth over that period.
• Since 1999, the United States has had a net loss of 76,000 engineering jobs. Over the same time period, the United States has approved an average of 16,000 new H-1B visas each year for engineers.
• If current employment trends continue and the H-1B quota remains unchanged, the United States will approve enough H-1B visas for computer workers to fill about 79 percent of the computer jobs it creates each year.

His data sources are:

• H-1B figures come from the Annual Reports on H-1B visas issued by the Immigration and Naturalization Service and its successor, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (data available 2000-2005). This supplied the number of new H-1B visas and the number of new H-1B visas for computer and engineering workers.
• Labor Condition Applications (LCAs) come from the Foreign Labor Certification Data Center, http://www.flcdatacenter.com/ (data available 2001-2007). The study used approved LCAs for computer workers.
• Overall employment figures come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Census of Employment and Wages, http://www.bls.gov/cew (annual data available 1994-2006).
• Employment figures for computer and engineering professionals come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment Statistics, http://www.bls.gov/oes (data available 1999-2006).
• Turnover rates are from Bureau of Labor Statistics Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, http://www.bls.gov/jlt/.

He was arguing that top rung foreign workers get paid middle-rung US salaries and are thus competing against middle-rung US workers.

Which, honestl

Re:did i read that right

[toriver]

Oh they do play by the rules.

You just occasionally need to drag them into a courtroom to tell them what they are.

Re:did i read that right

[twins.fan]

I don't think that Schumer has much interest in protecting Microsoft or Intel. Schumer is more interested in protecting his patrons on Wall Street like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, CitiBank, and Bloomberg. Wall Street's much more entrenched in the H1B visa scam that Silicon Valley or Microsoft.

Re:did i read that right

[anagama]

Open your eyes. Who do you think makes the rules? It is very easy for MS and Intel to play by the rules they write.

Re:did i read that right

[Anonymous Coward]

because with a whole world out there capable of living on dollars/day (something completely impossible in America)

People with H1Bs working in America have to cope with American prices too. What you're complaining about is outsourcing, which ironically doesn't require an H1B and becomes ever more attractive as the H1B option becomes less attractive.

Re:did i read that right

[shutdown -p now]

So fix that part of H1-B, then. Make it so that people brought on that visa have some leverage against companies who hire them, and can actually threaten to quit and find a different job, same as local workers do. Then it'll be a fair playing field for all workers, whether local or "imported", where only the skill matters.

Re:did i read that right

[Anonymous Coward]

Another H1-B MSFTie here - with an initial offer of ~$100k/yr not counting stock bonuses and benefits, and a relocation package that cost them $20k or so all in all. They aren't getting us cheap.

Re:did i read that right

[BBF_BBF]

However, one could argue that the companies can get top rung foreigners for average US worker prices, thus are really underpaying the foreigners.

Why ignore the top rung US workers or were you implying that US workers can't be top rung?

If your willingness to turn any comment into an insult to the US and your lack of critical thought process is typical of Americans, then the US really needs to open up the H-1B floodgates to add some diversity. ;-)

Let me explain: Top rung AMERICANS won't work for very long for AVERAGE wages because they can go elsewhere in the US whenever a top-rung offer comes by at will, so it would be silly for a company to hire a top rung American at average wages under normal conditions. However, if a top-rung foreigner who graduated from a US school doesn't find work in the US, they GET KICKED OUT OF THE COUNTRY, so may take a lower wage than he/she should get. In addition, changing companies while on an H-1B visa is not easy, especially if the previous company is not cooperative. If new visa paperwork is required (that's if there are any Visa's left for the year) the prospective employee has to be outside the country and not be working for the company. This pretty much locks most H-1B workers with the American company that hired them for the duration of their visa, which for the worker hopefully leads to Permanent Resident status (that's the carrot a lot of companies dangle in front of H-1B visa workers, and some don't ever intend to go through with the "next step".)

Hey, it may hurt the bottom-rung Americans from getting jobs, but I'd rather work with top-rung foreigners than bottom-rung Americans, cause they both pay the same taxes, but one strengthens the company, and the other is a liability.

Re:did i read that right

[h4rr4r]

Ending H1-B and allowing these folks to become citizens would be better for everyone.

Re:did i read that right

[OnePumpChump]

That would be nice, wouldn't it. Better for the H1-B holders, better for their non-immigrant coworkers. Not necessarily better for people trying to get H1-Bs, though, because all of a sudden they're less attractive to employers unless they actually have a legitimate need.

Re:did i read that right

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for Intel. I am white. I went to an American university. I didn't have perfect grades. I worked hard. Got the job.

I work with a wide variety of people, but one thing is common: we're hard workers. That's what matters.

If you're well-trained, maybe your resume isn't exemplifying it. Step #1 is to get noticed. A less qualified person may get a job because he or she was able to stand out from the crowd. Want to work on optimizing Linux kernel to work best on Intel processors. Show your passion for it. Write stuff for the Linux kernel to prove it. Understand x86 in and out. There are resources out there. You could learn on the job, but when others are doing that in their free time, you have no other choice to do the same to be able to compete for that job. Step #2 is networking, find the right person to help you get noticed. Step #3 .... Step #4 PROFIT!

DISCLAIMER: Opinion represented here does not reflect Intel Corporation's.

Re:did i read that right

[Hognoxious]

It used to be that when labor was short wages would rise, and that when labor was abundant, wages would fall.

But what's the elasticity - i.e. how much of an increase in supply causes how much of a decrease in wages?

And how much of an increase in supply does the H1B scheme produce? A few hundred thousand in a country of 300 million is going to be lost in the rounding.

Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft?

[RAMMS EIN]

FTFS: ``The Senate measure increases H-1B visa fees by $2,000 per application on firms that have 50% or more of their employees on this visa.''

And Microsoft and Intel evidently are below this 50% limit. As far as I can tell, this isn't Microsoft and Intel "getting a pass", as the title states. No company is being singled out here. It doesn't matter who you are, what matters if you have 50% or more of your employees on H-1B visa.

Re:Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft?

[mysidia]

Yeah... 50% total is also easy for big companies to avoid, by making sure to have plenty of employees performing non-skilled labor that count. They could actually aim to hire minimum-wage non-technical employees in advance in order to reduce the proportion of H1B workers. It could still be more cost-effective than hiring skilled labor from local applicants.

They ought to require firms applying for H1Bs to report number of workers in various categories or types of work, and if you have 50% or more of your employees performing any particular type of work on H-1HB visa , then the higher app fees apply for workers in that category...

So e.g. if >50% or your secretaries or H1B, or >50% of your support personnel are H1B, if >50% of your accountants/managers are H1B, or if >50% of your engineers are H1B....

Re:Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

if you have 50% or more of your employees performing any particular type of work on H-1HB visa , then the higher app fees apply for workers in that category

50% by any particular type of work is pretty bad...

This would really be pretty hard, especially if you only have 1 or 2 people doing certain types of work. It would be better if they put a and/or statement in there. Such as > 50% of your employees are on a visa, or > 25% of your employee's total income is in a visa.

P.S. Going anonymous here because the environment I work in has probably 40% employees on a visa, but maybe 75% of the income.

Re:Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

FTFS: ``The Senate measure increases H-1B visa fees by $2,000 per application on firms that have 50% or more of their employees on this visa.''

And Microsoft and Intel evidently are below this 50% limit. As far as I can tell, this isn't Microsoft and Intel "getting a pass", as the title states. No company is being singled out here. It doesn't matter who you are, what matters if you have 50% or more of your employees on H-1B visa.

Every Infosys site I have been on has been 99% India citizen staffed. When they go back to their country for personal reason like marriage or death another one flies over and takes their place. Maybe 2% of US citizens is all I have ever seen in any department run by them.
Talk about Cliques

Re:Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a tax-savings bonus hunter. My job is to apply the formula.

Take the number of foreign workers in the field, (A), and multiply it by minimum wage, (B), then multiply the result by a trivial arbitrary number of payable hours, (C). A times B times C equals X...

If X is less than the cost of H1-B visas for A, we hire shills.

Are there a lot of these kinds of loopholes?

Oh, you wouldn't believe.

... Which... software company do you work for?

A major one.

Re:Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a high-tech company who uses H-1B visas quite a bit. However, we hire anyone - from anywhere - that is good enough. I'm not sure whether there is more american citizens or more of us foreigners in the company - but to be quite honest, I don't see why it should matter.

You'll get hired if you pass a certain bar - no matter where you're from. USian? Cool. Canadian? Yeps, go ahead. South American? Excellent. European? Sure. African? Yay! Asian? Go right ahead.

Now, the bar is pretty damn high. I don't see why it should be lowered to hire more of a certain nationality.

Re:Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft?

[copponex]

Microsoft has 90,000 employees. Intel has 83,000 at least. Considering that there are around 100,000 H1B recipients, you could place nearly all of them at just these two companies and they wouldn't have to pay a dime for any applications, since it would be less than 50% of their employment.

Trickle down tax policies favor monopolies, and anything that taxes a company based on allowed percentage is going to favor huge corporations. But that's entirely the point. Start a ten man company with six H1B recipients, and you're looking at 12,000 in taxes. Microsoft can hire 44,000 H1B recipients and not pay a dime for the application fee.

Every company that hires people from outside the United States should be given zero incentives to do so. Otherwise they have no incentive to train an American for the same job, or to support public education measures so America can produce better workers.

Re:Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft?

[nacturation]

The submission is from theodp... what did you expect, an anti-Amazon patent rant?

Re:Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft?

[Third Position]

Every Infosys site I have been on has been 99% India citizen staffed. When they go back to their country for personal reason like marriage or death another one flies over and takes their place. Maybe 2% of US citizens is all I have ever seen in any department run by them.
Talk about Cliques

Nothing new about that.

Re:Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft?

[c0lo]

As far as I can tell, this isn't Microsoft and Intel "getting a pass", as the title states. No company is being singled out here

• Formally, the title seems correct to me: since neither Intel nor MS are affected, they do get a pass, at least for now, isn't it?
• In real-world terms, even if other companies would "get a pass too", the most affected will be: either the pure sweat-shops or small American companies for which one extra employees in H1B visa may mean the difference between paying or not paying an extra tax.

Does it make sense? (note: I'm not discussing or implying anything about the desirability of any situation. Just exploring, cold-minded, the summary/title, and also observing with respect the good /. tradition of not reading TFA).

Re:Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

copponex wrote:

Start a ten man company with six H1B recipients, and you're looking at 12,000 in taxes. Microsoft can hire 44,000 H1B recipients and not pay a dime for the application fee.

Do try reading the article next time. I'll quote the relevant section.

The $2,000 increase may be added to the $320 H-1B filing fee, said Sarah Hawk, who heads the immigration practice at Fisher & Phillips LLP in Atlanta.

H-1B visa fees can add up. There are a number of other add-on fees as well: a $500 antifraud fee that is required for any new H-1B and L-1 visa user, and a fee for training U.S. workers that scales from $750 to $1,500, depending on the size of the company applying for a visa.

Many companies also pay $1,000 extra for what's called premium processing to accelerate handling of the visa. And legal fees can run as high as $2,000.

Re:Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, then you shouldn't care about the increase in price because you just want to hire that person.

Personally, not living in the US I don't understand the conditions these workers stand. But when the foreigners are actually getting paid better than the nationals it seems obvious they must provide a perceived value.

If each individual Indian is really better than the alternatives, then the Americans should try to prepare themselves better.

Now when the perceived value is because nationals are being classified as a lazy dog because of their ethnicity, there is probably a problem.

If you have two equal candidates and hire the Indian over the American because Indians are industrious and Americans play games in their mom's basement, then you have a problem. Not saying it should be solved by law. It's not any worse than career profiling.

I know many "senior" programmers with amazing pieces of paper and former workplaces to show who are out-programmed by the High school drop-out which at 30yo took a C# course in a local community school and applied for the job. A bad programmer isn't fixed by experience.

Of course generalization works generally, just don't rely blindly on it.

Re:Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft?

[toastar]

FTFS: ``The Senate measure increases H-1B visa fees by $2,000 per application on firms that have 50% or more of their employees on this visa.''

And Microsoft and Intel evidently are below this 50% limit. As far as I can tell, this isn't Microsoft and Intel "getting a pass", as the title states. No company is being singled out here. It doesn't matter who you are, what matters if you have 50% or more of your employees on H-1B visa.

You must not be from america..... Or you failed you high school civics class. Of course it's worded this way, if it said the specific companies that didn't get taxed it would be a bill of attainder. The question is who it targets, 50% sounds like a round number, but you would be surprised at how many people probably lobbied to get it set that high. A good question is which companies would have been hit if it was set to 25% or 75%.

Re:Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft?

[recoiledsnake]

The submission is from theodp... what did you expect, an anti-Amazon patent rant?

Google gets a 'free pass' too, not to mention almost every American company. Looks like the headline and summary were spinned to troll Slashdot.

Re:Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft?

[recoiledsnake]

Picking out MS and Intel in the headline was clearly meant to troll Slashdot. Google and almost every other big tech company gets a 'free pass' too.

Re:Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does that 50% only cover their locations within the US? MS and Intel both have substantial international divisions, which I assume do not employ many Americans.

Re:Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft?

[hemanthm]

Why does everyone assume all H1B visas are for cheap labour displacing qualified American workers? People like me who study at American universities on student visas, compete against American students and are hired at the same wages as American workers also transition to H1B visas when starting work. Intel, MS, Google etc have a LOT of these. Indeed, the stereotypical "cheap H1B workers" at these places are often contractors brought in by other companies.

Re:Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft?

[Idbar]

Nice math! There is a 60.000 H1-B visa cap each year + 20.000 for high-degrees. The H1-B lasts up to 6 years. In the past years (previous to the recession), all the applications were fulfilled on the first day (April 1st). Which means that on average there would be around 80.000 H1-B recipients per year or about 480.000 active H1-B visas floating around.

As a foreign I could just tell you, it's not about Intel or MS. It's about another bunch of companies that charge people for getting them an H1-B. Which is an immigration loophole. Intel and MS still offer really competitive salaries to H1-B/US Citizens. However, It's my believe that H1-B's have the pressure of keeping their status and would work considerably harder to remain in the country. And after all, most of them have graduated from universities in the US.

Re:Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft?

[moosesocks]

Microsoft has 90,000 employees. Intel has 83,000 at least. Considering that there are around 100,000 H1B recipients, you could place nearly all of them at just these two companies and they wouldn't have to pay a dime for any applications, since it would be less than 50% of their employment.

In other words, this is little more than a tempest in a teapot. Yeah, Microsoft and Intel are big companies who employ lots of people. However, as a fraction of the overall economy, they only make up a small portion. Immediately revoking all of the H1-B visas and deporting those workers would barely have a perceptible impact on unemployment figures.

According to the latest report, in July there were 6.6 million people who had been unemployed for more than 27 weeks, 8.5 million underemployed part-time workers, 1.2 million discouraged workers, and countless more underemployed full-timers. Cutting 100,000 from that figure would be little more than a drop in the barrel.

Re:Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft?

[Maxo-Texas]

If there are 100 tickets to a concert and 99 of us want them, they will go cheap.
If there are 100 tickets to a concert and 103 of us want them, they may get very expensive.

Listen, wages will average out between our countries- nothing can stop that. They will come up and we will stagnate or go down.

Anyway, all of this ignores an upcoming surge of inexpensive robotic labor which will decimate manual labor jobs.

Continuing from above, if the demand for math degrees is 1% of the population and .5% have one, then pay will be good- if 1.5% have one, pay will decline.

It's really a black swan event. In 50 years, there will not be work for a significant percentage of the population. It's a productivity revolution for all manual jobs that will exceed that of the farm productivity changes of the last century. It is going to take time to figure out new ways to deal with this.

Bidding up college degrees to a lifetime's income to be one of a glut of grads with degrees who can't even find work isn't the answer.

Re:Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft?

[Bigjeff5]

That's very funny, but apparently Fight Club is too old of a movie to reference any more.

Sorry bro.

Re:Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft?

[Bigjeff5]

My God! Even McDonalds gets a free pass! Those bastards, with their McCafe's and McSmoothies and McShakes!

Seriously, this story is retarded.

Re:Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft?

[Bigjeff5]

It even tries to make Infosys out to be not so bad (because the real bad guys are somehow Intel and Microsoft, for not highering as high a percentage of H1-B's?) even though Infosys has something like 70-80% H1-B employees.

The target is obviously those companies who are using the H1-B program to hire cheep labor at rates Americans can't compete with (because of school loans and the like), of which Intel and Microsoft are not.

Trust me, hiring foreign workers is no panacea, and most companies realize it. While you can get skilled labor for less, it's still skilled labor and it's still expensive. You're still going to have to hire the guy for $50k, instead of $65k-70k. Hiring a janitor at $15k (to keep your ratio below 50%) barely makes up the difference, and the foreign worker will be more expensive in lost productivity for the first year or so because of the culture gap (if not a language barrier, as well).

They aren't going to save a ton of money, because if those foreign workers are as skilled as their American counterparts they are actually worth nearly as much, and economics will continue to force their pay up until it matches American workers' pay. The only time hiring a lot of H1-B workers makes sense is when you're running a scheme like Infosys, or when there actually is a shortage of qualified workers that you can find and hire.

Re:Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft?

[servognome]

They could actually aim to hire minimum-wage non-technical employees in advance in order to reduce the proportion of H1B workers. It could still be more cost-effective than hiring skilled labor from local applicants.

Considering taxes, management, training, healthcare, and all the other costs associated with hiring and retaining an employee, it doesn't make much sense to do so to stay under the 50% cap even at minimum wage.

Re:Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft?

[mysidia]

taxes, management, training, healthcare,

Who said anything about them getting training taxes or healthcare?

They'll be 1 hour a month part-time employees.. resulting in amount of pay that falls below the dollar amounts thresholds so the employer won't be required to perform any witholding.

Re:Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft?

[shutdown -p now]

Microsoft has 90,000 employees

90,000 (89,500 actually) is the total head count all over the world, though, not just in US. Of those, only 53,600 are in US. Source.

I suspect similar arithmetic needs to be applied to Intel figure you quoted.

Re:Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft?

[c0lo]

It even tries to make Infosys out to be not so bad (because the real bad guys are somehow Intel and Microsoft, for not highering as high a percentage of H1-B's?) even though Infosys has something like 70-80% H1-B employees.

What is the it in the it even tries? If, by it you designate:

1. my post, I'll reiterate my note/disclaimer: I'm not discussing or implying anything about the desirability of any situation
2. the title/summary: yes, I admit they are spin-work. Though, as I noted, the spin is still within the normal bounds of what would one expect from a spin: doesn't tell any lie (even if it doesn't say the whole truth).
   But if you choose to be frustrated by the spin and not focus on the reality, who's at fault you are wasting time ( :) says I, posting on /. :) )

The target is obviously those companies who are using the H1-B program to hire cheep labor at rates Americans can't compete with (because of school loans and the like), of which Intel and Microsoft are not.

With all respect and not any intention to flame or enter in a controversy with you, if you really believe the above, then your problem is not with kdawson's spin, but with the price you (or any yet-to-graduate) pay for your education and, possibly, the recruiting process in the companies. My suggestions in regards with the two:

1. don't strive for the piece of paper called graduation diploma, learn by yourself the useful bits and avoid/reduce the costs (you can take some courses at a uni, but not necessarily all)
2. to compensate for the lack of diploma, start gaining experience (thus references) in alternative ways to a graduation diploma (for example, try some open source projects). Not only this brings the necessary experience, but if you choose carefully, you can finish with some good friends in your social network.

why?

[Anonymous Coward]

And why does it make sense to tax legal immigration to fight illegal immigration? As if legal immigration causes illegal...

Re:why?

[cappp]

It's part of the general insanity of US immigration. I have friends that attended elite American universities and earned graduate degrees in the hard sciences - mechanics, biological sciences, physics and so on - and struggled to be allowed to stay in the US. These are people who have invested huge amounts in the American economy, provided skilled intellectual labour during their time in the country, and threw themselves into politcal and charitable volunteerism. Most spent 8 years in the country and were invited to leave as soon as possible after graduation - or perhaps after a year of work experience training. That's madness.

Interesting portion of the article

H-1B visa fees can add up. There are a number of other add-on fees as well: a $500 antifraud fee that is required for any new H-1B and L-1 visa user, and a fee for training U.S. workers that scales from $750 to $1,500, depending on the size of the company applying for a visa. Many companies also pay $1,000 extra for what's called premium processing to accelerate handling of the visa. And legal fees can run as high as $2,000.

and

The H-1B fee increase is going to cover only a fraction of the $600 million the Senate wants for border security. The largest H-1B user in 2008 was Infosys, which accounted for 4,500 visas that year. A $2,000 fee increase would have added about $9 million to its visa bill.

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

The tax is because you're not supposed to be using immigrants as a source of cheap labor. Immigrants are willing to work for cheaper than Americans, so employing too many immigrants lowers the standard of living. I think the idea is that a small tax might tip the scales towards local labor and prevent companies from using immigrants to make up the body of their company.

dom

Re:why?

[jcr]

That reminds me of one man I know who attended the University of Maryland, and got a computer science degree. He was from Hungary, and at the time, anyone shipping so much as a Z80 to Hungary was looking at hard time. This guy could have built a VAX from TTL parts from memory, and our brilliant government wanted to send him and his skills back behind the iron curtain.

-jcr

Re:why?

[megaditto]

What else is Chucky Schumer to do?

In an election year, the voters have three priorities: jobs, borders, and deficits.

Like any good Democrat he knows that you can't tax the illegal immigrants: they are already poor, and you will piss off many liberals.
You also you can't tax regular citizens because they might vote you out!

But by taxing work visas it looks like you are creating more jobs for Americans, while funding the borders, while reducing the deficit! Killing three birds with one stone!

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

...and add all costs involved for the applicant when going to the US Embassy non-immigrant visa appointment interview. For many people this often involved travelling far and one or two overnight stays. This can easily add up to another 1000 USD or more. Then the actually embassy charges roughly 150-200 USD for the appoint itself - it may vary but for me the "interview" has been taking 1-2 minutes of getting my finger prints (again!). Then add to the fact that you have to wait weeks/months to get an appointment (they are very busy), which may put you in limbo possibly without salary.

In addition, add all the time spent to prepare forms etc. That will takes many hours, and even days. IThen there are all people at the company hiring you that have to prepare more forms. So, I would imagine you can count days of work spent on just the forms. Translating that into money and you'll have another 1000 USD or so in costs. This not including the work at the US officials.

Re:why?

[tempest69]

The problem I see with the H1-B is kinda backwards.. The companies are able to really abuse these workers. Now even If I don't care an ounce about these people - it's still bad news for me. When it comes time for death march coding it destroys the leverage of the local workers to make appropriate demands for compensation. When it comes time for raises it becomes harder to compete with the people who are here at lower pay grades.
The problem I see is the H1-B's are locked in to their jobs, and nearly indentured servants. My problem is that the Hungarian will work for 30k and they expect an American with that level of skill to work for a mere 45k. Though with some relaxing on the H1-B the Hungarian could go on to find 6 figure work. Working at a project appropriate to his skill level.
My take is that we should keep the high end labor.. it makes the US richer, it makes the immigrants richer, and it means we have more top end people working the hard problems.

Storm

Re:why?

[sqrt(2)]

Those are pretty much the priorities of most people for most years, although it seems to more favor Republicans. Illegal immigrants DO pay taxes, they pay sales and property taxes (which are unavoidable if you buy goods and rent property) and most have payroll taxes taken out of the checks by their employer to cover their own asses. Many also pay into SS with fake numbers, so they'll never see any of that money but are subsidizing people who will.

Jobs aren't being saved or created by making it harder for educated people to come to the US and stay here. Borders? I guess borders are an issue for me, in that I want them to be totally open, and give amnesty to all people currently here. Deficits can be fixed with higher taxes for the wealthy and corporations - as well as reducing the size and scope of our military. With the left over cash you increase social welfare and entitlement spending.

I guess that's why I'm not a Democrat or a Republican, but a socialist.

Re:why?

[nedlohs]

Because legal immigrants benefit more than citizens from a reduction in illegal immigration.

But of course that isn't the real reason, it's two birds with one stone - both legal and illegal immigration get punished a little since the person whose vote this is aimed at getting isn't anti-illegal immigration, they are anti-immigration (well maybe just anti-non-white-immigration in truth).

Re:why?

[hibiki_r]

Switching jobs is not so easy under H1-B, but not impossible anymore. Still, a barrier.

The real problem is in the Green Card backlog. If a company wants to make an H1-B permanent, they better have a Master's degree, because if they don't they will get approved, but face a backlog between 5 and 10 years. This is one reason many weak international students will go for a master whether they find it useful or not: It shortens the Green Card application process to under 6 months.

By the time an H1-B without a graduate degree gets a green card, chances are he's spent 4-5 years as an H-1B, and an extra 8 on the queue. I'd argue that a programmer with 5 years of experience is more valuable than one that just finished a quick master's degree after graduation.

Re:why?

[moosesocks]

You also you can't tax regular citizens because they might vote you out!

But by taxing work visas it looks like you are creating more jobs for Americans, while funding the borders, while reducing the deficit! Killing three birds with one stone!

You say "looks like." How is this not the case? IMHO, this reinforces the stated goals of the H1-B program, which is to attract exceptional talent to the US that can't be sourced domestically. If you're looking to hire a "rockstar,*" $2k is not a lot of money to drop. On the other hand, it might make a company think twice about hiring a foreign worker as a "grunt."

*Forgive me, I hate the term too, but it works here.

Re:why?

[IICV]

I'm actually quite unclear on what the difference between someone with an H1-B visa and someone who has signed an indentured servitude contract is. Even the terms are similar - indentured servants sign a contract for three to seven years, receive housing, clothing and food in return for their labor, and must remain with the contractor until the end of their terms. H1-B Visas are valid for only three years which can be extended up to six, the workers are generally paid just barely enough to cover food, clothing and housing, and although in theory someone with an H1-B visa can change jobs, in practice it is almost impossible given their fragile status.

I guess indentured servitude was such a good idea, we just couldn't let it go?

Re:why?

[megaditto]

A mere $2k is peanuts to these Indian "chop shops" that will pass the tax to their employees, who will be even more indentured.

The real problem here is that the visa ties your "rockstar" to the employer, which undercuts similarly (or better!) qualified Americans. H1b people should be able to change jobs or start their own businesses.

If Schumer was serious, he would push the startup visa bill (hire 10 Americans, get a green card) which would go a long way towards fixing visa abuse.

Re:why?

[laddiebuck]

FYI, I'm an H1B, legal fees for my very straightforward application ran to over $3k. Bay Area prices, mind.

Oh, and I was a legal immigrant and paid 3 and a half times the resident tuition at the university I attended, where low-income students got a guaranteed scholarship. I, of course, wasn't even eligible for scholarships. And yes, I would have had to leave the country if I hadn't found my H1B job.

Just backing up your points from personal experience, really. All the stories I hear about the benefits for illegal immigrants (none of which EVER apply to the legal ones) really make me bitter.

Legal challenges are a comin'

[PinkyGigglebrain]

I can already see smaller companies going to court to claim that they are being unfairly burdened by the higher cost.

Right or wrong this is going to cause some fur to fly.

Another KDawson Special

[bloodhawk]

Why are MS and Intel even mentioned here? they aren't getting a pass, this isn't even related to them as neither have more than 50% of employees on Visa?

Re:Another KDawson Special

[Hognoxious]

Why are MS and Intel even mentioned here?

Because it was written by theodp.

Is that a viable business model?

[gmhowell]

If 50%+ of your employees are H1-B's, I would suggest that your business model is not viable in the United States.

Re:Is that a viable business model?

[moderators_are_w*nke]

No, it just means your lobbying expenses are above average.

Re:Is that a viable business model?

[Hognoxious]

Care to explain? If a company is doing it there and not going out of business it would appear to me that it's very viable indeed.

Re:Is that a viable business model?

[gmhowell]

They are only doing it in the presence of government 'subsidies'. If your business doesn't work without subsidies, it is not viable.

Re:Is that a viable business model?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah open up in India and hire Yanks to there, it's probably cheaper to hire Yanks as they are desperate for jobs and that :)

Re:Is that a viable business model?

[Hognoxious]

You get subsidies for hiring H1-Bs?

Where do I sign up - I'll take a dozen!

Re:Is that a viable business model?

[Anonymous Coward]

50%+ of your employees are H1-B's, I would suggest that the Employment Inspectors should come around and ask why no Americans could be found and ask difficult questions.
If the percentage was >70% then there should likely be an investigation and heavy fines if the H1-B's were ordinary folk.

In Australia there are a few Indian firms abusing our equivalent of H1-B's. It turns out employees do not get paid lawful 'overtime' money for march-of-death/impossible deadline projects and expected to work crazy hours to deliver, the the company won, because no-one else bid so low. And the cherry on the cake - a vague possibility of citizenship if they shut up and say nothing.

Re:Is that a viable business model?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell that to every corn farmer in the U.S.

Re:Is that a viable business model?

[rollingcalf]

The H1B is a subsidy in the sense that it artificially suppresses the wages of the H1B workers, due to the government-imposed barriers for changing jobs and the requirement to have a qualifying job in order to maintain legal status.

If the H1B visa weren't tied to a specific employer so they could change jobs freely without the next employer having to file a mountain of immigration paperwork, and there were a sufficient grace period (say 90 days) for a fired/laid off H1B worker to find new employment without being deportable, they would have more leverage to demand higher wages and wouldn't be so afraid of being fired for making such demands.

Re:Is that a viable business model?

[gmhowell]

In a nutshell, this.

Re:Is that a viable business model?

[Hognoxious]

Plus the auto industry and the banks.

Hang on, those were "loans", weren't they? Completely different thing.

Re:Is that a viable business model?

[Hognoxious]

The H1B is a subsidy in the sense that it artificially suppresses the wages of the H1B workers

A benefit given by the government to groups or individuals usually in the form of a cash payment or tax reduction.

I don't see any of that in the H1B system.

WSJ: Senator Probably Meant to Say 'Body Shop'

[theodp]

WSJ: It is likely the senator was going for 'body shop,' also a derogatory term, but one that describes firms who shuffle low-cost tech engineers around the globe.

Tax H1-B to fight illegal immigration?

[cgenman]

Shouldn't we be taxing H1-B applications to increase funding for local schools? After all, a big reason why workers come over on the program is because we genuinely lack enough skilled labor to meet our needs at reasonable price levels. Having come through the California school system myself, I'm a bit shocked that computers can add.

Taxing companies that bring over immigrant workers to pay for border patrol paranoia seems foolish. Tax them to help increase local talent levels. Or require the people to become permanent citizens, thereby permanently increasing the local talent levels.

Re:Tax H1-B to fight illegal immigration?

[Mitsoid]

Politics and logic / common sense?

What country do you live in? It's not the US!

It would be nice though :-)

Re:Tax H1-B to fight illegal immigration?

[Anonymous Coward]

Decreasing illegal immigration will improve schools. It's kind of hard to teach kids fractions when 90% of them can't speak English.

Re:Tax H1-B to fight illegal immigration?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't we be taxing H1-B applications to increase funding for local schools? After all, a big reason why workers come over on the program is because we genuinely lack enough skilled labor to meet our needs at reasonable price levels.

Yeap, this is why American graduates are unemployable

Re:Tax H1-B to fight illegal immigration?

[ultranova]

After all, a big reason why workers come over on the program is because we genuinely lack enough skilled labor to meet our needs at reasonable price levels.

No, you don't. You, like all non-third-world economies, lack skilled labour willing to work at subsistence wage. This is the corporate definition of "reasonable price level", and is what offshoring and immigration labour is meant to fix. After all, the top 1% holds only a third of all wealth, so there's plenty of room for improvement.

Re:Tax H1-B to fight illegal immigration?

[shutdown -p now]

Or require the people to become permanent citizens, thereby permanently increasing the local talent levels.

Vast majority of H1-Bs that I've met would be very happy if the amount of red tape and waiting time on the queues it takes to become permanent residents (and from there, citizens) would be significantly reduced. Most of them file for green card as soon as they are eligible.

  Keep in mind that most skilled third-worlders don't come to US to earn a quick buck, but rather to escape their own corrupt society and settle down in a better place.

You are right

[Sycraft-fu]

This is just spin to try and make MS look like the bad guys getting special treatment. The reality of the situation is that if companies hire a majority of American (meaning either citizen or resident alien) employees then they don't pay the extra fee. MS and Intel were noted in the article as tow companies that "play by the rules" and hire a majority of American workers, but they were not given special dispensation.

My guess is the logic is twofold:

1) It is to help protect American jobs and encourage companies to hire local. After all if it costs more to hire H-1B employees, then it is not as attractive a proposition.

2) To derive the funding for the measure from a relevant source. The measure deals with immigration, so companies that bring in the most immigrants get to shoulder the burden. While it isn't a direct thing (since the bill is about southern border security) it is still related.

Re:You are right

[Jedi Alec]

This is just spin to try and make MS look like the bad guys getting special treatment.

Posted by kdawson on Monday August 09, @02:02AM

In other news: water is wet and the sky is blue. Film at 11.

Do these H1-B stay in the US

[calagan800xl]

As I've been the beneficiary of an H-1B with Microsoft, I know very well that MS also does a good job at sending H1-B permit holders back home after 1-2 years, before they get a green card. They actually paid for my 1-way ticket back to Europe. I'd be interested to see what is the proportion of H-1B visa holders who end up staying permanently in the US and which company hired them.

Re:Do these H1-B stay in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

They actually paid for my 1-way ticket back to Europe

They legally have to pay for that.

Re:Do these H1-B stay in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

As any American citizen working at MS today I can contest, most of MS is made up of foreigners who are here on a green card or H1-B/L1 visa. On my team alone I am the only natural citizen and I hold the cheapest contract for the team. As an natural born citizen of the US and a worker at MS I'm appalled by the fact that most of MS is made up of foreigners here on green card or H1-B status while the rest of my country men go broke living on unemployment despite the fact that they qualify for many positions there.

Re:Do these H1-B stay in the US

[ook_boo]

An employment-based green card is very expensive, so it makes sense that MS would only give it to a few of their H1Bs. My company did sponsor my green card, and it cost them about $50,000. And in one of life's twists, I had to leave the US for family reasons soon after I received the green card, so all that effort was for nothing.

Re:Do these H1-B stay in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

As any American citizen working at MS today I can contest, most of MS is made up of foreigners who are here on a green card or H1-B/L1 visa. On my team alone I am the only natural citizen and I hold the cheapest contract for the team. As an natural born citizen of the US and a worker at MS I'm appalled by the fact that most of MS is made up of foreigners here on green card or H1-B status while the rest of my country men go broke living on unemployment despite the fact that they qualify for many positions there.

Is it embarrassing that your foreign co-workers speak better English than you?

Re:Do these H1-B stay in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was offered a job at MS, part of it was that they would sponsor my Green Card application. They did and I'm a US citizen now. I know tons of others in the same boat. Were you laid off? Were you always on a contract? There is no incentive for the company to send you back before you get your Green Card. It's not like they have to pay you more when you get it.

Re:Do these H1-B stay in the US

[Seismologist]

As I've been the beneficiary of an H-1B with Microsoft, I know very well that MS also does a good job at sending H1-B permit holders back home after 1-2 years, before they get a green card. They actually paid for my 1-way ticket back to Europe. I'd be interested to see what is the proportion of H-1B visa holders who end up staying permanently in the US and which company hired them.

In not trying to read into any underlying cynicism with your post, I assume you going back to Europe, and thus forgoing the greencard process, is what you wanted.

Re:Do these H1-B stay in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

I was hired into Microsoft on an H1B. 6 years later I got a Green Card. H1B workers by law must be paid the same wage as an American worker. Microsoft has pay bands that go with your level in the company. If you are hired as a level 60 you'll be in the same wage band as all the other people at level 60.
The problem is more with immigration policy in the US. If this were Canada after 5 years in the county you'd be a citizen. It won't be until 11 years in the US before I can become a citizen. Definately not a welcoming socitey... at least not for those who immigrate legally.
For those nay sayers...how do you propose to add skilled immigrants to your country? Skilled immigrants are needed to keep the ponzi scheme called social security going....

Re:Do these H1-B stay in the US

[shutdown -p now]

Wow, you sure are full of hate. I wonder, when those evil green-card wielding foreigners stealing your jobs finally become citizens after a long and tedious wait (which isn't their fault in the slightest), do you recount them accordingly? Or are they still job-stealing foreigners because they look and speak funny?

Re:Do these H1-B stay in the US

[shutdown -p now]

According to this:

H1B Visa 2001-2010: 27,189
Green Card 2000-2010: 6,207

Given that there's L1, too, let's just round up and say that roughly every 5th foreign employee gets sponsored for green card. Whether it's a lot or not enough is for the reader to judge.

Support StartupVisa.com

[digitaltraveller]

Alot of foreigners (like me) out there would like to come to the U.S. and hire (relatively) cheap American engineers,
but we can't do it because foreign investment visas are too costly/risky for small companies.

Here in Australia, our labour market is tightly government regulated, and it's nearly impossible to hire decent
engineers here for anything less than a king's ransom as competition for anyone good is fierce - even the banks
have problem hiring people.

So support startupvisa.com, to drive jobs and innovation from America's greatest asset - it's people.

Nice way of getting aid

[Anonymous Coward]

So the Indian companies not only pay $1Billion a year to the social security taxes that go to fund the bankrupt social Security system with no benefits derived for the individuals they now get to pay $200 million to fight illegal immigration. What next? A tax on immigrants because they are good in Math?

By the way, this also applies to attorneys

[kwoodard]

By the way, this also applies to firms that bring in foreign attorneys. Reference recent NY Times article. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/business/global/05legal.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=outsourcing%20to%20india&st=cse. My thought is that unemployed attorneys might be more politically active than unemployed IT developers.

This is why so many Americans are out of work

[Anonymous Coward]

I've worked at MS of and on since the mid 90's. Today, as an American born citizen with over 15 years in software engineering the best I can get at MS today is a low pay rate contract position while the rest of the team (99%) is made up of full time or contract employees who got green card status from their H-1B or LB visas or are still work here on such visas. The average American born worker at MS makes up a very tiny fraction of the work force at MS anymore. It is time that our US elected officials end the visas and send these workers home and give those jobs to the very citizens of the US who are more then qualified. If they are not qualified then B.G. and company should be investing more to train their own country men instead of bring over the cheap labor. Think about that philanthropist man.

Protectionism by another name

[BobTheLawyer]

This is just protectionism - why shouldn't American companies be able to hire whoever they want?

Re:Protectionism by another name

[Mikkeles]

They can; but just because a company hired someone does not entitle that person to be allowed to live in (or even visit) the US.

Re:Protectionism by another name

[Anonymous Coward]

That's protectionism too. Money can travel anywhere, people don't, it makes no sense in open economies, it makes sense in nationalist oriented economies.

Re:Protectionism by another name

[nedlohs]

Just because an economy is "nationalist oriented" does not mean everything is does is "protectionism".

Immigrants are not goods or services hence restricting them is not protectionism - unless slavery was reinstated recently anyway.

You'd have something closer to a point if you were talking about restricting access by tourists. Still not as point though.

I assume you also classify quarantine rules stopping me from bringing my rabid dog into Australia as protectionist?

Re:Protectionism by another name

[Anonymous Coward]

There are probably companies that do exploit the H1-B system to bring over people willing to work for less than equally qualified Americans, but for some jobs it really is a challenge to find enough qualified citizens to fill the positions.

Aside for the propriety of hiring those here with H1-Bs, the advantages to hiring those workers off-shore should be considered.

It's better to have the employees come to the U.S. than to hire them to work abroad for various reasons:
  1. They are skilled labor (they won't be a burden on tax payers)
  2. Taxes other than income taxes are received (i.e. property, sales, state income, ...)
  3. In general they improve the communities they live in by contributing wealth and intelligence
  4. It's simpler for the company that hired them which allows them to remained focus on their core competencies

Re:Protectionism by another name

[JumpDrive]

Why shouldn't Americans be able to by goods that are not subject to tariffs or import taxes? Why can't or don't American companies compete with foreign competitors on an equal playing field?

Re:Protectionism by another name

[ibsteve2u]

Our nation's response to Pearl Harbor was protectionism, too. Why should the interests of Business-with-a-capital-B be favored over those of the American people? Why shouldn't the American people be allowed to direct that their government take measures that protect their futures and their way of life?

I believe that there is some document somewhere that originated from the time of this nation's founding that gives the American people that right...

It's not the US

[Sycraft-fu]

Countries in general seem unable to have sane immigration policies. It is just one area that stupidity and bureaucracy form a perfect storm. Example:

My father is American, born in the US. My mom is a Canadian, born in Canada. Most of their lives were spent in the US (that's where I was born and raised). However, before I was born, during the Vietnam War they went up to Canada. My dad intended to dodge the draft. I say intended because he was never actually drafted but he wasn't waiting around for that to happen. Being married to a Canadian made it real easy to get in. In that time he obtained landed immigrant status, which is similar to a green card. That all ends, he moves back to the US, they start a family.

30ish years later, they decide to move to Canada. This is not a problem, as mom is Canadian. Also they purchase a house, and a business there. No big deal. Dad contacts Canadian Immigration about getting his landed status back. Surprisingly, they just give it to him. Not a single hitch, almost no paperwork. Just "here you go." Wow some sense at last right? If only.

So a few years later, he's lived there long enough to be eligible to obtain citizenship. He's applying, since there's no reason not to (you don't give up your US citizenship, you get both, I have dual citizenship, as does mom). Now the bureaucratic bullshit starts. Hefty fee, paid in advance, massive amounts of forms including asking all the dates you've been out of the country in the last few years and so on. All that gets submitted. He hears nothing, calls to ask. They say "Oh we won't even look at the application for 9 months or so."

Wait, what? I mean there's no reason (or probably even ability) to deny it, he's married to a Canadian, there legally, owns property, etc. However the process is what the process is so they accept an app and then just sit on it for months. Then there's more bullshit to come, he's been warned.

For that matter I've had people tell me I should look for a job in Canada. Reason is that they have a real lack of tech workers. They don't have enough locally to cover demand. Of course that doesn't mean they let more in, no immigration continues to be retarded. So as a citizen, a company would love to hire me since there'd be no bullshit, I could just move up and start work.

Re:It's not the US

[puto]

Actually, There are grey legal areas in what your dad is trying to to do. First your dual citizenship is grounded in the ffact that you have dual nationalities. A parent from each place. However, if a US citizen applies for citizenship in another country, he can run the risk of losing his US citizenship. You really need to have your father read this. http://travel.state.gov/law/citizenship/citizenship_778.html

Re:It's not the US

[BradMajors]

Speaking as someone who personally knows tech workers living in Canada who can not get jobs, there is no shortage of tech workers in Canada.

Re:It's not the US

[dubbreak]

I counter your anecdote with another:

I am a canadian tech worker. I work for a small/medium tech company and we've had a hell of a time finding quality lead developers, and even difficulty getting mid level positions filled (entry level is no problem). It took us 6 months to find a new software lead for one project, and he was a compromise. The new mid level we found (after interviewing many applicants) I ended up poaching from another company. There is talent in this town, but people who live here already have good jobs. That leaves you with hiring from out of town or poaching. Most of the out-of-town applicants weren't worth the time and money to fly in for an interview. Everyone I graduated with from compsci/compeng/eleceng is employed.

On the other side of the coin we had an opening for a mechanical engineer. We had a plethora of useful applicants for that position. It was more akin to shooting fish in a barrel, while the software positions were like dropping a baited hook in an empty fish tank hoping it would encourage fish to jump into the tank.

The tank in question was Victoria btw. Generally no problem attracting people here. The climate is a little milder than Vancouver and property is a little cheaper. It's also only 1/3 as rainy as Seattle (for people concerned about the proximity). It's basically the Florida of Canada (i.e. Canada's #1 retirement location). Finding people willing to relocate isn't a problem. Finding worthwhile people to relocate is. Part of the issue is wages. The local tech sector is notorious for underpaying tech employees. Previously the excuse being, "Living in Victoria is part of your bonus of working here." The cost of living is very comparable to Vancouver, and yet wages are around 20% less. If you aren't willing to pay for talent then you have to settle for mediocrity.

Re:It's not the US

[toriver]

As I understood it, it depends on circumstances: For instance, if you are granted Norwegian citizenship, you must give up your old one (with few exceptions). However, the U.S. considers this to be forced, and do not recognise it. So a Yank granted Norwegian citizenship will be Norwegian (only) in Norway, but considered U.S. across the pond.

Re:It's not the US

[anagama]

Totally off topic, but while Victoria is pretty on the surface, all its sewage and whatever other toxics go down the drain, are dumped untreated directly into the Puget Sound. People shouldn't forget that, and till it is fixed, should definitely avoid visiting Victoria. I've been waiting since the early 90s to feel that visiting Victoria would be morally acceptable.

Re:It's not the US

[Anonymous Coward]

This. I've applied to jobs how many times in the last 2 years, the occasional phone interview, nothing else.

It's no different than the US, really there is NO SHORTAGE AT ALL. The H1B program is being abused because companies want to pay less than the local talent pool and have a leash around the employee "Don't you dare ask for a raise or we'll ship you back to India"

Re:It's not the US

[shutdown -p now]

For that matter I've had people tell me I should look for a job in Canada. Reason is that they have a real lack of tech workers. They don't have enough locally to cover demand. Of course that doesn't mean they let more in, no immigration continues to be retarded.

Actually, there's a pretty smooth immigration track specifically for skilled workers if one goes through provincial programs rather than the federal one. This requires getting a worker visa first, which can be tricky as it requires a job offer from a company in the province - but then, what better proof of skill and relevance? Having a job, it's fairly straightforward to get a nomination, and then you get fast-tracked to permanent resident status, which is, frankly, good enough - citizenship takes a while more, and there are some travel restrictions while you're waiting to become eligible, but for a settled immigrant it's not a big deal (and if you're not then why apply?).

H1

[mike-seo]

We cannot altogether make the H-1 visa so difficult that we stop getting the adequate staff. At the same time there needs to be some preference be given to local Talent.

Re:H1

[shutdown -p now]

Well then, just make the imported foreign talent local by reducing the time and complexity of getting a US citizenship for skilled immigrants. It's not like US has an overpopulation problem...

Urban Moving Systems

[LeepII]

Meanwhile 200 "furniture movers" got H-1B's for Urban moving systems. I was not aware that there are too few furniture movers in the US for this position to qualify.

The new sweatshops in the US

[richman555]

This is a tragic industry trend. I work at a company where about 75% of all developers are HB1 visa holders. These companies are looking for 'instant' workforces that they can bring along and dismantle when a project ends. They also like to work these people like crazy, as they will only be around for a few years. They can work hard for a few years and go back to their country with more money maybe to buy a house or get married. As for HB1 visa holders being cheaper, perhaps a little bit when it comes to health care, etc. I think employers like that they can demand even more out of these folks.

Sorry Mr. Fermi

[Anonymous Coward]

So if there was a new Manhattan project today, they couldn't hire the best people for the job, they'd have to fill a certain number of positions with unqualified people, because of affirmative action towards locals. And then you wonder why China will mop the floor with us.

Re:Sorry Mr. Fermi

[careysub]

So if there was a new Manhattan project today, they couldn't hire the best people for the job, they'd have to fill a certain number of positions with unqualified people, because of affirmative action towards locals. And then you wonder why China will mop the floor with us.

Sorry, but no. You are referring of course to the scientific staff of the laboratories like Los Alamos and the Chicago Met Lab - all of whom served as government employees. The H1-B program and its restrictions only apply to private companies.

Who needs H1Bs anymore?

[Foolicious]

My (now former) company simply opened multiple large IT ffices in places like Gurgaon, Mumbai and Noida, so they don't have to get H1B workers. (They were first opened as BPO offices.) American workers are slowly laid off (always in small numbers every few months) or lost by attrition, new workers are hired in those Indian offices and work for the Indian subsidiary of that company. Those offices have grown by leaps and bounds since they were first opened in 2002-3ish. So that company doesn't "outsource" anything or get any H1Bs. Whether or not that's a dirty trick is another discussion. Everyone will have their opinions.

I would say that any H1B in this economy is pretty frustrating if just based on perception (and perception tends to be reality...); I guess I just don't believe there aren't enough American workers to do those jobs.

Re:Who needs H1Bs anymore?

[rickb928]

I know your former company, and they have changed their temp labor policy recently. In fact, the mix of foreign workers has been changing from largely Indian nationals to Asian nationals. But the offices worldwide still exist, and show no signs of being dininished.

Offshoring is still in progress. But I'm being converted as we speak.

It's a tangled mess, but I'm still disappointed. We just got a new temp in who is in the U.S. on an H1B. Seriously, they are doing the very same job that dozens of U.S. citizens did in 2008m the VERY SAME JOB. And many of those U.S. citzens that were laid off in 2008 are still looking for that work.

It's abusive, and has been for a long time. H1Bs need to be reduced dramatically. There are, repeat ARE, citizens that can do the work.

Re:Who needs H1Bs anymore?

[TheGratefulNet]

There are, repeat ARE, citizens that can do the work.

US citizen, here. been laid off for many months. have been horrified by the lowball offers that come in, trying to take advantage of the perception of the 'poor economy'.

american-born workers are looking for jobs and yet we continue to import and outsource jobs.

if only those in power would feel what its like. that's all I ask. have them walk in our shoes for a while.

not only is there ageism happening in high tech, but its reverse discrimination when local born guys can't even find jobs since its 'cheaper' to hire imports (and then throw them away, which always does happen, btw). its just a mess all around. this isn't leading to any kind of stability, its just a run for short-term profits. it will harm everyone in the long-run, though (short-term thinking often does).

I repeat, this exists because those who control the laws feel none of our pain. they simply don't "get it" or still believe in this misguided concept of 'trickle down' (give the rich company owners lots of power and eventually those 'below' will benefit. that never happens, either, btw.)

Re:Who needs H1Bs anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I know your company. Btw, they do two more things.

Use their offshore offices and bring those ppl here on L1 (no limits, and no min wage requirements. Theya re still offshore employees on deputation that's all. best, no expiry date and NOT a chance of them jumping ship or immigrating).

Such is the magic of L1 visa.

That too takes time to process. want to get them even faster? B1. Visitor/businesss visa. They cannot technically earn a salary here, but can be paid 'expenses'. There you go - bring ppl on B1 and make them work months on end. Sure, no salary, but surely 'expenses accounts'.

Any thirdrate moron from a developing country can abuse US laws, apparently.

Re:Who needs H1Bs anymore?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

still believe in this misguided concept of 'trickle down'

That isn't a concept, it's a campaign slogan (really, I'm being serious for once)

Re:Who needs H1Bs anymore?

[Foolicious]

I would be fine with H1Bs if they actually filled needs that weren't being met, but if you go to a site like Corp-To-Corp (or whatever you prefer), you'll see the number of companies that are willing to sponsor H1Bs for jobs like "PHP Developer, Perl Programmer, Midlevel Java Developer" and the like. If it was Bio-Genetic-Something-Or-Other, that would be one thing; there are not a lot of bio-genetic-something-or-otherists out there. But that's simply not the case with computer programmers, developers and the like.

Re:Who needs H1Bs anymore?

[Foolicious]

India will always have a place (as will the Philippines, especially for support desk stuff) because of the language issues. This isn't to say that someone won't come up with an "interesting" business model serving as a communicative go-between for relatively dirt cheap Asian (read: Chinese) programmers and English-speaking business groups, but given the number of reqs. I see that stress "Excellent communicator", I think having some background in English is always going to be valuable.

Re:Who needs H1Bs anymore?

[rickb928]

They also rotate the L1s and B1s, and H1Bs, so no one gets an expired visa. Great fun.

Open World

[Anonymous Coward]

There is, and that is when the whole world gets to a standard above 1$/day. Artificially limiting where people can work and travel solely based on where they were born is quite a medieval practice that we have yet to get rid of. Globalization is all about more goods moving around then people. The reason you get cheap labour intensive goods such as Tuna, Rice, Coffee etc is because millions of people are artificially forced to live in unlivable conditions because they can otherwise do nothing or cant go anywhere else.

If your skillset is such that other people can compete easily then distinguish yourself, don't just advocate the medieval practice of limiting people's freedom of movement.

An open world is a world where goods and services are more fairly priced, not underpriced (third world goods) nor overpriced (certain first world goods, such as medicines). It is a world where 6 billion people can be as productive as the 1 billion in the western world. It would be amazing to live in such a productive world.

Re:Open World

[PerfectionLost]

I can't quite find that stats, but I saw a really interesting chart that graphed population vs income. The number of people who are making under $1 a day has halved since the 80s.

Re:Open World

[anagama]

If your skillset is such that other people can compete easily then distinguish yourself, don't just advocate the medieval practice of limiting people's freedom of movement.

So if you went to school to become a nurse, but now the employers are importing them the Philippines, you should go back to school to become what, a programmer? After figuring out employers are just importing programmers, what do you, go back to school to become an accountant? But that won't be safe either. Maybe the only good thing to train for is college professor.

In the medieval system you advocate, the middle class disappears because there is no hope for having a middle class job. Some few people become super-rich, and most Americans become poorer and poorer until we look any third world country. In essence, you say we should give up 70 or 80% of our income so we can become a poor unstable country with all chaos that goes with that. I think it is a bad deal for us. Yeah, selfish, but when did it become our duty to impoverish ourselves?

Re:Open World

[s73v3r]

Did it mention what happened to their standard of living? Or their costs of living? If you suddenly make double what you were making yesterday, but then everything else doubles in price, you're not really better off, are you?

Re:Open World

[PerfectionLost]

I think the numbers were adjusted for the rate of inflation, but then again, I can't find the report. That said, in the developing world, highly industrial products suffer from inflation, but agriculture tends not to. My family is from Sri Lanka, and I see how cheap food is there (15 bucks a week for a family of 5), even though a (nice and new) TV is out of most people's budget.

Re:Open World

[anagama]

Is that in nominal dollars or inflation adjusted. Makes a big difference.

Where are the visas for foreign lawyers?

[trout007]

I find lawyers charge way to much. We should allow visas for lawyers that will work for $20/hr. I wonder what the odds of getting that through congress would be?

Re:Where are the visas for foreign lawyers?

[nomadic]

I find lawyers charge way to much. We should allow visas for lawyers that will work for $20/hr. I wonder what the odds of getting that through congress would be?

There are huge numbers of licensed American attorneys who already will work for $20 an hour, don't need to import anyone.

Border Security?

[drumcat]

WTF does this have to do with stopping illegal Latin Americans from crossing our southern border? ZERO. "Mexican Border Security Bill", huh. This is how we got in this fucking mess. Leave it to a guy whose state borders Canada...

Re:Border Security?

[dooode]

Yes, this is crazy. There are more than "11 million" illegal* Hispanic immigrants to US. The logic is, that by raising the fees for H1B, more money can be raised to control the immigration at the borders. There is nothing wrong with that, as every country has the right to determine the cost of its visa applications. But then is it logical?

The "total" number of H1B's has been 65,000. Out of this, only 20,000 applications got filled last year. And most of these applications are by people who are educated, English-speaking graduates. It does need some qualifications to get into companies like Intel, Microsoft or Infosys, be it any part of the world.

I am wondering what is more harmful to US? Is it those 60,000 underpaid IT-coolies who almost always have a bachelors or masters degree in their hand, or the millions of almost illiterate immigrants who cannot speak English, and out of which "many of them" rely on not-so-legal means of livelihood in US.

I visited a friend in Westchester, NewYork and found it funny that many people there could/would not speak English. It was even more idiotic that many of them had 5 kids, as US government provides child-support for each of them. This poor friend of mine is a Chinese national with a PhD degree who works as a researcher on an H1B, but it was ironic that his wife cannot legally work here even though she has a bachelors from a top university in China.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_United_States
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa

Re:Border Security?

[drumcat]

I don't care who speaks what, and I really do understand H-1B's are a hot mess. But that debate belongs somewhere else -- that's my point. Securing the borders and not giving up on Arizona is the right thing to do, and adding any discussion of visas is totally disingenuous. This is about ILLEGAL entry, and unless he was talking about making 14 million H-1B's available for free, he's not addressing the problem. I wish Schumer lived in a southern border state. Dipshit.

lot's of places use contrack jantors ferms any way

[Joe The Dragon]

lot's of places use contract janitors firms any way some of then hire illegals so even that is better as you have more Americans working and they must pay min wage as well.

Slashdot got it wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

The original article says "The proposed bill would hike the visa fee to $2,000 per application on those entities that have less than 50 per cent of their employees as US citizens." and not "firms that have 50% or more of their employees on this visa"

MSoft or Intel: they have offices all over the world so I find it hard to believe that more than 50% of their employees are US citizens.

The bill looks like is against companies like Infosys or TCS who (by virtue of being non US company) has less than 50 per cent of their employees as US citizens to get H1Bs.

Here are 2 things that always shock me:
1) To get an H1B or L1 visa, an ALL AMERICAN company has to invite a non US citizen to come and work in US (so the chop shop is not infosys or TCS)
2) Lots of cases: the jobs does not stay back in USA if you stop giving visas, they move back to where the H1B holder is from.

China does not give a f* if people die in a lab th

[Joe The Dragon]

China does not give a f* if people die in a lab that makes nukes and then will cover it up / get rid of the true as well.

Mod parent up

[Clueless Nick]

AC speaks up against hypocrisy. Should have been brave enough to post under own ID.

Quick question

[JamesP]

Why don't Intel and MS (and others) don't open centers in immigration-friendly countries then? Specifically for that purpose.

Re:Quick question

[Bigjeff5]

Because neither of them are abusing H-1B visas.

The OP is just trolling.

Infosys

[SatanicPuppy]

We did some financials outsourcing to Infosys, and I can honestly say it was nothing like "skilled" work. Most of the people whose jobs were outsourced had mediocre skills, and no special education.

Mind, the Infosys people are hilariously bad, and the number of errors that they're making on financial jobs that have to be tediously fixed because they can't be re-run is staggering.

Just my two cents.

Here comes the H1b rant again :/

[e065c8515d206cb0e190]

How is that a fiction?

In my field and in many hard sciences there are no qualified americans to do the job. The Department of State actually has a webpage where they list the type of skills that are scarce in the country and the types that aren't. Here is the page for computer and mathematical types of jobs. The outlook doesn't look bad. On the other hand, if you're a skilled auto-industry worker, I don't think the outlook is the same. And believe it or not, I have a pretty good idea of what skills set most H1Bs have...

Signed: proud H1B, soon Green Card holder

Re:Here comes the H1b rant again :/

[CherniyVolk]

In my field and in many hard sciences there are no qualified americans to do the job. The Department of State actually has a webpage where they list the type of skills that are scarce in the country and the types that aren't. Here is the page for computer and mathematical types of jobs [onetcenter.org]. The outlook doesn't look bad. On the other hand, if you're a skilled auto-industry worker, I don't think the outlook is the same. And believe it or not, I have a pretty good idea of what skills set most H1Bs have...

You quote Department of State, but your web link is to '.org'. Give me .gov or .mil and then perhaps you might not come off as stupid; someone lied to you if you think that .org site is a Department of State website, I know the real Department of State website for jobs and a .org isn't it. On your website, they list "Network Designers", "Statisticians" and "Video Game Designers". Just a few, but are you really going to sit there and suggest there are no qualified American "Statisticians"? No "Network Designers"? Oh, "Computer Support Specialists" is a real cute one.

The only thing that makes Indian H1-B attractive is the low-pay and the hope that maybe what they create will "be good enough". It's a game of chance wealthy greedy people play from time to time; because mediocrity often sells, WalMart is a perfect example of this fact. You people actually think you're being hired because you are "good".

As a person who has had to repair broken H1-B code for some American corporations. I'll tell you, the programmers who worked on those projects didn't know the first thing about programming or even English. The code was garbage and needed to be redesigned from the ground up, costing the corporation a lot of cash. Not to mention, finding a few IP violations within the code, but since the project had been outsourced the company figured they could point the finger at someone else should someone find out.

They paid a high-powered American to draw out on paper what is needed for 200 dollars an hour on contract. Then they had their own well paid professionals break down the work flow further and act as integrators sending off job-components to outsourced monkey programmers. But had monkeys actually done the jobs perhaps their plan would have worked, instead of chimpanzee's from the San Diego Zoo, they had H1-Bs from India do it.

The only outsourcing that produced admirable work that I had to work with, was outsourcing to other G7 countries like France. It's only I don't like France being an American so that adds a bit of animosity to the equation but it was good work. Anything from the Germans are very good, and Russians are very well capable of providing ground-breaking work (probably more so than anyone else), just have to make sure they aren't skirting you by putting Igor the total newb on the job. British always have a sense of humor and it's worth it just to listen to them talk and joke around; oh and they do very good work too.

But you know the thing is? G7 outsourcing is expensive, very expensive. India outsourcing is cheap, very cheap. So, perhaps the old adage of "you get what you pay for" applies to labor interests.

Re:Here comes the H1b rant again :/

[e065c8515d206cb0e190]

This site is linked from that DoS page:

Work Experience: If you are qualifying with work experience, you must have two years of experience in the last five years, in an occupation which, by U.S. Department of Labor definitions, requires at least two years of training or experience that is designated as Job Zone 4 or 5, classified in a Specific Vocational Preparation (SVP) rating of 7.0 or higher. The U.S. Department of Labor provides information on job duties, knowledge and skills, education and training, and other occupational characteristics at their website http://online.onetcenter.org/. The O*Net online database groups work experience into five "job zones." While many occupations are listed, only certain specified occupations qualify for the Diversity Visa Program.

Not sure who's coming off as stupid, espcially after admitting you were xenophobic and thowing a bunch of stereotypes.

Re:Here comes the H1b rant again :/

[Anonymous Coward]

DERK A DEEEEERRRRRRRRRRR!

Re:Here comes the H1b rant again :/

[CherniyVolk]

Xenophobic as a negative term is only used by foreigners trying to get into or stay within a richer country.

Sometimes I wish America wasn't as well-off so you idiots would shut the hell up. This is my country, not yours; so piss off if you don't like the way we do things or how we treat you.

If Indians from India weren't so insistent they know how to speak English, when they obviously do not, then perhaps their mangled verbiage wouldn't be such a stereotype.

BTW, that's still not the site for government military job postings. Most importantly, it's not indicative to a lack of American expertise as the op suggested.

Which would be an Indian stereotype of Americans, but I notice your hypocritical ass didn't point that out did you?

Stereotype, aka pattern recognition. So stuff it with your PC crap.

Re:Here comes the H1b rant again :/

[e065c8515d206cb0e190]

Who said military? This is the Department of State giving a link to a Department of Labor online database. And showing job outlooks (i.e. demand) (FYI H1B visas are only granted in certain categories of high skilled workers as the DoL deems fit and according to the country's needs). Some Indians from India may not speak English to your liking, but you've proved you can't read it that well.

The rest of your post is neither polite nor well argued so I won't bother.

Re:why? - record profits by wipro etc.

[walterbyrd]

Indian staffing companies are reporting record profits. When US politicians smell windfall profits, it's just like when sharks smell blood in the water.

When there is money to be had, the US politicians will think up some excuse to get their cut. Remember Godfather II? The way things worked in the old neighborhood, when you made a score, the local Don had an automatic right to "wet his beak." The same system was portrayed in that Goodfellas movie.

07/23/2010

> Indian software services provider Wipro said quarterly profit jumped 31 percent to 13.19 billion rupees ($284 million), beating expectations, as India's No. 3 outsourcer ramped up staffing to meet stronger global demand.

> Revenue for the April-June quarter rose 16 percent over the same period last year to 72.36 billion rupees ($1.56 billion) under international accounting standards.

> A Thomson Reuters poll of 23 analysts forecast quarterly profit of 12.15 billion rupees.

> "We are seeing strong demand ... across our industry," chairman Azim Premji said in a statement Friday. "We added the highest number of billable employees ever, in this quarter."

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_15586063

*Global*-ization

[Atmchicago]

In essence, we've created a system that always has a labor surplus leading to lower wages (or no wages) for everyone -- from the low skilled workers in the textile industry, to highly educated people in technical fields.

No, not for everyone. Just for the wealthier nations. Worldwide, developing nations are catching up rapidly and benefiting tremendously from the new jobs available, and their standard of living is rising. That's the global part of globalization - they are part of the same labor force, and part of the same seesaw. The United States are essentially destined to stagnate (or just slow down) in terms of economic growth until the rest of the world catches up, unless we pull out the rug from developing countries and resort to colonial strategies and protectionism (neither of which is that likely).

Re:*Global*-ization

[Fulcrum of Evil]

And it just so happens to benefit transnational corporations tremendously. How do we, as citizens in the rich world, pull some benefit from this situation? If we can't, why would we allow it to continue?

Re:*Global*-ization

[ChatHuant]

And it just so happens to benefit transnational corporations tremendously

Of course, which is why they keep pushing for deregulation, reduction of vamal barriers and so on. And since they have the freedom of speech to give money to any candidate, and they have lots of money, they usually get their wishes

How do we, as citizens in the rich world, pull some benefit from this situation?

It's very easy: be a rich shareholder in one of the aforesaid corporations, and you'll benefit a lot. You can't, because you can't get a high enough paying job? Well, that's too bad, get used to it then.

If we can't, why would we allow it to continue?

Well, because if you don't vote the way the corporations need, the wrong lizard may get in!

Re:*Global*-ization

[Fulcrum of Evil]

I was thinking more of rising up and taking the power from them - corporations are dangerous things, as was demonstrated by the dutch india company

same reason passport fees almost doubling

[peter303]

User of a government service have to pay for increases in the service. There is much more scrutiny these days at all levels of foreign travel.

Inter Company Transfers

[santoroj]

In the Britain we have a "temporary immigration cap" which has been exposed as yet another hoax with the Home Office confession that it excludes Intra-Company Transfer (ICT) programmes, which in 2008 let 43,495 non-EU workers into Britain, nearly 20,000 more than the government's stated "cap" limit. ICT transfers allow foreign companies with offices in Britain to transfer their own employees to here from anywhere in the world. ICT transfers are over and above what the government regime seeks to keep as a "cap" limit of 24,400. The depth of the government deception became apparent with a comparison between the figures quoted by Home Secretary Theresa and the number of Indian IT workers allowed into Britain under the ICT scheme. Figures released last August by Ann Swain, chief executive of the Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo), showed that ICT programmes resulted in the transfer of 29,240 foreign IT workers alone into Britain during the during the 2008/2009 year. According to Ms Swain, IT workers in particular accounted for the importation of non-European workers into the UK at twice the rate of all other types of professional skills combined. "Despite the downturn creating an ample supply of settled UK IT staff, almost 30,000 computer workers from outside of the European Union were brought to the country in 2008," Ms Swain said. This figure, Ms Swain said, was more than double the number (14,255) who entered the UK on ICTs that year to work in all the other professional service sectors, including telecoms, combined. This means that in one year, 43,495 non-EU workers entered Britain using the ICT programme. Under current ICT rules, employers can effectively bypass UK job-seekers, who command higher pay than their overseas counterparts, as they have no obligation to advertise the roles. Unlike other non-EU workers who must be employed at the company for a year before they can be transferred, graduates would be eligible for an ICT from the third month of work. "The irony is that while graduate level IT jobs are being outsourced to India it is now being proposed that it should be easier for Indian IT graduates to work in the UK at a time when there are few if any skill shortages at that level," Ms Swain said last year. One Indian company, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), sponsored 4,600 of its employees to come to Britain in 2008 through ICTs, according to new Home Office data. Another Indian company, Infosys Technologies Limited, sponsored 3,235 foreigners to come to the UK in the same year, while a third, Wipro Technologies, brought in 2,420. Indians make up 70 percent of the migrants brought to Britain on ICTs, while others are from nations including the US, South Africa, Japan and China.

Hardly a deterrent

[EmagGeek]

$2000 is not a deterrent when you can pay a foreigner $30K less even though they live and work on US soil.

Besides, these companies will just switch to the L-1 visa...

My two rupees ;-)

[achyuta]

A couple of points here as I'm working in the US on a H1-B, just so you know how things look from my perspective.

Why an American company would want to hire H1-B holders instead of citizens:
- Contractors are cheaper (No need for 401K, benefits etc etc)
- Contractors are easily expendable (If, Heavens forbid, we have another meltdown like 2008)
- The American company can plan inaccurately and dial the contractor workforce up or down based on budgets/company or project performance. You can basically tweak your bottom line by controlling the contractor cost. Its a luxury and has made people lazy and almost incapable of being able to accurately estimate work.


Sad truths:
- Not all H1-B visa holders are doing things which Americans themselves can't
- Many H1-B holders are poorly skilled (too bad there's no technical interview at the port of entry)


What America/ American companies can do:
- Some one mentioned 67.3% if Infosys revenues come from the NA region - care to check how much of that is from the B&FS space? Fix the Financial system. It is shamelessly bloated and is driving inflation for everyone else.
- The education system is too expensive & not being rigorous enough & is disconnected with industry. Where I go, not going to college (albeit lower standards on average) is not an option even for my maids kids (Yes, they can scrape through financially)
- Fact: The youth here that do go to college spend so much for it, have almost none of the issues we have to contend with in developing countries (comparitively speaking) & still don't produce enough per dollar to match us. Otherwise, why the hell wouldn't an American company hire an them instead of me?


Earlier generations Indians wanted to come to the US and probably settle down. In my case (and others in my generation), you can send me back. I'd be more than happy to go back to India and be with my family. The standard of living is not very different plus its my own country. I'm just here because my company sent me to do some work. And my company itself has better margins when I work from India, FYI. (Please note this discussion is NOT about offshoring work so I won't get into that)

The Infosys of 2014..

[achyuta]

..is poised to look very different.

Addendum

[bussdriver]

Sweat shops may keep people from starving but it is a horrible living. The argument that screwing 1st world nations to bring up 3rd world nations to balance out the world's labor is false and overly simplistic. It is a race to the bottom of human existence where the worst possible (cheapest) is the goal of the system to maximize profits for the top of it.

At some point the middle class of the world will be so greatly undermined and shrunk they will not be able to afford all the products that employ the rest of the world which will again create a race to the bottom where the "balance" is that most everybody is poor. In the USA personal debt has greatly undermined our middle class already - delaying the fall in lifestyle by suckering people into over extending themselves... thus creating decades of delay in public outrage.

Remember the hype in the 90s about how we were going to be a service driven economy? including "thinking services" - a knowledge economy etc. Like the internet somehow was only going to belong to the usa or something and nobody would do anything because there would be somebody providing a service for that. I don't remember when the idiot work ethic got into the culture-- in the usa you are lazy if you don't want to work more than 35 hours a week and 4-6 weeks vacation. how they sold that to the culture I'd like to know because it is unbelievably stupid.

Fact is, we can not sustain the endless growth economic model we've embraced which includes other thoughtless growth problems like overpopulation.

Re:Addendum

[anagama]

Fact is, we can not sustain the endless growth economic model we've embraced which includes other thoughtless growth problems like overpopulation.

I agree with you completely. I'm intentionally child-free precisely because I feel that we are reproducing like yeast. Back on topic though, I think that the political push toward more immigration, even though many of their "constituents" (*) are negative on the concept, is to patch up the future problems with SS and the baby boomers. Unless our population continues to grow at an exponential pace, SS is in huge trouble, and politicians are more worried about that than they are about a sustainable economy and population level. (*) Although most voters consider themselves constituents, to politicians, the only constituents that matter are those who can donate gazillions to the next reelection campaign. Regular voters are just peons.

H-1B visas

[the_hellspawn]

Here is my take on this although not needed. I feel that for every 1 H-1B's that come over to work in the US the US should send 10 over. The one can work at a wage just like every one else in the host country. The 10 in the foreign land will be paid with US dollars and US wages by hosting company. We should do this for 10 years or so just so they, foreign invaders, learn what it is like to be disproportional within their society for a chance and quiet coming over here. The moral of the story; clean up your own foreign backyards before coming over to ours. STFO!

Re:H-1B visas

[dooode]

Countries like India would love to have more Americans :) Bangalore has only about 30 thousand US citizens. More Americans in India would only increase the competitiveness of Indian companies.

Btw. as far as proportions go, Bangalore at any time has more outsiders than locals. The local Kannadigas are 5th when it comes to the population ratio. And perhaps that makes Bangalore more competitive than any other city in India when it comes to Information Technology.

What needs to happen.

[Anonymous Coward]

If the company has more than 10% H1B workers in any department, they get charged on a per-department basis.
Have it required that at least 50% of the H1B workers they have end with US Citizen ship or they are fined 10 times the average annual salary of the average H1B worker each year that does not occur.
H1B workers are given that via for a period of no less than 3 years and no more than 5 years.

Before any H1B vias may be applied for, they must allow an approved company attempt to hire for that job for them and the company must approve the hours, benefits and pay scale before they attempt to look. If the office can not find workers for that job at a level they considered worth it, THEN they can apply for a H1B but not before. So they aren't looking for a 100k a year job and only offering 30k a year, the approved company would not allow them the option of an H1B and would not seek to fill that position at that pay scale.

If at any time, a company has more than 50% of their workforce made up of non-american workers loses their status as an american based company. This includes their H1B workers locally and their overseas subsidiaries and other such offices. The company as a total must consist at at least 50% American workers over the entire company or they are considered and taxed as an overseas company, tariffs and all.

If you're going to have immigrants;

[bugs2squash]

the H1Bs are the ones you want. That and the special visas for artists and extremely rich people. The moral problem with these special visas is not at the receiving country's end, it is with the drain on talent and capital that it places on the originating country. Unless, say, India benefits from returning citizens with valuable foreign work experience it strikes me that India has more to lose than the US in this transfer of labor.
It strikes me that the "problem" is how to keep and feed huge numbers of US citizens that are not in this league professionally. The problem to my mind is not so much that there are only so many highly-skilled tech jobs around as that there are fewer and fewer productive things for people that lack high-end skills to do. If we are looking for a way to fully employ America and maintain a strong middle class (ie, what passes for socialism here) then we need to look for solutions for Americans in the bottom 50% of qualification and not worry about a few thousand high-end earners.
For the bottom 50%, H1Bs look like a winning proposition to me because they assume their burden of the tax base.

(3) ??? (4) Profit!

[walterbyrd]

Aren't we supposed to keep repeating that?

Re:(3) ??? (4) Profit!

[Anonymous Coward]

Truth and freedom are ends in of themselves. Though they usually do lead to profit eventually, that isn't the main point.

H1B is specificly designed to replace US workers

[walterbyrd]

A US company can hire an H1B even when a US worker is available. This happens all the time. US workers are frequently required to train their H1B replacements.

This has a very harsh "chilling effect" on aspiring tech workers. Why train for a job when you're just going to replaced by a cheaper H1B?

Bye bye American Jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

When I lost my job because of "relocation" I was the last American in the data center. When I left there were almost 50 central Asians there and not a single American. Screw Intel and Microshaft and all the other big American Companies that pay third world wages here in America. Shame on you all.

[OT] Your Sig

[Anonymous Coward]

Fear the Libertarians! If they get their way, the government will leave you alone! Oh, the Horror!

Unfortunately, a Libertarian government will also leave BP alone... and I bet you can guess the consequences of that.

Re:[OT] Your Sig

[jcr]

a Libertarian government will also leave BP alone...

Yeah, a Libertarian government wouldn't cap their liabilities at all. They'd be out of business.

-jcr

Re:[OT] Your Sig

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, a Libertarian government wouldn't cap their liabilities at all. They'd be out of business.

That's not going to help you if you've got cancer from groundwater pollution now is it?

let mexicans pay for it.

[Anonymous Coward]

If the problem is with the mexican borders, then make them pay for it! Why bully others?

Re:let mexicans pay for it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they comprise 12.5% of US population you idiot (we are talking millions). They can even vote and provide enough resistance to shut down major bills and vote down politicians.

These 60 thousand something H1Bs are but natural choice for ignorant idiots to play games with...

And

[mahadiga]

The Senate measure increases H-1B visa fees by $2,000 per application on firms that have 50% or more of their employees on this visa.

Indians prefer to move to USA not just for economic reasons. India does have serious http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility problems.