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Congress Will Consider Proposal To Raise H-1B Minimum Wage To $100,000 (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: President-elect Donald Trump is just a week away from taking office. From the start of his campaign, he has promised big changes to the US immigration system. For both Trump's advisers and members of Congress, the H-1B visa program, which allows many foreign workers to fill technology jobs, is a particular focus. One major change to that system is already under discussion: making it harder for companies to use H-1B workers to replace Americans by simply giving the foreign workers a raise. The "Protect and Grow American Jobs Act," introduced last week by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. and Scott Peters, D-Calif., would significantly raise the wages of workers who get H-1B visas. If the bill becomes law, the minimum wage paid to H-1B workers would rise to at least $100,000 annually, and be adjusted it for inflation. Right now, the minimum is $60,000. The sponsors say that would go a long way toward fixing some of the abuses of the H-1B program, which critics say is currently used to simply replace American workers with cheaper, foreign workers. In 2013, the top nine companies acquiring H-1B visas were technology outsourcing firms, according to an analysis by a critic of the H-1B program. (The 10th is Microsoft.) The thinking goes that if minimum H-1B salaries are brought closer to what high-skilled tech employment really pays, the economic incentive to use it as a worker-replacement program will drop off. "We need to ensure we can retain the world's best and brightest talent," said Issa in a statement about the bill. "At the same time, we also need to make sure programs are not abused to allow companies to outsource and hire cheap foreign labor from abroad to replace American workers." The H-1B program offers 65,000 visas each fiscal year, with an additional 20,000 reserved for foreign workers who have advanced degrees from US colleges and universities. The visas are awarded by lottery each year. Last year, the government received more than 236,000 applications for those visas.
I'm not a big fan of Trump, but if he actually delivers on this campaign promise (even if it's just scrawling his signature on the bill and then taking all the credit in speeches) that will be a good thing for me and most employed people on slashdot.
Is there any way this is a bad thing? H1B was supposed to be for bringing in essential foreign talent. If a company isn't willing to pay $100k per year plus the various expenses, whoever they are bringing it must not have been all that talented.
No more abuse for corporations. h-1b is an insult to the US. No more weaseling out of this one you motherfuckers.
An even better solution - move to a points system and no guest workers.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
âAnd, here, tech folks admit that increasing the minimum wage leads to less employmentâ.
I think it actually helps increase American IT jobs, because it reduces costs for US-based IT offices.
The big problem is the closing of US offices and moving *all* that office's jobs offshore. Unfortunately, that's part of capitalism and has been for the last 600 years. However, we should have laws preventing, or making it extremely expensive, for employers to force workers to train their replacements. I think we should go after that instead of H1-B restrictions.
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How many companies will see this as the tipping point to it making more sense to move the company to where the H-1B workers are instead of continuing to do the work inside the USA?
Now when I replace American worker, I will be getting paid more than American worker!
Any advanced degree employee at Microsoft H1B visa or not will make much more than 100k.
If the goal is the best and brightest, why deny anyone based on luck?
Leave the work of determining who to bring in to the H1-b sponsors. If they want to pay $50,000 to get their guy in, and another company wants to pay $60,000 for their guy, then it's pretty obvious who we should let in.
I would restrict H-1Bs to only areas of the country where residential rents (per sq. foot) are in the lower 50 percentile. If Google or Facebook wants to hire someone on an H-1B, open an office in Idaho or Mississippi or Fresno and hire them there. High skilled immigration is supposed to help the US, not just San Jose.
Or, alternately, if you want to hire $1 worth of H-1B payroll in a high rent area, then move $3 in payroll to a lower rent area.
This would help immigrants learn about America and Americans learn about immigrants. And it would help encourage tech companies to open facilities somewhere where people go to live rather than somewhere people go only to work.
The goal of the H1B program is supposedly to bring talent to this country that simply cannot be had otherwise. Talent like that should be rare and paid accordingly.
They can and will be replaced with companies that don't see US citizens (of all skill levels) as a problem.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
you're living in fantasy land if you think Congress will support this. Lobbyists will shut this down cold.
$100,000 is still too low. I'd say $300,000, but I'm open to an auction system too. The auction method would need a quota, and the other could safely be open ended.
See that "Preview" button?
Something feels off about this. I want to make it clear I hated both Hillary and Trump and think they're equally dangerous.
This won't increase the minimum wage for existing tech workers. In places like Redmond and the Bay Area, wages are already way over $100k. I don't think this will really change things for the best.
The only people who will be able to afford H1-B people are the big companies. I have a feeling this will starve the rest of the IT sector, consolidate jobs in Seattle/SF/NYC, and only allow the very large companies to even hire immigrants. This will push less qualified workers out of these high income areas and into 100k/year jobs in rural areas. Amazon/Microsoft/Google/Whoever will be able to hire the best US and on-US workers.
...because there's a lot of money to be made "off-shoring" these jobs and what business wants, business gets.
And has for the past seventy years.
Immigration and free trade are a big part of that. Lots of countries bow to internal pressure (think: Brexit/Trump/labor unions) and clamp down on either or both; the USA has done both on occasion in the past, but not to the extent of most of the major developed countries it competes with.
Something to keep in mind. There's a reason why Silicon Valley is the standard by which every other wannabe tech metro measures itself against. It's because it's open to the best and brightest, regardless of where they're born.
Great big NI.GGER Penises!
I recently heard a better idea.
Auction the H1B visas to the companies.
Take all the revenue from the auction and put it towards scholarships for people studying to work in STEM.
Also, fast-track to green card. The higher the price paid for the visa, the faster the green card application is approved.
Anyone worth an expensive visa is probably someone we want to make a permanent resident. Make the rhetoric around H1B match the reality - bring the best and brights to america and then keep them here.
The one catch is we have to make sure the number of available visas is limited to a number that maximizes auction revenue. Otherwise they'll just flood the market and the auctions won't fetch squat.
Raising the minimum wage to $100,000 for foreign tech workers is good.
Raising the minimum wage to $15/hr for Americans is bad.
Welcome to Donald Trump's America.
You are welcome on my lawn.
We should be opening the boarder and eliminating socialism. That is what would make us more competitive. This is just a temporary hack. If you think corporations can't simply move overseas you are mistaken. They can and they will. They are. Increasing the barriers to entry will just make us less competitive. The reality is sometimes you have to switch jobs, move to management positions, etc. Most people could be making six figure if they made the right decisions after graduating high school. The reality is what people were promised and expected was unrealistic. People got educated and trained for careers that were never going to work long term. Well, guess what- now it's time to re-train. I'm 32 and make good money. I got a computer science degree (4YR B.S.). I however didn't decide to go out and take the first job that came my way. I turned it down. I turned down a very good paying job in fact to take a $9 hr / job working 30 hours a week for six months so I could start a company that'd guarantee me income for a heck of a lot longer than had I gone to work for the first company that offered me a job. Do you know how long I would have had that first job had I taken it? 6-8 months. Then they went under. Make smarter decisions people cause socialism and protectionism won't work forever.
Sucker: It's the Indian's... They're taking all our jobs for half the salary.
Groucho: Well give them more money then!
Rim Shot.
My graduate program is chock full of unqualified "fresher" Indians looking to exploit the Masters degree loophole.
Best and the brightest? Don't make me laugh.
I'm not a big fan of Trump, but if he actually delivers on this campaign promise (even if it's just scrawling his signature on the bill and then taking all the credit in speeches) that will be a good thing for me and most employed people on slashdot.
Is there any way this is a bad thing? H1B was supposed to be for bringing in essential foreign talent. If a company isn't willing to pay $100k per year plus the various expenses, whoever they are bringing it must not have been all that talented.
Good post.
We have to get back in the mode where we can say "the other side did this" without assigning blame and descending into name calling.
It's been argued for the last 2 decades (-ish) here on this site that the main problem with American governance is corruption by big business. Regardless of the left or right position we need to start doing things that are good for the people, even if such actions are narrowly bad for business.
This is a good start, it was indeed one of his campaign promises, and that part doesn't matter one bit.
(I'm very curious to see who votes for/against the bill, or if it gets killed in committee.)
Here's another even better solution: Set a fixed limit, and then auction off the visas to the highest bidder, with the proceeds going to the US Treasury. Currently, they are free (other than a processing fee) and issued to whomever is first in the queue. An auction would ensure they go to the companies that value them the most, and have a real need to import critical skills, rather than just looking for cheap labor.
Hmm... 65,000 visas auctioned off for $1000 each would net about $65 million, possibly more.
That's actually enough to pay for some of the smaller services, and it's a great idea.
What's been going on with Slashdot? There's been, like, 4 insightful posts in the last 24 hours.
And how many of these H1(b)'s are doing engineering work at MS? Well, some from Canada but that's about it.
Require that for every H1-B hired that an American be hired to shadow that H1-B hire and learn the job the H1-B is supposed to do.
If an American is not available, multiply the H1-B's salary by 3 and contribute that to the nearest college with a computer training curriculum.
If the company is a habitual user of multiple H1-B visas, require the company to set up and fund an apprentice program at the nearest school, with priorities for the most disadvantaged students.
There are a lot of sharp foreign people out there. Will this ploy backfire in their faces?
In the Portland Oregon area, housing prices rose 20% last year. The poor and disabled in Beaverton and Hillsboro are getting squeezed out of the housing market. I have seen a HCL employee work 5 months on a L2 visa, then goes back to India for a month, come back to work for an other 5 months on a L2 visa.
Hmm... 65,000 visas auctioned off for $1000 each would net about $65 million, possibly more.
I think it would net WAY more than that. My company paid a lawyer $10k to do the H1-B paperwork for an important employee from a site we were closing in Europe. It turned out that we didn't even get the visa. If we could have just bid instead, I think we would have been willing to pay at least $50k, and likely a lot more, to guarantee a quota.
I agree completely, I was just hesitant to speculate that much on the value.
We're now talking about a billion dollars in revenue, which for comparison purposes is a sizeable percentage of the $18b NASA budget or the $6b NOAA budget.
With that amount of money, over 20 years you could rebuild a lot of infrastructure.
most of those visas are filled with high qualified people who received free/low cost higher education
Why go into engineering when management or sales pays double for less work?
Because, if you are in a good work environment in a good company, it's a whole lot more fun to follow your heart than to follow your wallet.
For those whose hearts lead them to engineering and who are fortunate enough to have a good work environment in a good company, there's plenty of reasons to stay rather than go with a less-work/higher-paying position in management or sales.
On the other hand, if your heart isn't in engineering, you probably shouldn't be there. If it is in engineering but you are in a lousy work environment or lousy company, change employers, not careers.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Shouldn't the pay be higher than what Americans are paid not the same? Shouldn't the cost discourage long term use of the program. Maybe average salary, plus $100,000 adjusted for inflation.
We have a winner. Sorry Slashdot. Realistically you can't be all conservative and gong ho Libertarian like most all and so that is the market wage yada yada with other people's jobs including minimum wage hikes or automation stories with posts about increasing demands for robots ..... then cry WANNA UNFAIR.
I am not saying I agree with this. But rather I want to state economic reality. If you put in artificial caps the market will respond appropriately and negatively. Our version of robots taking over is to give Phreej a root account and have him do the work in Bangalore.
I think this will surely bring more jobs overseas than protect them. Limits on H1B1 visas sure but 100k is quite excessive as not all IT jobs are frankly worth 100k. Yes someone needs to administer a database or do Active Directory infrastructure support and work. These are solid middle class jobs that are not super specialized anymore.
http://saveie6.com/
You Americans sure know how to price yourself out of the market. Guess where I won't be developing my next product?
Ultimately all your software guys will be out of work
I've spent a lot of time fixing other people's code. ...
I've spent too much time throwing out off shored code. Just worthless.
I've had offshore teams coding for me. Asia fails. China, India, never got it right.
I had a team in Hungry, they were good. Not great, I said don't and one did it anyway. Language issues
To be so bad at your job that you're terrified of 80,000 non-native English speakers (out of a workforce of 160m) who generally tend to work in growth industries. If you can't beat out an Indian making 60k, maybe the problem isn't them, it's you.
These are solid middle class jobs that are not super specialized anymore.
If they're not super specialized it shouldn't be an issue to find someone locally to do it for less than $100k. The H1B program was supposed to be for filling those really difficult to fill jobs.
And if you truly can't find anyone to do it locally, then it should be worth $100k to you.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I don't understand the economics of H1B. So a lot of people say these are low paid, low quality labourers. 60k is not THAT cheap for some parts of the US. Surely there must be equally qualified or better local workers willing to work for that money rather than be homeless and if these imported workers are shit, why even bother ?
job titles are to easy to game now an COL based mini wage for H-1b's say rangeing from 90K-150K+ Is nice.
And it's easier to stop people from gameing the location.
I'm from India and work in Bangalore.. This move might hurt our industry in the short term but I think in the long term we will gain with more jobs moved here. Companies like IBM, Accenture etc no longer outsource work to local companies here but they themselves have a very significant presence and work force here.. If I'm not wrong, I think IBM has the maximum no of hired man power in India..
job titles are to easy to game
Indeed. At my company, people have the freedom to pick their own title. With a few exceptions (you can't say you the CEO, president, or a director) it can be anything you want. One of our warehouse clerks has business cards that say "Supreme Commander".
The only real solution to the H1-B problem is to eliminate it entirely. If somehow it's true that finding talent is so hard that we need to import it, then institute a proper accelerated green card program for properly qualified folks and let them compete with Americans on equal legal footing. The H1-B program creates indentured servants who risk getting tossed out on their ear if they don't stay in line. That is the edge they have over American workers who are free to leave oppressive conditions. I think that is what companies want out of it, not the talent. Just look at who is actually hiring these folks for proof.
So no, raising the minimum H1-B wage is just theater. Kill the program and replace it with something far more fair for everyone involved. Well, except the greedy companies sucking the job out of life.
Firstly, it should be 108k adjusted for inflation since it was first set but whatever.
More importantly, it's going to be a waste of time if they fix it because it'll be broken within a few years (unless we have deflation in which case things are much worse anyway).
$100,000 is basically top 20%.
So instead of setting it at $100,000, set it at "Must pay a salary equal to the lowest income in the highest quintile for the prior tax year".
That way it will naturally increase with inflation. When $60,000 was originally set, it had purchasing power of over $100,000 today.
And if these are so special, rare, and talented then shouldn't they be making top 20% pay?
Keep in mind that Google and similar companies are often unable to hire the truly rare genius's they need because all the slots have been taking by bachelor's degree candidates with "C" averages for that year by large consulting firms.
The goal of H1B was to bring in labor unavailable in the U.S. at any price- not to bring in labor that undercut local market prices.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Real talent is worth more than 100k
neighborhood and you get hit by the Islamic Truck of Tolerance
I remember his famous routine where he wanted to make a law to make it illegal to pay illegal aliens less than what an American earns for the same job...
If that was possible they'd already be doing it, because it would be vastly cheaper than even the lowest paid H1-B.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Every single indicator from history disagrees with this sentiment.
Except for the ones that precede the deleterious effects of globalization. Never mind that the United States' economic/geopolitical status as a hyperpower tends to nullify precedents set by other countries.
Approximately 75% of the [amorphous construct redacted] market (by consumption not population) is found outside of the US so if our country tries to rely [redacted].
Nothing says that the US market can't be served by itself and friendly countries, while others can be localized to serve *their* own.
Given the proper reward, companies will step up and employ as well as serve US customers - as well as those in friendly (read: not recipients of abuse/fraud against US citizens) foreign countries.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Still not enough to afford one's own shitty studio apartment (without roommates) in San Francisco or Silicon Valley.
> the only way to combat it is by some incorruptible authority guarding against it with an eagle eye
If you have an incorruptible authority handy, that would certainly be good. The framers of the Constitution (the written one, not the govt we have now) explicitly designed the system to make greed and self-interest work for good. For example, the way separation of powers works was designed for that purpose. A hundred of the most powerful people in the country, the Senate, was to have many of the powers the President doesn't have; the President could gain those powers only if the Senate gave up power. That effectively restricted presidential power for most of the first 150 years - Congressmen could retain their power only by seeing to it that the President didn't take over, and vice-versa. The founders wrote about this.
Consider two economic systems. In the first, everyone is supposed to get the same $18,000 /year. Greedy (amd hungry) people who want more can only get more by doing illegal things - corruption, black market, etc. In the second system, you can get more money by providing anything that people want. If farmers want better tractors, you can make a lot of money making better tractors for them. If people want better smartphones, you can make a lot of money by making better smartphones for them.
In the first system, people who want more for themselves have no choice but corruption and crime. In the second system, the easiest way to get more for yourself is to do something that's helpful to other people. The second system has much *less* corruption (much less, though not zero).
We all know your sweet lies and tricks: "Oh, this measure is not as strong as it should be, so drop it completely !". NOT
Folks, the Bankster-controlled MSM again runs a smear-campaign against Trump. YOU must now venture out to NYTIMES, CNN, USA Today, The Economist to voice your support for the Patriot Trump.
If not, you will aid and abet the Banksters in selling YOU DOWN THE RIVER. The river to China, because China is run by patriots, not by Sodomists like NY.
Your Banksters have been shitting all over the place, using their stooges Obama, Bush and Clinton. They love to destroy you in the name of the megalomanic "growth" fetish.
This is the normal trajectory of Banksterism and a strong state must keep these idiots in check. Trump shows all the signs of doing so.
But of course the run a cross-media smear campaign against him. Still.
Go to the comment sections of the Bankster Magazines (The Economist, NYTIMES, FAZ, Le Monde, TIME etc) and blast their lies.
Invented by a bankster in a bankster centre (London). GO FIGURE !
We know your tactics of diversion, corrosion and demoralization.
The banksters and their Marxist tools hate the experienced, White Engineer. They are jealous about the skills of this man. What they want is a helpless mass of demoralized slaves, who will serve them.
Stand up and fight ! Do not back down when they try to exert pressure. Report them as "suspected Russian spies" to the FBI. That will make them run away.
We know you support the destruction of nations for your QUICK GAIN.
But please accept that we will fight you BASTARDS.
We know your propaganda tricks.
We know your dirty operatives posing as government agents, trying to intimidate dissenters.
We will not back down.
We will report you to our friends and to domestic intellligence for processing.
We will take photos of you and post them to police and intelligence.
The net effect of this price control will be to accelerate offshoring of those services performed by H1-B workers today.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
So you want to sell your patriot's jobs to China, so that your ego will be expanded from Silly Valley exploits ?
Face it, the downside of NY Bankster policies is by now larger than the upside.
You are an idiot. that's all.
Wouldn't it be easier to just train the Americans?
...and go figure, look who sponsored the bill. Since most H1Bs are already paid $100k+ in Cali, all this is doing is moving the H1B work pool from other states with lower incomes to Cali. I think they need to tax the sponsor for each H1B they have. And partially do away with the lottery system to where the more you pay, the more you is the primary selection process.
At least SOME H1-Bs from overseas will see an increase in pay. The market response will be more applicants, and more people overseas seeking degrees in those fields. You can't fool Mother Free Market.
Gently reply
This does not change the incentives at all.
- It reduces the demand for visas: fewer workers are candidates for replacement.
- It shifts the pain around: workers in high cost-of-living markets are more vulnerable.
- It moves the barrier to the middle, instead of the bottom, of the industry's pay grade, creating weird discontinuous effects (similar to the way employer health care introduces a discontinuity that blocks moms from working part time)
An example of changing incentives:
- the existing (ineffective) rules you must post the job publicly and entertain domestic candidates who apply
- a "turnstile" rule: workers entering must equal workers leaving on H1B-similar visas to other countries, combined with some kind of carbon credits system where you can pay to incent an American to leave temporarily
- removing nonmonetary incentives, like the restrictions on employee movement that make them indentured servants
- taxes that the worker doesn't get (ex. the existing huge application fees)
Seems this this benefits everyone except those who would exploit this program.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
If the uniquely skilled workers who are angry about being replaced with H1B's were making well over $60,000 a year, why can't those same people make the same amount of cash working for themselves? (or even more $$, assuming that their ex-employer is "greedy" and makes a profit)
I have spent the last several months hiring two QA engineers. I got about two dozen resumes that had been pre-screened by the corporate recruiter. All of them were somewhat qualified. I phone interviewed about half of those, and had about 8-10 people come in for interviews.
Most of them were on some kind of work program. I only saw resumes for three men, and one came in for an interview. He was from an African country. I think the other two may have been Americans, but I didn't phone interview them and am only guessing by their names.
All the rest of the resumes were women, and only 1 was American.
So while I understand the sentiment that the H1B program is being used to "replace American workers" - which I am sure it is - I personally don't see it. I did not get any qualified Americans applying for the position. There was nothing wrong with the salary or the market we are in, and nothing specialized about the positions. Now I do know that Big Corporations are able to use-and-abuse the visa program because I have seen it firsthand. But there is also some good that comes out of the program as well.
I guess this what we've been reduced to though, you have to choose one end of the spectrum, there's no in-between on anything.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
H1B program is just the tip of the iceberg. Indian companies TCS, Cogniscent, HCL, or Indian-American companies Syntel, Mastec, whatever name they go by now, all engage in faking credentials, faking interviews, faking resumes. A few good ones take a phone interview, and someone else shows up for the job.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
"Socialism."
You use that word a lot. I do not think it means what you think it means,
H1-B is abused left and right and $100K base will not solve much...
1) Use an auction system so the marketplace can dictate. This will discourage companies to find replacements because the alternative to an American worker will not be much cheaper and it will be there for what it is. -- To allow for talent where there is a shortage and the salary depends on the field. ASIC/FPGA guys make $140-$160K average with $180K for top federal jobs. That is obviously not the same with IT workers. So you can't just "baseline" the salaries...
2) Just as important is to drastically limit the pool of H1B. US Companies attempted to hire 235,000 H1-B's while laying off thousands of American Engineers and IT folks. If you don't limit it, just about every other company would rather try auction than post on a career website for talent.
Auction + limited H1B pool would do wonders to fix this system. Companies would hate it, because it would work the way it was supposed to. If you can't find American workers, well you can always try to go to auction and pay a bit more. The incentive is then going to be to 'try harder to fill those spots with American workers' which is the point in the first place.
If we're combating wealth inequality, "America First" and "America Great Again" then the H1B minimum salary should be pegged at no less than 20% of the salary + bonus + benefits of an organizations CEO/COO (whichever is higher) as posted the prior year according to their income tax statement - or $100K pegged to 2016 dollars - whichever less less. Although honestly unless we have a way to verify the quality of the imported talent - their safety - then we really should only allow American-made talent. For now. I'm all for H1B worker visas - but only after the FDA says they're safe. Just like that recently defeated drug import amendment. AM I RIGHT CORY BOOKER? AM I RIGHT?
imagine a soft, buttery paw gently pressing down onto a sleeping soldier's face. forever.
Companies now incentivized to open foreign development offices. Right? If you hire foreign nationals in their country of origin they're not an H1B employee. So instead of importing foreign workers to the U.S. (who pay rent, taxes and buy things from American companies), American employers will just employ more people abroad.
not entirely. You're never going to get completely rid of the ruling class. You're just not. That's because people are allowed to give their offspring their possessions when they die and those advantages accumulate over generations. I suppose we could go full Sparta and separate children from their parents and make everyone truly the equal from birth. But somehow I don't think that'd fly. It's also not the best solution.
The solution was and still is a heavily regulated economy that limits wealth inequality by taxing and redistributing wealth. We've been calling that socialism for at least a 150 years. Raise the marginal tax rate back to 90%. There's been exactly 1 time in history when the working class did well (not counting a slim merchant class). That was when a large organization (gov't) stepped in, took money from the ruling class and gave it to the the working class. It happened after WWII.
Raise minimum Wage to 15/hr. Accelerate automation and then implement basic income. And for God's sake get over our fear and hate that somebody might have a good life without punching a clock 40-60 hours a week and toiling away in misery. Do that or you're going to have the ruling class crushing you to maintain their power like they've done for 5 thousand years of recorded history.
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Consider a hypothetical BigCo, which hires ConsultingCo, to manage their IT -- ConsultingCo should not be allowed to staff their business with H-1B visa holders as that's not what the visa is supposed to be used for.
It's also hard to see then what BigCo is doing as it's hidden by the ConsultingCo -- if BigCo has 100 American IT employees and after the transition they still have 100, but 95% of these are H-1B's then how do you find out that what has effectively happened here is discrimination by national origin, hidden by a contract between two companies? Unless there's a leak, or the people hurt by the move make a public statement, or sue, it's not easy to see what's happened, and this is occurring all over the USA.
Absence of mass firings, this sort of arrangement should still not be allowed as it messes up the local labor force, pushing rates down, competition up, and changes the playing field in favor of engineers with 2nd class status which makes them more attractive than the local citizens.
If Microsoft is paying someone $70k, bumping that up to $100k WILL make a difference
Why not just vote to end the program
But they're not paying $70k - they're already paying over $100k, which I think was the point. This will definitely impact the tech outsourcing firms, but it won't impact Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, or other major tech firms at all.
I would restrict H-1Bs to only areas of the country where residential rents (per sq. foot) are in the lower 50 percentile.
So you'd give all the jobs-for-locals benefits to residents of a few big cities and leave the rest of the population in competition for high-value jobs with underpriced H1-Bs?
Looks to me like you completely missed the point of the Trump Win. He was elected by exactly those people you propose to leave out in the jobless cold, over a set of issues of which loss of jobs to foreigners by H1-B visas, illegal immigration, and outsourcing topped the list.
This election - not just the Presidential, but all down the ticket - was largely a revolt by the rural and the downtrodden against the urban elites. Trying to fix the problem only for those living in pricey cities and leave it in full force for these voters is a recipe for more extreme shakeups.
If the soapbox and the ballot box both don't work, and the jury box is unavailable, the only one they've go left is the ammo box.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The only thing the H1 program did was help keep some jobs in the US. Changes to it will only help encourage more outsourcing. The upgraded fees will only change the roles of H1s from devs to managing outsourced products. Hilarious
I am generally against H1Bs altogether but if we have to have them, then increase their salaries as they undercut the American worker.
As a Java Developer who was born and raised in this country, finding a job with a good salary should not be difficult.
Also next soon thereafter, remove the HUGE contracting companies from existence. The middle man always takes money from somewhere....
H1B is about one thing only: increasing the size of the labor pool to lower labor costs for the benefit of corporations.
Can I enjoy Indian costs of living while having to compete with them? Can I cut a zero off my food, medical, housing and education costs? If not, then you can go fuck yourself, toady.
Indian restaurants are closing all over the UK because of a visa requirement that experienced chefs need a job offer of over £35k in order to get a visa.
https://www.theguardian.com/li...
Instead of a lottery, allocate the limited H-1B slots by auction, then use the money to support tech scholarships for US citizens.
Plenty. Less at MS than most tech companies, but when I was there it seemed about 1/3-1/2 (as opposed to about 2/3 at most left-coast tech software companies).
In software development, H1-Bs are just where most talent enters the pool, and as the industry is still so biased towards young talent, most of the workforce is still in the first 5 years of the industry. Most H1-B holders I've known over the years have green cards now, BTW, as the years went on.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Having an order of magnitude more skills than some I-can-use-Java-APIs weenie, I look forward to the inevitable raise!
Specifically: Java programmers who proclaim that they know HTTP and TCP/IP and SqLite: it means they worked with an App which utilizes them. They do NOT, repeat NOT know anything about the internals of them. I dare you to ask a candidate about the details of a TCP/IP connection handshake, or the performance implications of deleting a row, vs. deleting a column.
Fortunately, there's a limit to the supply by virtue of the number of visas, so I can actually see this being better for everyone involved (stateside). More foreign competition for the limited visa slots, and US workers are more appealing with the cost of living imbalance lessened.
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
Nice try, but "highest paying base salary" is going to be screwed by the same regional factors isn't it? That should be obvious so you are clearly doing this deliberately.
Are you pushing an agenda or just think that "flyover country" doesn't matter?
What you've written is only applicable to a tiny percentage of graduates each year that by connections or ability manage to snag one of a tiny number of jobs available at that incredibly high base rate, and are able to move to an area where rents are ridiculous. It's also skewed by those people who land a ridiculously high paying first job due to family connections and their pay rate is due to who they are and nothing to do with the actual job. That's relatively rare, is not going to show up on an average, but it's going to skew that "highest paying base salary" metric right up. Averages are what you should be looking for in an honest discussion.
Are you attempting an honest discussion and made a mistake or are you pushing an agenda with false metrics?
Umm, H1B's live in the US, so their costs of living are comparable.
Also, have you considered the benefit of the employees? They take these jobs, they obviously see it as an improvement on their condition, even with all the bullshit H1B's have to deal with. Do they not matter at all to you?
I question your contention that anything resembling a functioning "welfare state" exists in the USA.
Sorry to bother you dwpro, but modern politicians have a long history now of changing laws to make it legal to do things that were formally illegal. So nothing is concrete anymore.
In Canada we have a similar and much worse program called the Temporary Foreign worker program. I want these assholes gone. They are nasty to deal with as their cultures and training are complete shit. They are working like slaves, driving wages down, and generally are giving unethical companies that hire them a leg up over good solid companies. Maybe some of them are nice people but I would send them all home tonight.
Luckily they are mostly in places like Tim Hortons, but the drag is that they are pretty much ending the ability for students to get even crap jobs and quadrupling the competition among students for those jobs that can't seem to get TFWs. This is great, a whole generation of young people who can't get even onto the bottom rung of the ladder of life.
Trudeau is a huge disappointment as I had a vague hope that he might erase this policy since it was a conservative one. My one hope with Trudeau is that he pisses people off so much that we elect our own Trump who won't feel one bit bad sending these people back to the third world hellholes they came from to suck the vitality out of our country.
People keep crapping on Trump over and over, and he certainly seems to be the human version of a botched boob job, but if he identifies a whole bunch of places where the emperor has no clothes and ends these monstrous policies then good for him. Silicon valley hated that they actually had to pay competitive wages while raking in obscene amounts of money. You have top companies with billions in profits not paying the people who make it happen enough to live in SF, WTF?
I love that Silicon Valley supported Hillary and now have been completely shut out of the White House. Best day in a very long time. I hope he burns the lot of them. Forces them to pay taxes, forces them to pay good salaries, and maybe figures out that the bunch of them are violating our privacy in ways that make 1984 look like a peeping Tom.
Limits on H1B1 visas sure but 100k is quite excessive as not all IT jobs are frankly worth 100k.
H1-B is supposed to allow a foreign worker to fill a position if a US citizen can not be found with the skills for said position. If that worker is more skilled than *any* available US worker, shouldn't they be worth 100k? Maybe a company could take a crack at training a US citizen for once.
We gave up a decade ago.
I haven't bothered to apply for jobs in about that much time.
Certainly haven't kept up my skills. You expect people to keep up their skills for a decade without any possibility of a real, decent paying job?
Fuck you and all like you that created this situation by cheating, lying, and abusing US workers.
I'm not a big fan of Trump, but if he actually delivers on this campaign promise (even if it's just scrawling his signature on the bill and then taking all the credit in speeches) that will be a good thing for me and most employed people on slashdot.
There's no doubt that he can push through a number of short-term fixes that make him look good, and maybe it will create more jobs for Americans, at least in the beginning; but isn't this what was criticised severely during the early years of financial crisis - and still is: that there were strong incentives for the executives to make a quick buck and then cut your losses and run, leaving the fall-out to those left behind?
Just to take an example: Trump wants to abandon everything that has been done to protect the environment - he wants to introduce more coal burning, he wants to scrap the Paris agreement and drill for oil in the Arctic etc. Apart from the damage this will cause to America's environment and the health of Americans, down the line, it will also mean that Europe, China and India will continue to get ahead of America when it comes to renewable energy technology, environmental protection etc, and they will build up sustainable industries on top of this, which will provide sustainable jobs etc, while America in years to come will be forced to go and buy this from outside, when a future government finally decides to come to their senses.
Is there any way this is a bad thing? H1B was supposed to be for bringing in essential foreign talent. If a company isn't willing to pay $100k per year plus the various expenses, whoever they are bringing it must not have been all that talented.
I don't know - but I suspect it is not as simple as you make it sound. In many countries in Europe - especially in Scandinavia - there has traditionally been rather stiff rules about minimum wages, and it as meant that the business climate simply wasn't as attractive as in many other countries. The was one of the many contributing factors that pushed up income taxes and foreign borrowing for many years, and the attempts at getting the rules loosened up have caused social unrest, strikes etc. I'm not against minimum wages, but you have to have a well thought out plan so you are prepared to tackle the consequences. And I have seen no indication that Trump has a plan - his stance on climate change consists mostly of ignoring science and walking away from international agreements; it's a bit like keeping warm by pissing yourself - it works, but only briefly, and then you have a more pressing problem to deal with.
Umm, not when they're crammed ten to a two-bedroom apartment and send all their money back home. Which is the same thing you would do if you went overseas to take a temp job for 18 months. Umm.
Non sequitur that in no way addresses your own government importing temp workers to compete for your job.
...and zero sources.
Putting your opinions in parenthesis after your assertions doesn't count as sources to prove your assertions.
Frankly - Comey DID find that Clinton mishandled classified data in a criminal manner.
Here's my source:
https://www.fbi.gov/news/press...
And for the lazy:
"From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received."
Comey decided that Clinton did commit a crime - but did so without intent to commit a crime. The public saw right through this as one set of rules for us and another set of rules for the Clintons.
Clinton lost because she is corrupt, she is a criminal, and her policies sucked - and she lost to a real-estate developer/reality TV star with NO government experience at all.
That should tell you how terrible a candidate she really was.
Is it true that if there's a law that prohibits people from being paid less than a certain amount, it makes it harder -- impossibly, maybe even -- for them to get jobs?
What an amazing notion. And sort of obvious, in retrospect.
I wonder why no one has ever noticed this before?
Golly!
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Because I'm pretty sure that he can't be not in yet for the shit that's going wrong AND in for the shit that's going right at the same time.
Doesn't this just make outsourcing entire departments more likely? You can essentially contract out work w/o moving a company and not incur either the expected tariffs or the h1b rules. It allows you to pay pennies on the dollar and essentially make the problem worse.
There are plausibly lots of jobs that have salaries over $100,000, and the H1-B program has been a tool for corporations to erode the earning power of their employees.
Instead, do this. Anyone hired on an H1-B visa, must be paid at least 20% above market rates for that position, forever. Those are domestic pay rates too, not international!
This will put the oft-raised but suspiciously poorly supported corporate argument that 'there are no qualified applicants'. OK, you want to hire internationally, go ahead. But you will actually pay a premium to do it, and the premium will exist for all positions. Now we'll see just how much value corporations put into outsourcing/offshoring.
I suspect that outsourcing would come to a screeching halt, and use of the H1-B program would fall to statistically insignificant levels. Also, it would be 'discovered' that there are universities pumping out qualified applicants! And that experienced employees want to change employers, or locations, or whatnot. And that there is actually a functioning job market in the US. Mercy me!
The majority of H1B holders work for major tech companies in the bay area with some working in the financial industry. I seriously doubt how many of them receive a wage below 100k, and honestly how many Americans work in those industries and how many are actually hurt by H1B holders. People are firing at the wrong target. There aren't a lot of H1B visas out there. It's not like you get a random job and they automatically grant you a working visa. First, it's not that easy to get a job at all. It's not like you get whatever job you want. Most non-FLAG companies don't want to fuck with all those legal horse crap and they simply don't hire foreigners. Once you secure a job, you need to go in a lottery(where those cocksucking motherfucking Indian son of bitches cheat and get multiple shots. Obama administration knows it and just let those asshats get away with it), and one chance in four you will get to work in the US for 6 years. After six year, you will most likely be kicked out of America because getting a green card is hard as shit, and you know why it's so hard? Illegal immigrants filled up the quota. Look, gentlemen. Americans need jobs and I understand that. Actually, I'll get the fuck out myself if it will help because I fucking love this country but it's not going to help. If Trump wants to bring Americans job, kick those illegal immigrants out. Kick those cheating asses out. Bring the factories back to the US. Immigration system sure needs reform. It's very fucked up but not in the way most Americans think it is.
Inevitable because Indians are exporting their uncivilized Caste system to USA http://www.livemint.com/Opinio...
Casteism
Send Americans to India;
Indian education system will train them into highly skilled wage slaves;
Casteism
Not going to happen
And there is a HUGE difference between a "degree" and experience.
I am not really a Java developer, more a Java "script" kiddie. But I am no longer surprised, when I turn to an H1B hired for a Java position to discover they are more clueless than I am. It's very common.
Also, I've learned during interviewing that it is not uncommon for half the credentials to boil down to they took a 2 week program or completed an online tutorial. And that there is actually zero business experience for stated skill.
That if you pay them $60K+ you don't need to do any of that.
America operates under a fascist economic model of strong collusion between the business elites and government, striving for a two class system - elites and laborers.
We utilize intellectual property laws, courts, legislation, etc to control markets. But even worse, the application of those regulations are often very one sided.