Ted Cruz Wants Minimum H-1B Wage of $110,000 (computerworld.com)

dcblogs writes: U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, has morphed from a vocal supporter of the H-1B program to a leading critic of it. He has done so in a new H-1B reform bill (PDF) that sets a minimum wage of $110,000 for H-1B workers. By raising the cost of temporary visa workers, Cruz is hoping to discourage their use. Cruz also wants to eliminate Optional Practical Training Program (OPT). The co-sponsor of this bill, The American Jobs First Act of 2015, is U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who called the OPT program "a backdoor method for replacing American workers."

Comments

I support this.

[generic_screenname]

If a company truly needs expertise that just simply cannot be found in the US, then a six figure salary is probably a bargain. Of course, this will never pass. I can dream, though.

Re:I support this.

[acoustix]

Instead of dreaming, perhaps you need to look in the mirror and see why corporations would rather employ Joe Unknown from the other side of the world than you. If you have value, you will always get a job over someone trying the H-1B route. Presumably you have limited skills and no experience. And "web" isn't a skill, bad luck.

Tell that to the former senior engineers at Texas Instruments who were laid off while making $150k while their Indian replacements were paid $50k.

Re:Ha!

[Anonymous Coward]

Two people in Congress finally do something that isn't complete self-serving bullshit and the best response slashdot can come up with is a guy making fun of them.

Not always a good idea

[grilled-cheese]

Companies are going to do whatever makes the most money. The H1-B program gets them cheap labor in the US. Take away cheap labor, jobs will simply move offshore. If the labor is at least based in the US, those workers are still participating in the US economy.

Re:Not always a good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

And then those companies will realize that it's actually a bargain to pay labor costs here and get an actual working product. Every single product I've seen shipped offshore for "cheaper" labor has ultimately resulted in massive cost overruns and a product that doesn't meet expectations (at best) and frequently just doesn't work. There's a lot to be said about being able to work with your business face to face or at least in the same daylight hours when you're both awake.

Re:Not always a good idea

[Mike Van Pelt]

I used to work in network operations for a company that did this sort of thing. Housewife in Minot, ND, sits down to her computer in the spare bedroom and logs in. A script pops up on her computer and her phone rings. "Welcome to Chikin Lickin, may I take your order?" When done, a minute or two later, the popup/phone again, "Thank you for calling Fat Burner Delux, the miracle weight loss supplement endorsed by Dr. Oz." It could be anything that someone had contracted with the company to do "virtual call center" for, ranging from very much upstanding legitimate companies and organizations, to ... not so much.

At the time (it was years ago) their phone answering people were all U.S. based, and that was one of their selling points, that they were Americans and sounded like it. I'm not sure if that's still the case or not, but there's certainly little barrier to having phone reps anywhere on Earth.

Dammit!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's bad enough that you give my job to some foreign worker, but now your going to pay them twice as much as you were paying me?

You SUCK!

That he may be

[Pollux]

I don't like Ted Cruz. I don't like that he has double-standards. I think he's a hypocrite. And I don't like the platform he has chosen to run on.

But a good idea is a good idea. And when someone we disagree with shares a good idea, we should unite behind it, rather than censor it because of its source. If we don't, we just divide this nation further.

Re:That he may be

[Austerity Empowers]

But a good idea is a good idea.

It's not though. That salary might be low in some places and high in others. It might be low in one industry or high in another. In my area/industry that's actually really low, but there are a lot of H1Bs here. Additionally, salaries change over time, do we need a federal fiat every time? Will we have to fight for "minimum indentured servant wage increase" every N years?

H1Bs should stop being granted. Offer green cards to present holders, but no more new ones. Either they come in with a green card and you take the risk that they leave or suck, or they don't come in.

Re:That he may be

[Fire_Wraith]

I'd say it's a better idea than the current setup - which isn't saying much.

The H-1B program definitely needs to be massively overhauled. I wouldn't say it needs to be permanent residency, but it certainly needs to entitle the holder to freely move to another job, just like any other worker. The companies also need to be made to pay enough in fees for sponsoring it that they won't be making money - let's say, $100k per year of the visa. There also shouldn't be any rebates if the worker quits, so there's incentive to pay the person well and treat them well. For people who really represent such critical skills that there really is no American available to do the job, that shouldn't be an issue at all.

Re:That he may be

[Anonymous Coward]

This makes it an imperfect idea, perhaps... but not a bad one.

The main argument against H-1B visas (at least the most vocal argument) is that big corps are using cheap foreign labor to cut costs, at the expense of American workers. Do you disagree?

Putting a high threshold on entry is an elegant solution. Much more creative and clever than the usual thinking present in Washington. Maybe the exact numbers proposed are imperfect. Those can be fiddled with easily enough. But the broad concept of a minimum H-1B wage allows the original spirit of the H1B program to soldier forth -bringing the best and the brightest from around the world to help the USA- while reducing the abuse as laid out in the above paragraph.

Re:That he may be

[thaylin]

Umm you do realize that if H1-Bs are paid more than American workers it would be cheaper to employ Americans, right?

Re:That he may be

[Faust6]

It's a good idea to jump on it (read: appropriate) early, because it's a rather left-leaning populist idea. If the Dems pushed this bill first he'd have to cry bloody murder.

Re:That he may be

[Austerity Empowers]

The main argument against H-1B visas (at least the most vocal argument) is that big corps are using cheap foreign labor to cut costs, at the expense of American workers. Do you disagree?

It is one strong argument citing abuse. Other good arguments are: second class (non)citizens, lack of freedom to negotiate salaries, lack of freedom to leave bad employers, not to mention idealistic failure.

Putting a high threshold on entry is an elegant solution.

It is not high for say: engineering R&D, it's quite low, entry level in some fields. It may be high for IT... hard for me to say. However it WILL sound high to a lot of voting americans, particularly the ones voting republican. It is a political stunt. Divide your enemies against each other, most americans can't differentiate between "wealthier middle class" and "filthy rich". They do this all the time in union areas to try to deflate strikes.

bringing the best and the brightest from around the world to help the USA-

Or, we give qualified candidate first dibs at green cards, and allow them to negotiate with their own employer. Some might believe this is more in the spirit of "free market" than a federal fiat is. Except we don't like free markets when they work against the rich guy.

Re:That he may be

[erice]

That salary might be low in some places and high in others. It might be low in one industry or high in another.

This.

H1-B jobs are supposed to be paid at the prevailing wage for the position and the industry it's in. We can be cynical about how some employers scoff at this and misuse H1-Bs, but the solution is to enforce the existing law, not break it with an unworkable across-the-board salary threshold.

You need both: a requirement to pay at least the prevailing wage and a requirement to pay at least a fixed wage.

Prevailing wage should generally be best but, without a hard number, it is too easy to game. That is what the fixed minimum would come in. No matter how you classify a position to try to work around the prevailing wage requirement, you can't pay less than the fixed minimum.

Re:That he may be

[godrik]

I aggree with this. The main problem is that H1B employees are fairly "trapped" in their job. That creates an artificial pool of employees that are likely not to leave the company which drives bargaining power down for the workers.

Also you could tie future H1B visa for a company to the number of retained H1B.

Benefits? Vacation"

[MDMurphy]

First "loophole" I could think of off the top of my head would be: "Sure we'll pay them $110K". Oh, those jobs include no paid health benefits, no vacation, no sick leave. That could drop the "cost" of the employee down to someone making $70K.

While that sounds bad at first, it wouldn't really be horrible, heck I might even be interested in having all the cash my employer was willing to put out and leave it up to me to spend it. For couples where the other spouse has a good deal on insurance, it might be nice to have the money rather than overlapping policies.

Re:Benefits? Vacation"

[phantomfive]

Many tech companies already pay more than $100k per employee. Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc. Making a minimum wage is a benefit for those companies, because they will be able to get more H1-B visas for themselves, whereas companies in middle-America where cost of living is lower won't be able to afford hiring people on the visa anymore.

Close....

[Lumpy]

Add $80,000 to that number for any H1B in California or New York City.

Honestly, H1B is NOT for cheap labor, it 's for highly skilled professionals that you cant find anywhere else. Force the scumbag CEO's to pay for them.

Re:Close....

[nobuddy]

What it is for and how it is used are two very different things.

Re:Jobs will be offshored

[tsotha]

If they could offshore these jobs they would already have done it.

Re:I still say

[bobbied]

I still say Ted Cruz is actually Al Lewis from The Munsters.

Yea, I noticed that too... But still, Mr. Lewis certainly wouldn't have the same politics and I think he'd be more interesting to listen too. However, who he looks like has nothing to do with his politics....

I thought Cruz was a libertarian?

[JoeyRox]

Libertarians don't call for government enforcement of minimum compensation stipulations, especially not for specific priviledged groups over others.

Re:Cruz can't be trusted

[phantomfive]

"Sometimes things change."

Yes, but not politicians.

Sure they do. They flip-flop all the time!

Minimum Wage Not as Important as Layoff Provision

[Maltheus]

The bill also calls for:

that within 730 daysâ"two yearsâ"of âoean employee strike, an employer lockout, layoffs, furloughs, or other types of involuntary employee terminations other than for-cause dismissals,â a company cannot bring aboard any H-1B labor

I think this is an even bigger deal than the $110k provision.

Re:Another dumbfuck politician.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just get everyone to agree on the precise boundary of what "free trade" is. Can you buy animals? Can you buy water rights? Can you own ideas? Writing? People? What about land? What if I just have enough guns?

Your notions of property rights might seem obvious to you, but not everyone agrees with you. We, as a community, must come to a consensus. One man's free trade is another man's anarchy, and another's totalitarianism. Can't tell if I'm responding to sarcasm or not.

Re:Ha!

[larryjoe]

Silicon Valley tech companies that hire H-1Bs won't care much. Very few of their H-1B employees make less than $110K anyway. If the definition of "wage" includes not just base salary but also bonus (actual awarded amount) and stock (actual value, not some notional future value), then it's likely that all of their H-1B employees already meet this requirement.

Here are the numbers for 2015:

Rank H1B Visa Sponsor Number of LCA * Average Salary
1 Infosys 23,816 $76,794
2 Tata Consultancy Services 14,096 $67,673
3 Wipro 8,365 $69,936

I suppose that these workers might have received some significant additional compensation above their salary, but my guess is that the probability is pretty close to zero.

These top three companies received 46,277 visas, which is over half of the total visa issued. Their average salaries are way below $110k.

If the speculation that companies above abuse H1B visas by importing low-wage earners is true, then the $110k wage limit would eliminate those visa uses. Of course, that assumes that the changes forces companies to actually pay that much. I can easily think of many ways to circumvent the $110k limit, including paying that amount and deducting most of it back (a la indentured servitude).

But the key point is that the abuse is predicated on saving money for the ultimate users of the companies' services. Kill off the financial incentive, and the problem completely disappears.

There is actually a reasonable case for some companies to need something like an H1B. There are actually quite a few US companies that pay decent H1B wages. Instituting a minimum financial threshold allows separation of these arguably more legitimate cases from the arguably job killing cases.

13 Google 3,059 $125,596
18 Amazon 1,600 $113,163
19 Qualcomm Technologies 1,585 $111,816
21 Apple 1,464 $133,593
24 Oracle America 1,073 $119,506
40 Facebook 780 $133,535
50 Ebay 664 $121,691
55 Yahoo! 619 $132,752
59 Paypal 576 $124,616
63 VM Ware 535 $121,203
70 Cisco Systems 494 $121,899
74 Salesforce.Com 483 $124,063
96 Linkedin 382 $139,634

Re:Cruz can't be trusted

[bigpat]

Ted Cruz used to be the Republican candidate who I considered the most arrogant, and most annoying to listen to (he started running for president years ago!). Sometimes things change.

No, I still think Cruz is annoying, arrogant, etc. etc... but on this one particular issue he is right and has put forward a good proposal.

We really need to get past partisan politics where whole issues get misappropriated by political parties. People are not stereotypes and ideas should matter more than the color of their party.

Re:Ha! - Federal Income tax is not paid.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a H1-B holder and as far as I know I pay tax exactly the same as everyone else.

Re:Ha! - Federal Income tax is not paid.

[slew]

You're figures are fine except that Hr1B visa holders DO NOT pay
federal income tax (I'm not sure of the particulars, but it's true).

So their effective salary is significantly higher than the stated values.

CAP === 'accord'

I have no idea where you get your information, but H1B visa holder are required to pay all federal, state, local taxes including FICA (Social Security) and Medicare.

The only exception I am aware of is that if you by some circumstances become a non-resident-alien of the US for part of the year (hired mid-year, or terminated mid-year), you can dual-status and only pay US taxes on your US based income and a flat 30% on non-US connected income (normally you have to pay US taxes on your worldwide income although you can claim an exemption for taxes you paid to another country).

Your confusion might be that those on OPT (practical training) temporary visas which often are used by college graduates before they get H1Bs are exempt from FICA and medicare, but are still not exempt from other state and federal income taxes. OPT used to be a max of 1 year, but now it is 2 years.

Re:Ha! - Federal Income tax is not paid.

[PortHaven]

That's not what we're talking about silly H1-B.

What we're talking about, is that the jobs us Americans are working, for $75,000 would pay over $100,000. Except rather than pay what the market demands, the companies import workers on H1B visas. They claim, they can't find the talent. Utter BS, often they replaced trained with untrained workers, and have the trained workers train their replacements.

But you see, if you can hire imported workers for $60K-$70K, then you never have to pay the market value. And you can force Americans into lower pay. It's basic economics of supply and demand.

And GUESS WHY that pay average is around $60K-$70K, because that was the $110K of yesteryear. That was the amount that if the salary exceeded, they never get investigated for wage sinking. And guess what, $60K in 1990 when H1B visas went into effect, if adjusted for inflation would now be $110K. So all Ted Cruz is asking for is the originally minimum salary cap being put back in effect. All laws passed should be inflation adjusted, if so, then it would already be $110K