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Trump Admin Takes First Steps To Overhaul H-1B Visa That Tech Companies Use To Hire Internationally (geekwire.com)
President Donald Trump's immigration authorities are moving to enact broad changes to a visa that allows American companies to bring international workers to the country. From a report: On Friday, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Department of Homeland Security released a proposed rule that takes the first steps toward overhauling the H-1B visa. The new rule would prioritize applications for workers with advanced degrees from American universities. The policy would also change the application process companies go through when they want to secure H-1B visas for foreign talent. Instead of completing a petition for the new employee, companies would register for free online to enter what's been described as the "H-1B lottery." Immigration law caps the number of regular H-1B visas that can be awarded each year at 65,000. An additional 20,000 may be awarded to workers with master's degrees and PhDs. Under the new system, USCIS would review all applications, including those for workers with advanced degrees, during a registration period before the actual petitions are filed.
The alternative is to set up software hubs in those other countries.
It will be just like hardware really, the design, testing, etc etc will be done in the USA, but the construction is done overseas.
Over all it will not see much change in the number of US citizens employed in the USA, it will mean that those H-1B jobs simply get filled overseas. The US government looses the income tax paid, and other countries benefit. Long term, the knowledge and skills that gets transferred to another country will improve the knowledge and skills available in that other country, success breeds success. It could see even MORE US jobs going.
Capitalism is a wonderfull thing, it means the USA can get their shoes cheaper, but it also means companies will seek lower wage economies.
There is no law to say USA wages must be higher. Competition is a double edged sword
I worked at ATT Wireless when number portability was released, and people could finally switch cell phone providers and keep their number. The VP of finance fired the entire department running the software/services and brought in Mindtree (i think) to replace the workers. He had a couple hundred H1B's working months in advance of the migration.
The Migration failed horribly. ATT Wireless missed the deadline, hundreds of people lost their jobs, and ATT wireless couldn't enact number portability quick enough and was fined millions of dollars a day.
My engineering department was moved into the same building as the H1B's, and it was a nightmare. I've worked with H1B's over the years, but never experienced the mess of the restrooms and building. Working at other companies with H1B's and Indian Nocs, and no issues, so no idea why ATT and Mindtree was so horrible. My experience with H1B's have been mixed, some cheap companies pushing Cisco certified engineers who didn't even know how to use SSH to talented skilled programmers who became citizens. So I do think some H1B's are being used as an excuse that no US workers can be found, theres always unemployeed looking for work, when I know some engineers who took 3-6 months, and a Storage engineer who took a year to find a storage architect job. YMMV.
Also up here in Seattle, there are entire blocks of apartment buildings around Microsoft that Indian consulting companies rent out, and put 3-5 H1B's to an apartment, they live dirt cheap, its rather depressing to see how they live. Its not like theres not enough engineers around this area, we have Amazon, Google, Facebook, ATT, TMobile, Verizon, Apple, Blackberry, Tableu, and a zillion other tech companies here. Lots of us citizens looking for work. Last time I needed a job, I just posted what I wanted on craigslist in internet jobs, and had a recruiter calling me with what I wanted. But I admit I'm lucky, I had telecom experience in a telecom town.
So is cleaning up H1B abuse good? Sure. Companies posting for database admins with 10+ years experience, programing, and paying 7 dollars an hour, so they can post "cant find any workers!" to hire H1B workers, is a scam. And that should be ended.
Also, I like the 20K for PHD/Masters H1B, those people will demand high wages, and should help boost up wages for everyone. (I hope)
Cheaper is the word you're looking for. You can't put "works harder" on the balance sheet.
Don't hand out the visas in a "lottery". Sort the applications by salary. Start handing them out for the highest-paid workers, and work your way down.
If you really can't find these workers in the US, you'd be willing to pay more to import them.
If you're just looking for cheap bodies, well you're gonna end up towards the bottom of the list and not get any visas.
This is what I hate about corporate media. They're left on social issue but hard right on economics.
Companies get 65k H1-Bs every year. Those visas are good for 4-6 years. There's over 800,000 H1-B visa workers in this country. Most of them tech workers.
If Trump wants my attention he can start by reversing the Obama era executive order that let H1-B spouses work. That basically doubled the number of H1-Bs to 1.6 million overnight. That would also put upward pressure on H1-B wages since they'd have to pay for a stay at home spouse. He promised that during the campaign. It's been over 2 years and I'm still waiting. And no, the courts don't matter. It's an executive order. If anything the courts would side with reversing it. Obama overstepped his bounds signing the order.
This same Congress is getting ready to double the number of H2-Bs, by the way. With the help of the Clinton Democrats like Pelosi and Chuck Shumer, I might add. I'm not expecting anything here. Donald Trump's also staffed his admin with the same ex-Goldman Sach's people who've been running the country since Clinton.
If anyone wants to vote the bums out you'll get your chance in 2011. Show up at your primary. Also, and I know this isn't popular to say, but don't vote GOP. The Dems have Clinton Democrats, and those bastards need to be primaried, but the Dems have a _few_ pro worker folks like Bernie and Liz Warren. Yeah, they won't gut immigration, but birth rates are down, do you really want it gutted? What's gonna happen to your 401k if we're short workers. No, what you want is for some of that money the immigrants are earning to make it to you and your community. The GOP has been pushing trickle down economics again. The Tax Cut Trump did proved that. And it's not working, like always. GOP is out of ideas, Clinton Democrats are out of ideas. Time to give the Berniecrats a go.
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meant 2020. Stupid /. not letting me edit comments.
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This is a great way to drive education cost for US students by admitting more foreign students. Expect two mortgages if you want MS degree. If you cared about US workforce you would make sure they can afford education!
Can be as simple as "Every H-1B must get paid at least double the average American salary." Such a rule could work in perpetuity, too.
You'll notice it's an _additional_ 20k. They'll use diploma mills to get the workers they want. Meanwhile your wages and mine will drop.
Also, it's not 20k _total_. It's 20k this year, 20k more the next. The work visas are good for 4-6 years at least. There's already over 800k H1-Bs in this country. Why do you think it is you can't turn your head in STEM without seeing them or that they're having to cram them 5 to an apartment?
I don't think any abuses are going to be curtailed. It's going to get worse, but since Trump ran on cutting these abuses he'll have his media engine push that narrative to us tech workers. As always, watch carefully what they _do_, not what they say. I keep repeating this, but Trump still hasn't made good on his promise to revoke Obama's executive order allowing Spouses to work...
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Average American makes $51k/yr. And that's the Average, it's much higher than the median Even at $102k/yr you're getting a steal. H1-Bs are already trained, are trained on a specific tech, are completely disposable and work 60-80/hr/week without complaint.
Make it 4 times the Average and you might have something, but then we'll have to fight to keep them from redefining "Average".
It's like Wargames, the only winning move it not to play. End the program. If we need them here they can immigrate, just like everybody else. No more temp workers.
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He doesn't get credit for recognizing an OBVIOUS problem. And once again, all he is doing is telling people what they want to hear.
The real problem isn't even bringing people HERE to work. It's companies laying off U.S employees only to replace them with workers in places like India and now Africa.
I mean, just how stupid is this trump guy? And worse, just how stupid are the morons who follow him?
Now make it an auction instead of a lottery...
How are all the ORANGE MAN BAD!!!! idjits going to respond to this?
I'm grabbing popcorn!
Great idea. Personally, I have a Masters in Pomposity and Self-Righteousness, plus a Doctorate in Grandiosity and Self-Aggrandizement, all by mail, all from Trump University, and all signed by The New Messiah, our Great Leader, The Donald Himsef.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
This is only true for certain types of work. If there is a substantial stream of work that can be transferred offshore_in its entirety_ including the subject matter expertise, then all that work can be performed remotely. For anything else, a local presence is required. Either to accept the iterative knowledge transfer from the local SMEs, or so that the work can be performed locally under supervision. If this isn't done, then delays, misunderstanding, and other screwups will contribute to a greatly increased failure rate.
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
we have immigration enforcement for a reason. Deport both when the spouse is caught.
You are exactly right. The sooner that the Justice Democrats which you constantly advocate for stop their campaign to dismantle ICE, the better. It's hard to take them seriously as a viable party when they take these kind of moronic positions.
The alternative is to set up software hubs in those other countries.
Then watch your cutting-edge company dull and rot, as the 10-minute turnaround time for Q-A turns into one day due to the near-half-day time offset.
(It's especially a scream to watch management try to use Agile techniques across a 12-hour offset and a giant culture gap, too.)
And that's assuming you find exceptionally competent help. (Hint: There ARE really competent engineers in, say, India. But they're pretty much all employed, and paid substantially more than the bulk of the body-shop fodder which are most of what you get now.)
One way to solve the time gap issue is to move the whole operation, including architecture, design, and admin, offshore. But then your IP is over there and NOT over here. If they're not competent you're left with restarting from scratch or an older snapshot when you realize they've blown it (and you're now months or years behind in the race to the window). If they ARE competent, watch for them to quit and start their own company (with your IP, under their IP laws and (non-)enforcement), leaving you in the same position but with a new competitor.
Even with engineers of ordinary competence and the project split across the pond, offshoring can be of negative value: Your designer spends a bunch of time breaking off a chunk to be done overseas, then ends up doing the work himself anyhow, when the module doesn't arrive in time. So the added worker cost both his own pay plus a bunch of the time of the local guy on the critical path without any benefit from his work product.
The invisible hand will get around to swatting the company - perhaps into the dustbin of history. But that takes some time.
= = =
But, speaking of the invisible hand: I'd like to see if we can get its input.
A company "needs" a foreign talent? It's not just using H1Bs to get cheap labor? OK. Then the talent is worth a lot of money, and should be paid it, right?
So lets try this:
- A cap on the number of H1Bs, some number N.
- And each year they go to the N candidates (or as renewals for those already here) being paid the highest salaries (with preference to those already employed in case of ties.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
you can measure the hours they work and how many lines of code their write. I know /.ers like to bang on about code quality, and yes that matters in some places. But in a lot of place it doesn't. The phrase "Code Monkey" exists for a reason.
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They do not at all. I work with some people who have HB1 visa's and they are terrified of being fired. It's difficult to find a second employer. As you get anywhere near the end of the visa it gets even worse as who want to hire someone who might be forced to leave in a year? It's not quite slavery but it is indentured servitude. It creates an entire second-tire class of people who are easier for their employer (or their contracting company) to take advantage of. In Roman slaves were a big issue because they could get fairly intelligent and educated greek slaves and that was cheaper than hiring people. So the common roman couldn't find a job because a lot of them were being done by slaves, at the same time being able to work as a slave sucks to. It just sucks all around.
H1Bs already pay a 1000$ a month extra in tax. Its called FICA. They pay Social Security, Medicare, Disability taxes bt are not eligible to claim any of it. As soon as they lose their job or get disabled they have to leave the country. How do you think SS is still solvent? All the projections done in the 80s said SS would be insolvent by 2000 but the H1 boom of the 90s added billions to the SS fund with zero outflow or future liability.
**Life is too short to be serious**
I'm not completely sure about that. Even with a rather small budget you can still pay very high salaries for some positions. There are also huge differences in productivity and hiring a small number of highly paid, but also highly productive engineers can be a good strategy. If you pay 200k to a highly skilled engineer who is easily performing work that normally would require 3 average engineers with 120k each, than that 200k salary is cheap and not expensive.
Jan
I'm not so worried about the number however the "auction" method is horrible. It artificially reduces deflates salaries in the US.
It needs to be an auction method where companies have to pay more to reserve one of these spots. Additionally, they need to be required to pay 1.25x or so more than the national average in pay.
Instead these H1B lottery people are brought in at bargain basement prices and screwed over by contracting companies. They're typically low level college graduates and severely affect US salaries in the IT industry