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Computer Programmers May No Longer Be Eligible For H-1B Visas [Update] (axios.com)
Two anonymous readers share a report: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services quietly over the weekend released new guidance that computer programmers are no longer presumed to be eligible for H-1B visas. This aligns with the administration's focus on reserving the temporary visas for very high-skilled (and higher-paid) professionals while encouraging low- and mid-level jobs to go to American workers instead. The new guidance affects applications for the lottery for 2018 fiscal year that opened Monday. Companies applying for H-1B visas for computer programming positions will have to submit additional evidence showing that the jobs are complex or specialized and require professional degrees. From a Bloomberg report, which has confirmation: The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services department issued a memorandum that makes it harder for companies to bring foreign technology workers to the U.S. using the H-1B visa process. The new guidelines, issued late Friday, require additional information for computer programmers applying for the work visa to prove the jobs are complicated and require more advanced knowledge and experience. The new policy is effective immediately, so it will change how companies apply for the visas in an annual lottery process that begins Monday. Indian outsourcing firms, which have faced the most amount of criticism, stand to lose the most. The changes don't explicitly prohibit any applications for a specific type of job. Instead, they bring more scrutiny to those for computer programmers doing the simplest jobs.
I don't consider a four day old memo "Old news", and, yes, this memo -- which Slashdot, being Slashdot didn't link to but instead linked to a low-quality article -- is from March 31.
I am no supporter of Trump and voted for Hillary last November, but I am not blinded by partisan politics; he's doing the right thing here: Protecting hard working Americans.
But if you actually look at the recommendations, you can see it doesn't really do anything. All it takes is a candidate with a diploma mill degree above an associates and they are considered ready for those specialized jobs.
This isn't a real attempt to fix anything. Just an attempt to give them talking points so they can claim to have done something.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
All this memo is saying is that since the Nebraska center is now processing H1Bs like it did during the Y2K rush it needs to do so at the existing standards (4 yr degree needed) instead of the Y2K standards (No degree needed to get H1B). Nothing to see here. keep walking.
From 2006 onwards only the Texas center has processed H1Bs and the standard has been a 4 year degree is needed.
**Life is too short to be serious**
There was no training, it was knowledge transfer.
Wrong. The employees themselves being laid off described it as training. From the NYTimes article, which I won't bother linking to a second time: "It was so humiliating to train somebody else to take over your job." (emphasis mine). Note the use of the word "train", not "knowledge transfer." The New York Times used the word "train" multiple times in their article, and would not used the word if they did not have evidence to back up their allegation.
Or perhaps this "knowledge transfer" notion is just an "alternate fact" we are supposed to accept.
You're thinking about the last asshole.
Nope. This president.
Before Donald Trump became the president, he used to criticize former President Barack Obama for spending too much time playing golf. But according to recent reports, in less than 90 days of his presidency, Donald Trump has played golf twice as much as Obama did and the tax payers are not at all happy with it.
http://www.inquisitr.com/4115232/donald-trump-14th-golf-trip-playing-twice-as-much-as-barack-obama-says-report/
That's why they turned to companies like Unisys. Unisys makes the claims that it needs H1B workers, and Unisys seeks contracts with big companies to handle their IT services. Big companies dissolve their IT departments, push the duties to Unisys on-paper, Unisys brings workers into the facilities to displace butts-in-seats of existing IT staff and the original company forces displaced workers to perform training in order to get any kind of severance package. The company that gets Unisys' services feels that they retain a degree of control over the situation since the workers are in their own facilities and there's no need to open the company network up to the whole world for just rote maintenance.
If you want to fix the problem, restricting the nature of the jobs eligible for H1B is a good start. I bet a lot of companies would not be so inclined to let foreigners on foreign soil so deeply into their networks as a matter of course, too much opportunity for malfeasance that might not be easily prosecuted or otherwise rectified, so those companies probably wouldn't seek to overseas their IT support to the degree that they're willing to outsource to outsiders within their own walls. Also raising the minimum wages required for H1B jobs would help, it would show that yes, those H1B workers really are worth the money and that the company really can't find the worker at nearly any wage. The $150,000 number with annual adjustments for inflation or cost of living makes sense, it means that truly skilled workers with advanced training that are not readily just internally trained or promoted would probably remain as they are, but lower-end skilled jobs that your average IT worker with five to ten years experience aren't outsourced to save 50%.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Much of the H1B law already prohibits the abuse we see, but the government specifically chooses to not enforce and punish the illegal activity.
Greed is the root of all evil.