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Trump's Next Immigration Move To Affect H-1B Visas; Require Tech Companies To Try To Hire Americans First: Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)

AdamnSelene writes: A report in Bloomberg describes a draft executive order that will hit the tech industry hard and potentially change the way those companies recruit workers from abroad. The H-1B, L-1, E-2, and B1 work visa programs would be targeted by requiring companies to prioritize higher-paid immigrant workers over lower-paid workers. In addition, the order will impose statistical reporting requirements on tech companies who sponsor workers under these programs. The order is expected to impact STEM workers from India the most. Penguinisto adds: If (perhaps when) the president follows through, his next move could limit or at least seriously alter the way H-1B visas are distributed, putting U.S. citizens at a higher priority, and possibly restricting H1-B visas tighter. From the article: "If implemented, the reforms could shift the way American companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Apple recruit talent and force wholesale changes at Indian companies such as Infosys and Wipro. Businesses would have to try to hire Americans first and if they recruit foreign workers, priority would be given to the most highly paid. "Our country's immigration policies should be designed and implemented to serve, first and foremost, the U.S. national interest," the draft proposal reads, according to a copy reviewed by Bloomberg. "Visa programs for foreign workers should be administered in a manner that protects the civil rights of American workers and current lawful residents, and that prioritizes the protection of American workers -- our forgotten working people -- and the jobs they hold."

7 of 834 comments (clear)

  1. Re:OK, help me out... by The+Joe+Kewl · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Call me whatever the F you want. I wish this was around 7 years ago when I got outsourced after 9 1/2 years with my previous company!

  2. Make sure the H1Bs are paid $100k by mveloso · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you make sure an H1B holder is paid over $100k a year the abuses will stop.

    Or require them to be paid the average prevailing wage of the position in the CEO's MSA.

    Either one will kill large chunks of the body-shop industry.

    Lastly, put in a bounty program for body shops that use B1 visa holders for body shopping. Reporters get 40% of the imposed fine, which is a multiple of the salary delta between the body shoppers and the equivalent FTE.

  3. Re:OK, help me out... by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The H-1B visa was a mistake. Even in Canada, employers have to go through a lengthy Labour Market Impact Assessment process before they can hire a temporary foreign worker, and some companies have had their privileges to do so revoked because they misrepresented their case and made it look like Canadians weren't available to do the job. We also have tighter salary laws. Extreme sub-market wages hurt everyone in the end—including the company, which ends up with damaged morale, weakened culture, and subpar work caused by inadequate training.

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  4. Simple solution to the H1B problem exists. by goombah99 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    All you have to do is insist that any person hired on H1B receive a salary 25% higher than the highest paid equivalent level US person in the company. If they are willing to pay the premium then it's pretty clear it's not bullsh*t to say they are more qualified for the job. I've seen proposals to simply fix the salary at say $150K . but a fixed salary can't span the distance from academia to industry or across various types of work.

    As someone who handles a lot of resumes I plainly see that many foreign applicants are infact more qualified in some cases. So I don't think they should end the H1B program. They just need to end the abuse of it.

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  5. Re:OK, help me out... by Mashiki · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The TFW program is being abused badly and more so since Trudeau loosened the rules that Harper had put into place. More people are losing their jobs to imported workers, and not just the very bottom rung. But skilled tradesman like welders, pipefitters, machinists and so on. The process isn't stringent enough here in Canada, and companies have already figured out how to abuse it.

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  6. Re:About by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Except that more than just 16 year olds work at places like this, and Walmart in particular, through its part time employment practices, essentially uses the taxpayer as its benefits system. If Walmart is to be allowed to pay a very minimum wage, then it should at least be forced to provide a large amount of full time employment.

    In actuality Walmart seems to be slowly realizing that its employment practices lead to high turnover, and the cost of training new employees is actually costing it money. There's something to be said for a decent wage and benefits if you're talking about retention. If you could pay one 17 year who you trained to clean the bathrooms and sweep the floor, and he stayed at the job for more than a few months, wouldn't that ultimately be cheaper than having to train a new person with some frequency, even if the training isn't overly complex?

    What you're talking about here is a rather one-dimensional of the worth of a job, even a so-called "low skilled job". There are damned few jobs that literally require no training whatsoever, and not that many where the training takes a few hours. A place like McDonalds or Walmart can actually have a good deal of training in safety, processes, systems and the like that can extend longer than one shift, and thus every time you have to replace an employee who you've pissed on because you're paying them shit wages, you're costs actually go up. And that's not even talking about productivity and quality issues that come from paying piss poor wages.

    Want to solve the housing problem, don't starve people out. Build more houses. If the market can support the jobs, then the market can support the housing, unless of course you're talking about a real estate bubble, and in the hottest markets that has fuck all to do with minimum wages, and everything to do with speculators, and in some areas, like Seattle, Vancouver, Toronto and London, it has to do with wealthy foreign buyers planting their cash into what they view as safe real estate market. That somebody working at McDonalds slinging burgers for $15 an hour is utterly irrelevant in these kinds of markets, and cutting their wage in half wouldn't bring the housing prices down at all, because there is little if any relation between the overheated market and the hourly wage of burger slingers and door greeters.

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  7. Re:What in the blue hell are you talking about by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 5, Interesting

    US companies generally don't want to set up shop in some foreign country. They want the comfort, safety, infrastructure, and lifestyle that comes from living in the US. They just want to import cheap code-monkeys to work locally, rather than pay full price for local code-monkeys.

    If they decide to relocate to another country, that's fine. Let them move to China or India. They can let us know how easy it is for an American company to set up shop and take local jobs away from local tech companies. I'm going to guess that'll be a bit harder than they thought. Or if they can outsource all their coding/IT away and get the results they like, fine with me as well. That's legitimate global competition, but you have to take the bad with the good. In other words, they'd just better not cry to me when all their code or data mysteriously turns up in competing products and services, or on the black market, similar to what hardware makers face these days in China.

    And the notion that Trump is doing this simply for political reasons? You guys don't get him. I don't think Trump is a deep or complicated person. He often speaks off the cuff, and said what he was going to do, and now he's doing it. It's pretty simple, but some people can't wrap their brains around it because they see the back-room double-dealings of Clinton as normal and expected behavior for a politician, and so, naturally, expected the same from him. He still has nearly four years to disappoint everyone, so we'll see.

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