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]

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

[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

[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

[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.

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]

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?

[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.

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?

[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.

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.

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: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: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: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?