IEEE-USA Criticizes Failure To Reform The H-!B Program (ieee.org)

Slashdot reader Tekla Perry writes: IEEE USA says H-1B visas are a tool used to avoid paying U.S. wages. "For every visa used by Google to hire a talented non-American for $126,000, ten Americans are replaced by outsourcing companies paying their H-1B workers $65,000," says the current IEEE USA president, writing with the past president and president-elect. The outsourcing companies, Infosys, Cognizant, Wipro, and Tata Consultancy in 2014 "used 21,695 visas, or more than 25 percent of all private-sector H-1B visas used that year. Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Uber, for comparison, used only 1,763 visas, or 2 percent," they say.
On Friday, IEEE-USA also issued a new criticism about the lack of progress in reforming the H-1B program, saying "At least 50,000 Americans will lose their jobs this year because the president has yet to fulfill the promise he made to millions who voted for him."

Comments

Locals preferred ?

[Kohath]

Genuine question here. Companies are supposed to hire local people if they are available and H1Bs only when there are no qualified locals. The question is:

Have any of you ever been hired instead of an H1B because you are local? Have you ever heard of a situation where a company wanted to hire an H1B but ended up having to hire a local person instead because of this requirement?

In my experience, the idea that H1Bs only get hired if there are no locals available is complete fiction. Has anyone ever seen this rule help a local person get a job instead of an H1B?

Re:Locals preferred ?

[Junta]

If they want to do it, they can do it.

So company A wants to downsize and replace with cheaper workers. If a company get H1Bs, then very shortly lays off people, then it's a flag.

So instead they outsource to company B. So far, they are playing by the rules. Company B has bid to provide the work cheaper than doing it in house.

Now company B says "I need some talent, I don't have enough staff', then *they* can claim there are no available local talent for what they need (for some *very* narrow definition, like 'software programmer ii' or something). They don't have layoffs to explain. When they are not your existing employees, it's easier to try to paint the labor market as somehow not applicable to the positions.

Re:Locals preferred ?

[Kohath]

Understood. Any real counter-examples though? Any examples of companies breaking the rules and facing enforcement actions? Is "hire locals first" 25% fictional, or 80% fictional, or 99.9% fictional?

The "hire locals first" rule keeps getting brought up to defend the H1B program. I'd like to know how phony that argument is: partly, mostly, or entirely phony.

Re:Locals preferred ?

[hawguy]

Genuine question here. Companies are supposed to hire local people if they are available and H1Bs only when there are no qualified locals. The question is:

Have any of you ever been hired instead of an H1B because you are local? Have you ever heard of a situation where a company wanted to hire an H1B but ended up having to hire a local person instead because of this requirement?

In my experience, the idea that H1Bs only get hired if there are no locals available is complete fiction. Has anyone ever seen this rule help a local person get a job instead of an H1B?

My company always searches for local candidates and candidates in this country before looking for H1-B's -- hiring an H1B worker is hard, you have to interview them, decide to hire them, *then* wait month(s) to see if you can actually get them a visa. We've lost some really good candidates that either weren't able to get an H1-B in the lottery, or they just got tired of waiting for it to come through and they took a job locally.

Used as it's meant, the H1-B program is very valuable to american businesses and workers -- it helps businesses succeed by giving them the talent they need to start grow. My company was started by a team of 5 - one was an H1-B holder, 3 others were green card holders who previously held H1-B's (those three have since become US citizens), we've now grown to around 250 people, I think around 20% of our engineering team is made up of H1-B workers (all PhD's from well known schools, with degrees in the domain my company specializes in). We have a strong college recruitment program, traveling to about a half dozen USA colleges a year, but we can't find the senior staff we need from American universities alone. Due to my work on our HR system, I can verify that they are paid comparably to our american workers (not even taking into account the higher hiring costs due to the cost to get the visa, relocation costs, etc)

Without the H1-B program, I doubt this company would have ever been founded, or if it was, it would have been based in Europe where most of the founders were from. In fact, we're scouting around for a European office due to the uncertainty in the H1-B program, so we may curtail hiring in the USA as we build up a European engineering team.

Re:Locals preferred ?

[sgt_doom]

The federal regulation is that there can be NO oversight on the visa program --- that's right, it is illegal for the federal gov't to monitor the work visa program (see either the federal regs, or read Michelle Malkin's book, Sold Out --- and yes, I realize she is or was a conservative, but this book is definitely not in that realm).

Re:Locals preferred ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. Very few H1Bs are Europeans. They are almost all Indians.

Re:IEEE, your grandpa's club

[thinkwaitfast]

It's always a good idea to have a deep understanding of how hardware works when writing low level software. Like why you get an interrupt even when they are turned off or why your branches are doing what they're supposed to. Trying to debug faulty hardware, is a lot of fun, especially at the hardware level. Data spanning page boundaries are a lot of fun. And not every system in the world runs Intel. Quite the opposite is true.

I can tell you about my experience. ..

[OneSmartFellow]

... training my replacement,  after I gave notice.

I am always looking for a new job,  anyone who isn't is a fool.

So, I was/am happily employed by a medium sized ,very high tech , company.  I'm a sys-integration guy, which means I used to be an very good developer, then got more interesting in the bigger picture.  Since I was never satisfied with my knowledge in any aspect of computing,  I became very good with OS fundamentals, networking,  file systems,  and all the other peripheral stuff associated with software development  (revision control,  ticketing, testing,  deployment, you name it,  I know about it )    So Integration came easy.

I  recently found a significantly better paying,  more interesting job, so gave notice.   My company hired an H1B to replace me.

He is useless.   After 3 weeks of fairly intensive OJT, he is still unable to even start to resolve the few minor problems that come up.

I have very,  very little faith that he will be able to take over for me.

I know for a fact that he is being paid less than half of what I am earning.  I  also know that totally qualified locals are available,  for about 85% of my rate.

So, I  have told him,  he shouldn't even have the job, he is taking a decent paying position from a properly qualified local,  and that he should be happy I'm not his boss, cause I'd fire his ass immediately.  I have a pretty good suspicion that he was hired because the project manager' wife (indian) has a H1B recruiting company in India.   She's a bitch and a half too.

Needless to say we're not really on speaking terms.

Fuck the H1B program.   It's just a way to abuse the labor market.  There's no skills shortage,  there's a corporate greed problem.

Re: IEEE, your grandpa's club

[Anonymous Coward]

I have hired a lot of EE's. My interviews with Americans almost always end with the hiring team thinking that they are fantastic candidates, and then management says that they cannot afford them, and submits an H1-B application. There are a lot of qualified American EE's, there are not a lot of qualified management professionals willing to pay for them.