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.

Comments

masters, even doctorate, means nothing

[TheGratefulNet]

if its from various overseas countries.

its well-known that many cultures encourage rote memorization and that passes for 'learning'.

is THAT what we really want? have you not seen enough of that from people you work with?

this is bullshit and we all know it.

Re:masters, even doctorate, means nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is America even taking these in instead of training their own?

Re:masters, even doctorate, means nothing

[MightyYar]

It's absolutely nuts to train the smartest people in the world at the best schools in the world... and then ask them to kindly leave.

Re:masters, even doctorate, means nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

The description above clearly states "those holding advanced degrees granted by U.S. institutions", so not advanced degrees from overseas countries.

Re:masters, even doctorate, means nothing

[hey!]

Well, you shouldn't be able to get a doctorate from an accredited research university just on rote learning.

You shouldn't be able to get a master's degree or even a bachelor's either, but programs vary in quality. Now I worked on place where management was keen on Indian H-1Bs, often with master's and occasionally PhDs. The impression I got is that a masters' is much more common in India; I believe it is a prerequisite at some Indian universities for PhD candidates. Anyhow, the quality of those people were all over the place, from everything you could wish for, to one guy who was exactly what you're talking about: he had the UML of the entire Gang of Four book memorized and could give a convincing-sounding chalk talk about any of them, but in fact he just had a prodigious memory. There's no way he should have qualified to *enter* an master's program, much less get out with a degree.

I don't blame Indian culture; I've worked with Indians I'd hire again in a heartbeat. I blame certain US universities that have converted the popularity of masters's degrees with Indians into low quality cash-cow programs -- usually not in CS, but in the fuzzier and less mathematically rigorous "IT" field. If someone came to me with an MS/IT I'd automatically treat it the same as a bachelor's, just from my experience with graduates of such programs. The good people coming out of those programs were good going into them.

Re:masters, even doctorate, means nothing

[MightyYar]

It's absolutely not worth the societal cost of driving our education costs up to the moon if we aren't going to retain these people. Either let them in or don't, but don't make our local education market for all into a global market for the elite without realizing some benefit.

Re:masters, even doctorate, means nothing

[sg_oneill]

its well-known that many cultures encourage rote memorization and that passes for 'learning'.

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.

Re:masters, even doctorate, means nothing

[Shaitan]

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.

Re:masters, even doctorate, means nothing

[Shaitan]

"Why the hell wouldn't you take highly skilled people with advanced degrees?"

For the most part these workers aren't being brought in for jobs that actually require a Masters or Ph.D. We don't want the most highly educated, we want the brightest and that is not the same thing.

"The average American isn't going to earn a Ph.D. and less than half of the population aged 25-29 has a bachelor's degree. "

Sounds like a great reason to make that possible without taking on tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt just to get a job any bright person could have done.

"The notion that if we just trained everyone that we'd be able to solve all of our problems is nonsense."

Sure. We could just stop laying off the existing workers. We lay off 80-100 thousand tech workers a year and now import 85,000 a year. This isn't rocket science.

Re:masters, even doctorate, means nothing

[quenda]

Oh boy! We can be the next UK!

You already are. But it remains to be seen if the US stays as the foremost global power as long as the UK did, or handles the transition as well.
Though I'm sure the US will do better than Portugal or Russia, post empire.

Re:masters, even doctorate, means nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Fuck those guys

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm all for immigration, but technology staffing companies can go fuck themselves.

favor

[fluffernutter]

Weren't H-1B's supposed to be to get people who had skills not available locally... which would be people with higher education? Now we have fallen back to simply 'favoring' those people.

Re:favor

[Solandri]

H-1Bs were created in response to a trend that research turned up. More and more U.S. college and university graduates were accepting jobs overseas, resulting in a net drain of skilled graduates out of the country. The idea behind the H-1B was to make it so that a well-educated foreigner could get a job in the U.S. more easily, countering that trend. Many other countries run a similar visa program for skilled workers. It also gave another option for foreign students who recently graduated from college in the U.S. to get a job here after their student visa expired. So more of those foreign students could stay in the U.S. after graduation instead of returning home, again countering the trend. The long-term idea being that the H-1B would be a first step towards U.S. citizenship (meaning the skilled worker stays here permanently).

Unfortunately the program got exploited by companies trying to (ab)use it to hire cheap foreign workers to replace Americans. Those job listings you've seen with a ridiculously specific list of required qualifications are mostly H-1B visa jobs. The listing was carefully crafted to exclude anyone from qualifying for the job except the person they wanted to get the H-1B visa for. Companies are required to advertise those jobs for a certain length of time to prove that no American is capable of doing the job. Adding skills or certifications which aren't really necessary for the job but possessed by the foreigner they have in mind for the visa is one of the tricks to pass the advertisement requirement without "finding" any qualified Americans.

Favoring graduate degree holders to receive H-1Bs is a step in the right direction. There are a lot fewer of them than graduates with a bachelors degree. And their field of research tends to be a lot more specialized and thus legitimately harder to find a qualifying American.

Re:Still being done wrong

[imidan]

H1Bs were never meant for bringing in most of the people companies are using them for today. The purpose was to be able to bring in high-skilled workers, temporarily, for the purpose of doing one job at one business and then going back home to their country. I support H1Bs used for such purposes, and I think the program should continue with a drastically reduced number of available visas and strict requirements for unique expertise and well-above average pay.

It seems like most businesses using the H1B program today want to bring in groups of foreign low-to-mid-level coders so they can treat them as indentured servants for a few years and then send them back when they're used up. I'm not sure we should even have a visa program to support that goal.

Chalk one up for the Orange Guy

[Tablizer]

I disagree with a vast majority of "his" policies, but this one he got mostly right. H1B's were being used for IT "bodyshops" of de-facto indentured servants instead of what they were intended for: hard-to-find specialists. Kudos to the obnoxious wall-less one.

Re:Still being done wrong

[PhrostyMcByte]

So true. The way the program is currently working is an abuse of the people working for it as well as hurting local workers. We should be using it only to bring in experts when we truly can't find an American to do the job. There should be oversight to verify this.

I wouldn't mind H1-Bs so much

[rsilvergun]

if I got anything from them. But as it stands I get virtually no services from my government. We're not building roads. We slashed funding to Schools and the sciences (I'm paying for most of my kid's college out of pocket and living like shit to do it) and I spent $14k on medical insurance last year.

Americans are having less kids. That's normal for a developed country. So yeah, if we want our 401ks to have value in 20 years we'd need immigrants. But my 401k has been eaten up by fees and market crashes. And with my wages so low due to stiff competition with H1-Bs it's not like I have a lot of money to put into it anyway. Meanwhile I've got a Democrat, Joe fricken' Biden, attacking Social Security

What I'm saying is screw the social order. The rich and powerful broke the social contract so screw it all. End the H1-B program until we have systems in place so that there's some benefit to me, you and every American who isn't a fucking multi millionaire. Hell, stop all immigration until that time.

Re:Still being done wrong

[rahvin112]

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.

Re:Still being done wrong

[imidan]

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.

Why is it even a lottery?

[dyslexicbunny]

Everyone submits their needs, sort by salary highest->lowest and take the first 85,000. At the end of the year, interview the employee and look at their tax and bank records to ensure they are receiving that salary (bank to make sure they aren't passing money on to a non-family third party). Companies that fail to deliver the proper salary will be fined 10x the proposed salary and jail someone(s) for lying on a government form.