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CS Professor Argues Silicon Valley Is Exploiting Both H-1B Visas And Workers (huffingtonpost.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the California-controversies dept.

schwit1 quotes Norm Matloff, a CS professor at the University of California at Davis, on H-1B visa programs: The Trump administration has drafted a new executive order that could actually mean higher wages for both foreign workers and Americans working in Silicon Valley. The Silicon Valley companies, of course, will not be happy if it goes into effect... Their lobbyists claim there is a "talent shortage" among Americans and thus that the industry needs more of such work visas. This is patently false. The truth is that they want an expansion of the H-1B work visa program because they want to hire cheap, immobile labor -- i.e., foreign workers.

To see how this works, note that most Silicon Valley firms sponsor their H-1B workers, who hold a temporary visa, for U.S. permanent residency (green card) under the employment-based program in immigration law. EB sponsorship renders the workers de facto indentured servants; though they have the right to move to another employer, they do not dare do so, as it would mean starting the lengthy green card process all over again.
Computerworld also argues this year's annual H-1B visa lottery "may be different, because of President Donald Trump," reporting that the lottery has historically favored the largest firms heavily. "In the 2015 fiscal year, for instance, the top 10 firms received 38% of all the H-1B visas in computer occupations alone. All these firms, except for Amazon and to a partial extent IBM, are outsourcers."

19 of 318 comments (clear)

  1. Lack of talent my ass!!! by drewsup · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Seeings how they are TRAINING their low wage replacements, exactly how low talent are they??
    Anyone who doesn't understand that low talent is the new code word for "we make too much money according to you" needs to wake up!

    1. Re: Lack of talent my ass!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I worked for a big IT outsourcing company. Every couple weeks they lay off 100-200 americans. Quietly. This way the media doesnt pick up on it. They are then replaced by folks from india. There is actually a written HR policy titled "india first"

      Customers have gotten wise to this and started putting it in their contracts that we must use US based labor. They got around that by bringing in h1b labor.

      They started laying off everyone in mexico because they said that labor was too expensive.... moved those call centers to the phillipines.

      It has nothing to do with talent. Its all money. We had, and still have, no shortage of qualified US labor. We just laid them off at every opportunity to bring in cheaper labor. Thats why i left. Good thing i did. 2 months later, they gutted my dept of folks making six figures.

    2. Re:Lack of talent my ass!!! by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Maybe they should limit H1B to people who teach US workers. After all, if they are low talent... Train them up!

      Seems like banning outsourcing companies from getting H1Bs would solve most of the problem.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    3. Re:Lack of talent my ass!!! by duckintheface · · Score: 4, Insightful

      IF there is a lack of talent, why is that? Could it be because wages are too low to attract people into that field? So the cure is to raise wages, not to lower them even further by bringing in more foreign workers. Republicans and neo-liberal Democrats pretend to believe in the free market... in everything except labor. A free market in labor means that salaries rise until the needed workers are attracted.

      --
      "He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
    4. Re:Lack of talent my ass!!! by number6x · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The very fact that they are training their replacements means that these jobs are not H-1B eligible jobs and that visa fraud is being committed. H-1B visas should be used when no workers with the skills are already available in the work pool. This would be workers who are already citizens, or permanent residents ('green' cards).

      The fact that an American citizen is currently doing the job, and is willing to continue doing the job means that there is an American citizen available to do the job. Therefore the job is not eligible for H-1B visa.

      Companies commit this fraud through the Human Resources (HR) equivalent of 'creative accounting'. The company will define a title for the current worker, just a descriptive label that has no legal status, something like 'Systems Design Analyst, Level III'. Then HR will define a description for the job, again a made up label, like 'Programmer First Class level IV'.

      The company will say, "Oh boo hoo! We have no "Programmer First Class level IV" programmers and can't seem to find any in the USA! Whatever will we do? Our profits are doomed!" The company happens to work with a partner in India who sources H-1B visa worker, and amazingly this Indian company has a whole bunch of recent graduates with freshly printed certificates that show what good "Programmer First Class level IV' programmers that they all are, and look how cheap they are as well.

      The current worker, who is not qualified for the job on paper but created all the software the job entails, is given the option of working for six months, training their replacement, a severance package, and no argument when they apply for unemployment insurance, or getting fired immediately and having the company deny them unemployment insurance.

      The very fact that an American citizen is training an H-1B replacement means, in the real world, that visa fraud is being committed. However, there are no laws for truth in job descriptions like there are laws for truth in accounting that prevent companies from easily committing this massive fraud.

      If there is truly a talent shortage, higher H-1B wages will help create a drive to train more workers within the USA and will reward any H-1B talent that is brought in to the US for their work. The only reason not to pay H-1B workers more is if you want to commit fraud and replace Americans with cheap labour.

    5. Re:Lack of talent my ass!!! by zifn4b · · Score: 4, Insightful

      IF there is a lack of talent, why is that? Could it be because wages are too low to attract people into that field? So the cure is to raise wages, not to lower them even further by bringing in more foreign workers. Republicans and neo-liberal Democrats pretend to believe in the free market... in everything except labor. A free market in labor means that salaries rise until the needed workers are attracted.

      Let me tell you logically why the argument doesn't hold up. India has 4x our population. They are supposedly much more educated than Americans thus we need their H-1B visas to fuel our tech sector due to the so-called shortage of equivalent American workers. One would think if India is so much more advanced in the STEM field that because they have 4x the amount of people their tech sector ought to be booming and much more advanced thus compelling Americans and other countries to do the equivalent of the H-1B visa to go work there for better opportunities. Except... that's not happening. Why?

      --
      We'll make great pets
    6. Re:Lack of talent my ass!!! by chiguy · · Score: 5, Informative

      You, like everyone here, get the general intent of the H-1B program correct, but you miss the legal loophole that tech companies put in. It requires companies to prove they're not displacing American workers OR pay H-1B holders $60,000. Guess which option companies choose?

      https://www.theatlantic.com/bu...

      "n 1998—during the tech bubble—lawmakers amended the law to provide more visas at the request of the growing tech industry. At the same time, legislators cracked down on outsourcing companies that were employing large numbers of H-1B workers from Asia, and then contracting them out to American companies looking to save money. Though these consultants are typically called “outsourcing firms,” in a sense their work related to the H-1B visa program is better described as “insourcing,” since what they’re doing is helping companies find workers abroad whom they bring here for new jobs.

      Under the amended law, companies that rely heavily on H-1B workers (more than 15 percent of their workforce) would now face additional scrutiny when applying for visas. These companies would have to promise not only that their H-1B workers would not replace American employees at their own company, but that they wouldn’t be used as replacements at firms that the company had contracts with either.

      The new requirement would have provided some additional security for American workers, but a seemingly small, yet significant exemption was also written into the law. It allows those same H-1B reliant companies to ignore the requirements about protecting American jobs as long as they pay the foreign workers at least $60,000 a year, or hire a foreign worker with a master’s degree. It’s unclear why this exemption was included, though critics of the H-1B program say tech companies lobbied for it to undermine the new, tougher restrictions that might impact their ability to hire foreign workers. Considering the average IT worker in the United States makes far more than $60,000, that exemption makes it lucrative—and legal—for companies to displace American workers with cheaper H-1B workers. And it effectively undoes the additional protections of the 1998 bill."

      --
      passetspike!
    7. Re:Lack of talent my ass!!! by ghoul · · Score: 3, Informative

      One word - oil. America's wealth is built on being the Saudi Arabia of the early 20th century.
      There was a lot of capital created by the robber barons and they invested it in multiple companies which could afford to innovate due to the capital cushion .
      America still produces more oil than Saudi and throughout the last 120 years has been one of the top 2 or 3 producers. With cheap oil= cheap energy everything becomes easier. India has negligible amounts of oil. Don't kid yourself that Americans are rich because they are superior, they are just lucky.

      A bonus word - immigrants. In every generation the wealth of America attracts the cream from around the world. They keep the innovation factory running. Even though their 1st and 2nd generation descendants revert to the American mean it doesnt matter as newer , smarter, hungrier immigrants keep coming.

      --
      **Life is too short to be serious**
  2. missing tag by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    #noshitsherlock

  3. Don't tie the green card to the company by Snotnose · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Let the H1-Bs change companies easily. Those who suck will stay low wage and not be a problem for me. Those who are good can easily find a job that pays them what they're worth.

    1. Re:Don't tie the green card to the company by ooloorie · · Score: 4, Informative

      Green card is not tied to employer, but usually need an employer to sponsor it. Employers are usually reluctant to sponsor because the employee is the free to leave.

      Stop repeating that obsolete nonsense. Employees on H-1Bs can easily change employers (I've done it); the old employer won't even find out until you have your new job. That's been the law of the land for a long time.

    2. Re:Don't tie the green card to the company by achacha · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's not whether they find out or not, the real issue is that most employers have a "waiting window" for new H1B hires. Nothing stops you from moving to a new company but you will have to put in that initial time (which many HR heads blame the legal team for taking a long time, and in many cases the legal team can "lose" your paperwork or it can get rejected on technicality due to a law change). So this has nothing to do with you (as employee), but more to do with profits. While you are in this waiting period you will work hard and I have seen people pretty much live at work. This is pretty much indentured servitude. And if they don't like it they can leave anytime, and start this process again with still no guarantee that they will get a green card. People in charge (usually head of HR and whoever is doing payroll/finance, CFO or CIO depending on company), know that they are getting a good thing, why not get the most of it.

      I have worked in this industry for over 3 decades and met many good people who were stuck in this process, some lucky ones got their green cards after 5 years because they were very good (and often had to threaten leaving to "hurry" the legal process) and the company could not afford to lose them. I have worked with people who were on it for over 10 years and some just went back home because they got tired of the hours and low pay and missed their families; QA, support and IT people had it worst, as they were worked for very long hours and I felt that there was no urgency to get them green cards because they could be easily replaced. Software developers (especially good ones) had a significantly easier time.

      It's a well intentioned system that as always gets abused for profit.

    3. Re:Don't tie the green card to the company by beelsebob · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Changing job with an H1B is trivially easy. Changing job while in the process of getting a green card, will reset your application and set you back years.

    4. Re:Don't tie the green card to the company by unixisc · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They can! It's called an H1B transfer. So if you have such a visa and are working for, say, Microsoft, and you want to move to Avanade, you can. It doesn't go against the national H1B cap since it's a visa that's already been issued. Which is why companies are more willing to do H1B transfers as opposed to a brand new H1B, which runs into those limits

      The real issue in question is what was mentioned in the summary:

      EB sponsorship renders the workers de facto indentured servants; though they have the right to move to another employer, they do not dare do so, as it would mean starting the lengthy green card process all over again.

      So the issue workers have is not that an H1B can't be transferred, but rather, that if a worker changes companies, then the company he's quitting would obviously stop applying for his Green Card, and the process would be reset w/ the new company. Also consider the fact that few employers would apply for a Green Card immediately: they'd want the worker to be w/ them from 6 months to a year. So, in the above example, if Srinivas' I-140 has been approved and he decides to leave Microsoft and join Avanade, not only does he lose that I-140 approval and everything, he then loses that time it's taken him, PLUS the time Avanade would like to try him out before deciding whether to file his I-140. So that is what would keep him in that company at least until his Green Card is approved

  4. easy to fix without adding more limits by pghmike4 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you want to end exploitation of H1B visa holders, it seems like the easiest step would be to let visa holders change employers without restarting the H1B process. This would reduce the exploitation factor, since employees could walk away from bad jobs. It wouldn't require guessing what a reasonable salary bound would be, but would let the market decide that, instead.

    1. Re:easy to fix without adding more limits by currently_awake · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Make H1B an auction, where employers bid for them instead of distribution by lottery. That will make them cost more than American workers and thereby eliminate the companies that only want low wage "guest workers" while still letting the legitimate skills shortages to be filled. Oh look, a free market solution!

  5. Re:"Indentured Servitude" looks a bit different by visualight · · Score: 5, Insightful

    FALSE.

    The jobs overseas are *already* much cheaper than what the H1B's are getting paid. If it were possible to have these jobs overseas ---they would already be there---, and that is cold hard fact. The jobs going to H1B are jobs that require face-to-face interaction with people here in the United States.

    The 'alternate fact' here is the obvious bluff from tech companies (Let us play by our rules or we'll ship jobs overseas). The only response that has any integrity is "Well, take your goddamn ball and GO home then."

    --
    Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
  6. a big win for Silicon Valley by ooloorie · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The Trump administration has drafted a new executive order that could actually mean higher wages for both foreign workers and Americans working in Silicon Valley. The Silicon Valley companies, of course, will not be happy if it goes into effect...

    Companies like Google and Facebook pay their H-1B workers quite well. Their problem has been that the H-1B visas in recent years have been snapped up by low-paying outsourcing and contracting firms who have spammed the H-1B lottery with applications.

    Trump's proposed system gives priority to H-1B visa applications based on salary. This is a big win for Silicon Valley companies, because they pay some of the highest salaries. It's a big loss for the outsourcing and contracting firms.

    1. Re:a big win for Silicon Valley by ooloorie · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The vast majority of H1Bs work as cheap contractor labor doing day to day benign IT tasks.

      Did you read anything I wrote? Trump's changes to the H-1B program are intended to change that, so that the visas go to the most high paying, most specialized jobs.

      I so tire of SV trying to set policy when they aren't the norm.

      SV isn't "setting policy"; SV backed Clinton, who generally has supported the current lottery program combined with increases in the number of visas. Trump is proposing to decrease the number of visas but allocate them to the most well-paying jobs. That's probably a good thing for SV, but it's not what SV was lobbying for.