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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.
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?
An even better solution - move to a points system and no guest workers.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
An even better solution - move to a points system and no guest workers.
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.
Seriously? Like the Tech Giants don't already have enough unfair advantages over smaller rivals and especially Startups which are the companies most likely to need to look offshore for people with uncommon skills
There is absolutely nothing bad about this.
Except this really screws up scientific research. This eventually makes it unaffordable to bring in foreign scientists to work on projects especially at the postdoc level. And no foreign scientists are not replacing american scientists because there are areas of science where there is only one person in the entire world that's an expert in that subject. This proposal is a step backwards.
A better proposal would make it illegal to replace a laid off non H1-B worker with a H1-B worker.
FWIW, I agree with you.
Raising the minimum wage just hurts the income of the truly needy and raises inflation.
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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.
It IS illegal to replace a local worker with an H1B worker under the current system, it is also required to do a search and hire locally first. The problem is nobody cares, over the years less than a dozen companies have ever been investigated and only a handful have ever been banned from applying for more H1B's and even then, the companies investigated and banned are very obvious shell companies.
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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.
You hire an H1B for the job. Will you also hire and train an American to fill that job? No, that would be crazy, the job is filled. So ten years from now that "temporary" hole is now a permanent skills shortage. And when that H1B decides to go home he can start up a company to do the same job for half the price of the American one. H1B doesn't just export jobs, it exports the entire industry.