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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."
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.
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....
If 50%+ of your employees are H1-B's, I would suggest that your business model is not viable in the United States.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
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.
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
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
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
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.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
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.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
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.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
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.
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.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
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.
Why ignore the top rung US workers or were you implying that US workers can't be top rung?
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
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.)
--
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