New Data On H-1B Visas Prove That IT Outsourcers Hire a Lot But Pay Very Little (qz.com)

New submitter FerociousFerret shares a report from Quartz: Hard numbers have been released by the U.S. government agency that screens visas for high-skilled foreign workers, and they are not pretty. Data made available by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for the first time show that the widely made complaint about the visa program is true: a small number of IT outsourcing companies get a disproportionately high number of H-1B visas and pay below-average wages to their workers. The new data also gives a more accurate picture of salaries of H-1B workers by employer. The top IT outsourcing companies on average paid much lower salaries to their workers. The wage divide is largely a result of different education requirements of H-1B positions. H-1B visas are issued to workers with specialized skills which generally requires a Bachelor's degree or higher. More than 98% of approved H-1B visa positions were awarded to workers with either a Bachelor's or a Master's degree in fiscal year 2016. A closer look at the educations held by H-1B workers at companies like Google, Amazon and Intel -- places with in-house tech staffs -- show that more than 60% had Masters degrees. For most IT outsourcing companies, the majority of H-1B visa holders only had a Bachelor's.

Comments

"...they are not pretty."

[turkeydance]

beauty is in the eye of the employer

Re: "...they are not pretty."

[Reverend Green]

Depends what they're looking up. Sometimes knowing how to find an answer efficiently is more important than memorizing random tech trivia.

Re: "...they are not pretty."

[arth1]

Sometimes knowing how to find an answer efficiently is more important than memorizing random tech trivia.

Actual knowledge is usually required to understand something. If you look something up, it doesn't mean you understand it, including understanding why or why not..
I generally want to hire people who can not only answer and address problems by copy and paste, but will ask why more often than how, because they are subject matter experts with actual understanding.
How to use locks or threads is child's play. Understanding when and when not, and being able to troubleshoot them in a non-standard environment requires knowledge residing in your own brain, not stackexchange.

Re:"...they are not pretty."

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you just admit you want to judge the applicants on appearance and mannerism and sociability but you're too cheap to arrange face-to-face auditions.

What you really want are actors who will look right into the camera and lie to you convincingly.

Seriously?

[technomom]

This is news? Companies wouldn't bother to even do H-1B visas unless they paid less than homegrown employees.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

While simultaneously replacing jobs that U.S. citizens might take.. after a computer-focused IT education provides them what they thought was the means to a career....

Yet you fail to understand the "argument" that the United States is failing to provide qualified tech workers... even with years of STEM programs.

So if they don't get the overworked-underpaid H1B temp employees they want and they for some reason can't find local talent... its time to ship jobs beyond our shores!

Wait.. do I hear an echo from Disney-world?

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff-at-disney-train-foreign-replacements.html

California dreaming!

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3117602/it-outsourcing/university-of-california-to-send-some-it-jobs-to-india.html

This is corporate greed funded by legislation.. and nothing more.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Precisely.

H1-B visas should only be granted to companies that are hiring the holder directly - no contracting companies should be allowed to sponsor H1-B holders.

If the employer of the H1-B candidate had to treat them as an employee, we would see the higher wages. But since they are employed by contract houses, they get less money, the corporations get cheap foreign labor, and wages stay low.

Re:Seriously?

[OffaMyLawn]

It also allows you to essentially fix costs for a position if you're using H1B as temporary labor. New employees every 3 years means never needing to raise what that position costs you.

And as another poster pointed out above, these are rarely used to hire in workers of skill greater than they could find locally. I'm aware of a company that has staffed their QA department almost entirely through H1B, and their QA is not required to actually understand the product at all, just run specified test cases and report results. My dad is not a technical person and he could do their QA.

Re:2.6 million H-1Bs over a decade

[CrankyFool]

[ Just to be clear: I'm a virulent anti-Trump liberal. I'm not trying to shill for the guy. I think he's awful ] On this front, there've been two developments you can attribute to Trump: 1. USCIS has suspended priority processing of H1Bs, which reduces some mobility of H1B workers; 2. The general travel ban and xenophobia of his administration has had a chilling effect on non-US residents' desire or willingness to come to the US to work. This also includes people who are in the US today who have started considering leaving. If you're against more foreign workers, I'd say he (well, his administration) actually has some accomplishments to point to.

There's a Fix

[BBCWatcher]

1. Naively capping H-1Bs at 1,000 per organization would only result in more organizations. The outsourcers would simply lean on shell companies. Depending on the elasticities, workers would get paid even less in order to fund the extra overhead. That won't work.

2. There is an easy fix, actually: set minimum H-1B salaries to $10,000 per month (2017 dollars, inflation indexed) nationwide, up to $2,000/month more (2017 dollars) in high cost of living areas (e.g. Silicon Valley), plus require that the employer post a 12 month bond. That'll have zero impact on Apple and several other legitimate H-1B employers. Closely monitor compliance (e.g. compare to tax records), deport any employee paying kickbacks, throw anybody accepting kickbacks in prison, and keep the bond if there are any rule violations.

3. A variation on #2 is to hold monthly or quarterly H-1B auctions. The bid price is the employee's salary, and the highest salaries win, subject to a $10,000/month (2017 dollars) floor.

Options #2 and #3 would help boost government revenues since high salaries (for both the H-1Bs and resident workers) mean higher tax payments.

Re: You got to look at the reasons behind outsourc

[Reverend Green]

If you were earning $500/mo in the States, you would NOT have a house of your own and plenty of food. You would be living in a cardboard box under a bridge and eating out of dumpsters. Get real, broham.

Neither of those had any practical effect

[rsilvergun]

the maximum number of H1-B visas was awarded this year as always. There's no sign of a drop for next year either. Putting a few hoops up doesn't change anything. The program needs to end.