Slashdot Mirror
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."
fucking TIME!
So, what's the "group think" on this one? Because I don't want to be called a racist or a xenophobe...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I believe it's to hire the more expensive foreign workers, so they won't be able to low ball US worker salaries. I could be wrong though.
It means that if when this happens:
ABC Inc wants to bring over someone who is actually special, who has skills not available locally. Since they have special skills, ABC Inc is willing to pay them $190,000
XYZ Inc wants to import some entry-level coders, for $40K each ($20K cheaper than entry-level US workers)
ABC Inc wins. They are getting someone with special skills not available locally, as *evidenced* by fact that they are willing to pay for those special skills.
It's not perfect, but it's an improvement. No system is perfect.
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.
You've missed the obbious. Trump doesn't care what the media thinks. He does what's right no matter how much they screech.
I've said this before and it still stands: there needs to be a secret shopper program of sorts where test applicants (who have really good backgrounds that match the skills needed) apply and if they are rejected, a hearing is held. public embarassment would result from any company who was cheating.
it would be a bit of work to set it up and manage it, but the alternative is not working at all (ie, trust system).
I've often thought about this. I have been out of work for months and months at a time and yet I'm pretty well qual'd for many jobs. I applied for quite a few, several that were 'below' me since I needed to eat and would take any job I could get that would keep food on the table. even those, I could not get. I knew something was 'up' but no one really cares (who has power to change things).
I'm now employed, but during my 'out' months, it was a real struggle to find a company who would hire an older american and who needs a local salary grade to afford US style expenses.
I'd have volunteered to be a secret shopper. I'd enjoy it, in fact, since I would know that bad co's would be brought to justice.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Stop the fraud. These companies are firing Americans and replacing them with H1B individuals. And saying we can't find Americans with the skills! If the Americans they are firing don't have the skills, how could they be asked to train their replacements.
;) I was just dropped in the fire.
And if their replacements had the skills, why would they need training!
I have never been trained by an individual I was replacing
But easy on the hyperbole - we can't defeat the lying and maniacal fury of our White Nationalist POTUS by using their own techniques, any more than we can defend freedom by surrendering our freedom. I would recommend looking to the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior as an example of how we can win this fight. Let President Trump (nee: Drumpf) rely upon the Big Lie, screaming alternative facts at the top of his lungs. We must calmly and quietly assert Truth in response.
"What's right?"
I think you meant to say "He does what he thinks is right".
That isn't to say that it is or isn't right - but Trump isn't automatically right on all things. Keep that in mind.
set the same persons up in an overseas establishment. Send those who they replace to the establishment to train their "replacements". Depending on the foreign establishment, the new employees will get $10 k to $20 k per year, much more if they're in a European country, but not what they'd get in Silicon Valley. Seems like a lot of that's going on now.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
The days of "trying" to hire in the USA and then shopping globally for the cheapest average workers to bring into the USA are over.
The wage gap was so just tempting. If you really cant find an expert in the USA, you will have to find an expert in another nation and then pay top expert USA wages in full.
Some of the cash savings to not hire US workers and then bring in very average low cost workers to keep local wages low could now be more difficult.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
isnt that the point, if you looked everywhere in the country and could not find qualified personal, then you get into the H1 program??
In *theory* yes, in practice there are a few loopholes...
1. Pay at least $60K and the position is *deemed* to be highly qualified
2. Hire for a University
3. Advertise widely for a junior title position and hire a few on the cheap, then use this salary level to automatically qualify future H1b candidates by saying it is the same title as the previous position already advertised and filled (the trick used by the big consulting companies that hire many folks with "identical" titles).
Fixing the loopholes will go quite a ways to fixing the problem...
at least for H1-B. Last I heard they were legally required to attest they could not find a qualified American (fat lot of good that does).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I think we should abandon H1-B completely. If someone wants to work in the US, and has a job lined up here, then we should allow them to become a citizen within a year assuming they jump through the necessary hoops (take a night class, pass the citizenship exam, etc). This idiocy of requiring people to wait years, sometimes over a decade, to become a citizen while they work in the US at a well paying job is stupid.
We are a nation of immigrants. It's in most of our blood. Immigrants start businesses far more than native born Americans because they are risk takers... if they are willing to uproot themselves and move to a foreign land, they are likely willing to take other risks as well. That kind of risk taking is what built our nation, and shutting it out only harms us in the long run.
The H1-B program creates trapped workers who have to toe the line and rock no boats, lest they be fired and deported. This allows companies to abuse them in ways citizens would not put up with. An immigrant with citizenship is less of a threat to the livelihood of tech workers than an H1-B visitor, as companies would not be in a position to deport them if they asked for a raise; they could look for other jobs with impunity, and thus would compete on equal footing... and similarly, would not have to put up with artificially depressed wages.
So open up immigration, and fuck the stupid fake 'work' visas.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
There are way too many loopholes and nobody is really trying to enforce the rules. It is actually quite reasonable and legal to require hiring citizens and permanent residents first since the H1-B isn't even allowed to be here without a special visa that nobody is obligated to grant.
when you factor in training. And that's before we talk benefits, since most of these guys work for contractors. Also their young, but being here on work Visas nobody complains about age discrimination when their contracts don't get renewed past 40.
You're massively underestimating how profitable the abuse here is because the scale of it is hard to grasp. It's completely pervasive. Anything less than $300k (adjusted yearly for inflation) isn't enough. Remember: these Visas are suppose to be for geniuses. The best and brightest. It's 2017. A code monkey makes $100k, especially on the West Coast.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Currently there is a lottery every year to see which companies get the H1-Bs, they are not prioritized. (Other than having a couple types of H1-B).
> Thing is, this is already how H1-Bs are supposed to work.
It's already WHY, not HOW. Currently, companies (mostly a few staffing companies) put in applications in which they simply *state* that talent isn't available locally. They provide no *evidence* that Americans aren't available to do the job. There is then a lottery, and H1-Bs applications are randomly approved. The staffing firms, who submit hundreds of thousands of applications, then essentially resell the H1-Bs at a profit.
Trump's order is to give preference to applications which provide *evidence* that there is no local talent available because the employer is willing to pay the H1-B a high salary. A company wouldn't pay an imported worker $200,000 if an American will do the same job for $150,000. Therefore the high salary proves that the H1-B is being used as intended.
As I mentioned before, this plan is of course not perfect, but it's clearly an imprpvement. Perhaps Congress or the4 administration will make further improvements next week, next month, or next year - he's only been in office ten days.
I worked for Microsoft north of 15 years. My division hired something like 70 new H1Bs this year alone (all straight out college). I was one of the ones who trained three new hires. My job was gone in the next round of layoffs. Any company has massive layoffs should be mandated to first atleast consider the laid off staff before getting H1Bs. BTW, as an older and experienced person I command more than the younger H1Bs. It is baloney that the companies cant find talent locally. It is just the companies do not want to pay for it. BTW, I am of Indian ancestory.
Right now, H-1B's are assigned haphazardly to companies regardless of salary; that is, one after another, one H-1B may go to a $60000 programmer, and another to a $250000 expert.
Presumably, under the new rules, H-1B's would go to the highest paid positions first. That is, DHS would sort all visa applications (for the year or quarter) by salary, in descending order, and give out H-1B visas in that order until they run out.
This actually is probably a good change: it means that visas go to the most economically valuable positions and it pretty much ensures that people don't get hired as cheap replacements for US workers. It's similar to the idea of auctioning off the H-1B visas, which has also been discussed.
I mean wasn't the existing American workers would be given priority and in the case that no one has been found in a certain time like 3 weeks or so, then the position would be open to H1B wrkers. At least this is what I remember from my H1B days back about 20 years ago. But I know these indian a-hole companies, one of which was my visa sponsor and their recruitment ad was a page of incomprehensible goobledy-gook about my position , posted on an obscure bulletin board where I worked. At the time, the high school grad, so called sysadmins were turning their nose down to salaries I have been given and there was no word about recession. So, I did not think too much ab out it. Once I was on my way to my green card, thru marriage (and not a sham one if you have to ask) when I lost my job at the 2001 dot com bust, I realized what a peon I had been first time around. Nowadays, H1B is another way of saying cheap labor. At least at the time I was hired, I was being paid a market average salary. Now, I know Indian workers in So Cal, making 2/3 of what I was making in the same position and I was barely making the ends meet. T hey obviously were living in below standard levels. I do not have anything against these people as long as they are getting paid a salary as good as an american worker gets but companies undercutting the American workers by offering headcount 10-20-30% less than an their American equivalents is a sham, from which ever point you look at. Hence F*** Zuckerberg,, F*** Nadella, F*** Pichai and all their cohorts. Do not use these visas for things they are not introduced for. Taxpayers are not supposed to pay fr your way to the top. You are running a business. Bear the expenses like any smaller company does..
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
I agree. And it makes you wonder why Obama didn't manage to do this in eight years in office. This really seems like a no brainer.
The old way was "make a law telling companies they must ____." You pointed out how well that worked.
Trump's draft order has taken a hint from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison's approach - if people are motivated by money, you set it up so that they make the most money by doing what you want.
The draft order says that instead of approving H1-B applications at random, via a lottery, as it's done now, they are to use a different approach. If a company truly can't find American workers with the required skills, if the imported labor actually has special skills, the company will be willing to *pay* for those skills. Companies wanting to import cheaper entry-level prpgrammers won't pay them $180,000 / year. That's why Trump's order is to prioritize H1-Bs by salary. You want to import someone and pay them $40K? Go to the back of the line. You're willing to pay $200K salary because there truly aren't any Americans available with those skills? You're at the front of the line.
It totally removes the motivation to use H1-Bs as cheaper replacements for American workers, because it makes H1-Bs cost more than American workers. The company who wants to minimize costs will hire Americans, whenever possible.
Though it's not perfect, there is a certain genius to using their desire to minimize costs to get them to avoid H1-Bs. The founding fathers wrote about doing something similar. They deliberately set up a power struggle. It's designed so that a president could increase their power mainly by taking power away from Congress. On the other hand, Congress is a bunch of people who like having power and won't give it up easily. So to fight the President's desire for power, they used the Congresscritters' desire for power.
The old way was a lottery, with H1-B applications approved randomly. Oh and companies would say there were no American workers available, pinky swear.
Trump's draft order has taken a hint from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison's approach - if people are motivated by money, you set it up so that they make the most money by doing what you want.
The draft order says that instead of approving H1-B applications at random, via a lottery, as it's done now, they are to use a different approach. Preference is given to applications paying the highest salary. If a company truly can't find American workers with the required skills, if the imported labor actually has special skills, the company will be willing to *pay* for those skills. Companies wanting to import cheaper entry-level prpgrammers won't pay them $180,000 / year. That's why Trump's order is to prioritize H1-Bs by salary. You want to import someone and pay them $40K? Go to the back of the line. You're willing to pay $200K salary because there truly aren't any Americans available with those skills? You're at the front of the line.
It totally removes the motivation to use H1-Bs as cheaper replacements for American workers, because it makes H1-Bs cost more than American workers. The company who wants to minimize costs will hire Americans, whenever possible.
Though it's not perfect, there is a certain genius to using their desire to minimize costs to get them to avoid H1-Bs. The founding fathers wrote about doing something similar. They deliberately set up a power struggle. It's designed so that a president could increase their power mainly by taking power away from Congress. On the other hand, Congress is a bunch of people who like having power and won't give it up easily. So to fight the President's desire for power, they used the Congresscritters' desire for power.
Guess what. Technology workers like you and me aren't immune to the same damn laws of capitalism. Businesses will find a way to reduce costs and punch up their profits, no matter what populist measures are passed by the politicians.
I guess you missed it. The big bitch session about H1B's is that it isn't capitalism, it's cronyism. It's using government to interfere with the market by letting business use effectively indentured servants. They bring people in that don't have the knowledge about how much the job is actually worth, suppressing wages. Then when they find out they're getting screwed just like US citizens they have no recourse since if they raise a stink they lose their status and have to go back while the company gets yet another sucker. If this was capitalism then the foreign candidates would just work for somebody else that actually paid them what they're worth but with the H1B program they're prevented from taking any action. But hey, it's not as though this is the only time a company thought that using cronyism is a hell of a lot better deal than actual capitalism.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
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.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
XYZ Inc wants to import some entry-level coders, for $40K each ($20K cheaper than entry-level US workers)
I'm Canadian, and we don't really have this problem in the tech industry (other industries are a different matter...), thus I don't have a personal stake in what's happening in the US (other than the fact that I do routinely get calls from HR rep from large, well-known Internet companies that want to hire me and bring me down to the US, but I have solid reasons for not uprooting my family for such a move).
Personally, from what I've read on /., the situation you describe above sucks. We had a similar situation in my city a year or so ago when it was found that several McDonalds restaurants had been turning away student applications, and was using the Temporary Foreign Worker program to bring in foreign workers while claiming no local Canadian were interested in working for them. This is low skilled work, and it turned out there were lots of Canadians who wanted the jobs -- the local McDonalds franchisee just decided that he could bully foreigners into working long hours more easily. When this hit the news, the Government took action and rescinded their ability to bring in foreign workers, and (as I understand things) McDonalds rescinded their franchises. So I agree -- it's wrong, and it needs to stop.
But do you know what else sucks? By forcing XYZ Corp., to pay those entry-level coders more, they're likely to do the math and realize that it will be cheaper to just open up a foreign branch of XYZ Corp. in the country/countries most of these workers are originally from, and then pay them the local equivalent of $20k/year. Now not only have the jobs been lost for American workers, but all the money those workers would have spent in the US for housing, food, clothing, etc. is also gone. You can't offshore fast food, but you can offshore IT workers.
So I suppose the downside is that if XYZ Corp. does the math and realizes it's going to be cheaper to just offshore, it may not do a whole lot to help American IT workers. And it will doubly hurt when the wages they're paying don't get spent in the US either. I'm not saying H1-B's are the solution (I don't have a solution) -- but getting rid of them may not work out as some rosily hope.
Yaz
In theory that is how it works.
In practice, they sabotage their search for US people in order to claim they couldn't find anyone.
For example, I get lots and lots of emails from recruiters asking if I'm interested in a job opening that is well below my level of experience, and thus pays a much lower salary. The positions are also not in the state I live in, and I've never expressed any interest in moving to that state in any resume I've posted/emailed/sent out.
They use my rejection (as well as several other similar rejections) as evidence that they can not find anyone for the job. And if I had expressed interest in the job, they'd offer no relocation, require I fly at my expense for the interview, and then reject me for whatever reason they make up. "Not a good personality fit with the team" works wonders.
The really great trick is when you combine that with under-titling the H1B worker.
You claim you are looking for a Software Developer 2 with 5 years experience. You try to recruit a bunch of people with 20 years experience, and fail because you're out-of-state and paying for 5 years experience. You get your H1B approval, and a miracle occurs! The H1B worker you hired happens to be qualified to be a Software Developer 5. So you have them take on "extra duties" and get your Software Developer 5 for the price of a Software Developer 2.
Is anything missing from the US education system?
No, we graduate 1.55 people with STEM degrees for every entry-level STEM job opening. And then we staff those openings with H1B workers because they didn't have to take out student loans to pay for their STEM degree.
The people claiming we need H1B visas are lying. They want to pay workers less money, and competition from H1B workers drives salaries down. So they lie about not being able to find US workers.
I happen to visit a forum of US immigrants of certain Eastern-European origin. Most are in IT jobs, and came here by way of H1B visa (though significant portion have been sponsored for a permanent residency by now). They are largely vehemently pro-Trump, islamophobic (and generally harbor great dislike and disdain for all "brown people", be that middle-easterners, hispanics or asians). I find the current situation not a little ironic - in a way wouldn't it be poetic justice if they were hit by the very policies they so feverishly support?
Not that I specifically wish this upon anyone or their family, but if the choice must be made - these people surely deserve it more than refugees from war-torn countries.
Trump doesn't care what the media thinks
Except when they report about the size of his inauguration crowds, or his tax returns, or his court cases, or his comments about women, or his many contradictory earlier statements, or when he calls them the "opposition", or "biased", "false", "failing", "dishonest", or..
Your title does say it all.
America is saturated with unskilled labor. Those people need to live somehow. Until we have some kind of guaranteed base income or some such system, they need a job.
Aside refugees from extreme conditions, it's difficult to me, morally, to "help" massive amounts of semi-skilled foreigners when our neighbors might be wondering where their next meal will come. They should come first. The whole "you can't help others if you can't help yourself".
We can't save the world. We just can't.
Now that doesn't mean these work visas should not exist. There is totally a need and large benefits for having visa programs for high skill immigrants where there's real needs. And stuff like H1B should be exclusively used for that.
Do you think XYZ Corp hasn't already done the math on whether its cheaper to offshore? They have. Repeatedly. All of them. Many did offshore. XYZ Corp isn't importing cheap H1Bs because it's cheaper than offshoring, its because it needs a domestic American presence - particularly for customer requirements.
I have tons of empathy for Indian workers, Mexican illegals, etc. I don't fault them one bit for coming here. They have families to feed, and I understand completely why they do it and don't hold it against them (I would do the same thing in their shoes).
But I'm also an American. And so I stand by my fellow Americans first and foremost. And we have kids to feed too, of course.
And I would expect the same treatment from any other country. If I were applying for a job in another country, I would do it with the understanding that a citizen of that country is of course going to get preference over me. That's the whole point of having countries in the first place.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Well I'll bite. I think David Frum said it most accurately. "When liberals insist that only fascists will defend borders, then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals wonÃ(TM)t do"
Harris said something similar in 2003ish I believe:
"The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.
To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization."
I mention this that not to imply any sort of plagiarism, but rather the opposite. This is a multifaceted phenomenon that has been around for a long time, at least since 9/11, a problem that many people are discovering and re-discovering, but still very few liberals or leftists seem to understand or accept that this is what is going on. They think that the solution to rightwing extremism is leftwing extremism[1], instead of taking advantage of the golden opportunity to simply portray themselves as The Sane Position/Party[tm].
A related phenomenon is the backfiring of what I call "Operation: Conflation". It's widely observed that words like 'misogyny' and 'racism' are losing their punch due to their overuse, due to their being shoehorned into more and more inappropriate situations. And that's quite true, but it's only half of the story.
What is less commonly observed on is that the attempt to marginalize people and ideas by branding them racist or misogynistic or fascist is beginning to flow in the opposite direction as intended. Instead of making it less acceptable to support Trump, they're making racism (actual racism) more socially acceptable. "If being worried about Mexican immigration is racist, well shit... I guess I'm racist then." And the next time an actual racist opens his or her mouth, they listen a bit longer than they normally would. And they don't feel as ashamed to even nod their heads now and then. Wash, rinse, repeat for fascism and misogyny.
The Overton Window is not being moved by the extremists alone; at this point in history, the heavy lifting isn't being done by the KKK or even the self-identified alt-right. It's being done by self-described liberals and leftists and progressives overplaying their hands and insisting that we talk about extremist right views all day long, and by tossing a cornucopia of reasonable sounding ideas (and even a few actually-reasonable ideas) into that giant bin marked "evil extreme-right bullshit", they're making it a lot easier for people talk themselves into simply diving into that bin head first.
And they're still doing it. With glee. Hands rubbing together, expecting Trump to crumble to dust at a
Well I'll bite. I think David Frum said it most accurately. "When liberals insist that only fascists will defend borders, then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals wonÃ(TM)t do"
Harris said something similar in 2003ish I believe:
"The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.
To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization."
I mention this that not to imply any sort of plagiarism, but rather the opposite. This is a multifaceted phenomenon that has been around for a long time, at least since 9/11, a problem that many people are discovering and re-discovering, but still very few l
Is the US tax system really so archaic that they can't just produce stats on this sort of thing automatically?
In the UK the majority of employees get paid through a system called PAYE where tax information is automatically passed to the tax man. There are of course people outside of this system, but not enough to be statistically significant enough to alter the stats.
This means it's trivial for our statistics body the ONS to produce stats on things like average salaries by field which are then used to inform government policy on the rare occasion we have ministers willing to engage in evidence based policy rather than doing what they want regardless of what the data says.
He cares very much what the media thinks. Why do you think he threw a temper tantrum when it was shown that he didn't have the biggest inauguration crowd? He's always checking the media because he's so insecure and so narcissistic.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Just *saying* stuff about what you need is the old system.
Trump's draft order says "put your money where your mouth is." If they don't actually need someone with all of those skills, they won't want to *pay* top dollar for someone with all of those skills. The draft (which will hopefully be revised) says whoever is willing to pay top dollar for their H1-B candidates goes to the front of the line. You don't pay top dollar for someone with unique skills unless you *actually* need those unique skills.
* Ps Trump is a jackass and I voted against him - twice.
Well, yes, but.. you have to live in North Texas.
You could at least have quoted house prices in Colorado or Utah or somewhere nice.