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H-1B Visa Lottery Will Now Favor Masters, Doctorate Degree Holders (sfchronicle.com)
McGruber shares a report from The San Francisco Chronicle: The Department of Homeland Security announced a rule change Wednesday that will transform the lottery that decides who gets the 85,000 H-1B visas granted to for-profit companies every year. Previously, an initial lottery granted 20,000 visas only to those holding advanced degrees granted by U.S. institutions -- master's degrees or doctorates -- and then a general lottery granted 65,000 visas to all qualified applicants. The Department of Homeland Security switched the order of these lotteries, it said in a notice of the final rule change, which will bolster the odds for highly educated foreign nationals. The change reduces the likelihood that people with just a bachelor's degree will win in the general lottery, said Lisa Spiegel, an attorney at Duane Morris in San Francisco and head of the firm's immigration group. The program shift could hurt technology staffing companies, also known as outsourcers, who have a reputation for flooding the lottery with applications. Three Indian firms -- Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro -- often account for a majority of the H-1B applications, an analysis of government data shows.
I'm all for immigration, but technology staffing companies can go fuck themselves.
The description above clearly states "those holding advanced degrees granted by U.S. institutions", so not advanced degrees from overseas countries.
For the price of an H1B.
Americans are smarter than the rest. The problem is, they have to pay for their education in American dollars and companies want cheap graduates....because they turn more profit for them.
The immigrant door needs to be shut until the rest of the world gets their curriencies and standards of living up to or past the US'. Because if it isn't closed, everybody but the company heads gets exploited.
https://youtu.be/LPjzfGChGlE
1) A PhD or Masters is not a course. Its a research program. There are "Masters by Courseworks", which is slightly different, but generally when someone is doing a Masters or PhD its because they are researchers. And unless someones got a sneaky phoneline to God, theres nothing to "rote" memorize.
2) I hate to break it to you, but US Universities are not generally the highest categories. There are some, but the stats aren't great. 1.7% of US universities fit in the "Top 100", versus UK with 2.5% and Australia with 3.1% I should observe US figures are highly tainted by the proliferation of bogus universities (Liberty University, and other dodgy thinktank feeders). Sure you have things like Caltech or Stanford , but for every Caltech, you've got a hundred busted ass rural universities or "Praeger mail order university where you get a doctorate for declaring the world is flat" type places.
Don't be so arogant, and consider traveling.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Because they are importing 85,000 people a year to dillute and reduce salaries in the US. It's all about avoiding paying fair wages.
The H1-B was never created to fill a temp job. You are making up what you think it should be not what it was intended for or why congress created it.
It was created to continue to draw in and keep the worlds best and brightest. The H1-B was meant to keep college graduates in the US where they would step up into green cards and then citizenship after a decade or so. America had been a brain drain on the world for decades and that trend began to decline in the 80's and 90's with a number of fields being unable to hire enough people and not enough US citizens graduating in those programs to even replace retirees in the field so Congress created the H1-B program to give an opportunity for graduating foreigners in professions with tight labor markets an opportunity to stay in the US in high paid jobs and an eventual path to citizenship.
The work and wage requirements were specifically to prevent the system being abused for temp positions, exactly what you claim you think it is for. You don't get to just make up whatever rules you think it was created for, it's a matter of congressional record and it's intent and purpose is NOT what you claim. This temp job claim would make H1-B exactly not what they were intended to be, a system to be abused by foreign companies to replace US workers with slave labor. Your very premise is absurd.
Back on topic.
Personally I think it's a foolish example of degree inflation that serves no real purpose to require Masters or PhD's. H1-B's should be available to non-graduate level degrees just like any other field but it should be restricted to fields where there is a real market issue. There are a large number of STEM fields in the US where graduation rates are not sufficient to replace the people retiring in that field every year. These professions should be given preferential H1-B treatment and a direct path to citizenship afterwards, not requiring people to spend an extra $50k and 2 years on an advanced degree they don't need and might actually over qualify them which is just as likely to get the best and brightest to leave rather than put up with the hassle.
Though this proposal might help stem the abuse of H1-B, I doubt it will be effective. You could stop much of the abuse simply by enforcing the laws already on the books. Most of the companies abusing the H1-B system are doing so in ways that are transparently illegal and would be easy to verify with any type of enforcement system. The problem with the H1-B system is that there is no enforcement system. There is literally no risk to the companies abusing this because without enforcement there is zero risk of being caught. Enforce the laws we've already got on the books and you could stop H1-B abuse in less than half a year. Audit the companies, find the ones abusing them and bar them from hiring H1-B's.
The H1 visa program was started to allow into the country aliens "having a residence in a foreign country which he has no intention of abandoning who is of distinguished merit and ability and who is coming temporarily to the United States to perform temporary services of an exceptional nature requiring such merit and ability." In the 90s, H1 was split into A and B, where A was for nurses and B was for others.
Go look at the text of the law. Here's an excerpt: we'll issue visas to an alien "having a residence in a foreign country which he has no intention of abandoning who is coming temporarily to the United States to perform other temporary service or labor if unemployed persons capable of performing such service or labor cannot be found in this country."
There's a subsection more directly related to academics: a visa for "an alien having a residence in a foreign country which he has no intention of abandoning who is a bona fide student, scholar, trainee, teacher, professor, research assistant, specialist, or leader in a field of specialized knowledge or skill, or other person of similar description, who is coming temporarily to the United States as a participant in a program designated by the Director of the United States Information Agency, for the purpose of teaching, instructing or lecturing, studying, observing, conducting research, consulting, demonstrating special skills, or receiving training..."
In every clause of this law, the word "temporary" features prominently. Every part of it starts with the same phrase about the person not abandoning their home. It's true that it's one of the few non-immigration visas that allows its holder to attempt to immigrate here. But for a law that you describe as having nothing to do with temporary jobs, the Congress sure included a lot of text about them.
On the one hand, you don't want their families to come. On the other, you want them to stay long term and contribute.
As an actual immigrant who moved for work I can tell you that the idea we just flit around taking any offer that looks good is nonsense. It's a huge upheaval, a huge pain in the arse to sort out visas for us and our families, and every time you need to figure out how the new country works, get your kids into the local education system, learn the local language and customs etc. I pay my way, I have to pay for healthcare while my taxes subsidise less fortunate locals' treatment.
Of course most immigrants are on the younger side and healthy so they tend not to place much of a burden on healthcare or pensions anyway. Studies in the UK found them to be a net contributor, maybe the US is different but given that you don't have free healthcare I'd be surprised.
The company I worked for was looking for local talent for over a year. It's great that you want to invest in education but for a business hearing that you will just have to wait 10-15 years to get a qualified graduate when you need an experienced engineer isn't going to cut it. My employment has lead to the company being able to hire two juniors who will now gain experience and eventually take on my role when I leave one day.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
America, by itself doesn't want them, as we have more than enough people, and we have colleges and skills churning out CS majors by the legions.
H-1Bs are wanted by business because of pure money and power. A developer will wind up with a $40k salary, who normally gets 80-100k, and there is also the control aspect. If a H-1B gets fired, they get deported, so they wind up working 100+ hour weeks and putting up with malfeasance that no US citizen/resident would tolerate.
The H-1B program is basically a violation of national sovereignty for business profits.