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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.
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.
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.
$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.
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.
Re "It's because it's open to the best and brightest, regardless of where they're born."
The US graduates the worlds 'best and brightest" every year. The US has no advanced skills issues. Engineers, doctors, artists, artisans, lawyers, scientists, technicians all flow out of of the US educations system every year in bulk.
If you got your education in the USA and legally want to stay on your fine.
If you have the one skill the USA cant find in all its universities and within a vast pool of decades of skilled workers, you can still get into the USA to work.
The change is in not allowing wages to spiral down using cheap guest workers to never have to consider US workers.
The guest worker was to fill in a gap in US during times of need i.e. a specialty occupation, not a vast wage reduction system for years of wage savings.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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.)
Also, give holders more flexibility in changing jobs without losing the visa, make the system a path to citizenship, and prevent new visas from being created if previous holders are unemployed. Essentially prevent jobs from using the visa to control workers while suppressing wages or constantly churning through new candidates.
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.
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.
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/
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
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.
The problem is all the big companies shit on the small and medium sized ones. Gee with the rampant corruption and unlimited campaign contributions just who do you think will get those lovely cheap workers?
Also many are Doctors and Engineering professionals and not just helpdesk sweatshops.
How the can smaller guy compete with the big houses then for projects at companies when they can offer the same service for 1/2 the price due to cheaper labor?
The solution is to charge 25% above the average market value by county which keeps statistics for job titles. Let's say that Sr Unix admin is worth $125,000 a year in San Jose? The H1B1 visa holder can do the job but by law has to pay $156,260. A Sr. Unix Admin in rural Texas is worth $70,000 a year? Hire an H1B1 Visa for $87,500.
The doctors can still come here with no limit. Since they are specialists mostly they already charge $250,000 a year so the extra cost won't prohibit hospitals from hiring these doctors which America desperately needs which I think most slashdotters agree is what the Visa program was originally for
http://saveie6.com/
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
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.
Easiest mistake to make is misunderstanding that offshoring is NOT a apples for apples replacement and it does require unique skills and new expense to make it work.
There are plenty of offshore firms who have successful relationships with US companies. Select one of these firms and try them out. If it fails, it's probably you.
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.
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.