Uber receives more foreign-worker visas as it lays off hundreds of employees

https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/10/17/h-1b-uber-snatches-up-more-foreign-worker-visas-as-it-lays-off-hundreds-of-employees/

by masonic • 7 years ago

187 213 7 years ago

mercurynews.com

rshnotsecure• 7 years ago

I recently worked at a major retailer who has offices in the Bay Area.

Part of the role involved migrating the ERP and ATS system, which had employees, salary, details etc.

In the building I was in, which had incredible developers btw some of the best I’ve ever seen (and despite working on a legacy system!)...209 out of 209 were H1-B’s. Our consulting team at the time was about 20, and 19/20 of the team were H1-B’s.

The really sad part about it was as we were leaving, they were establishing a training program for junior H1-B’s with liberal arts degrees to learn programming. I have no idea how they got the visa licenses for those folks.

At the same time, they were the best people I ever worked with. But it’s not a sustainable way to run an economy.

s_Hogg• 7 years ago

I thought the H-1B was supposed to be a lottery, how is any company having this much "good fortune"?

jumpinggenes• 7 years ago

They could be "older" H-1Bs , folks from India are waiting for a GreenCard since 2010, they can renew their H-1Bs in 3-year increments (perpetually) if they have a pending application for permanent residency.

giovannibonetti• 7 years ago

Well, the article mentions how many visas were approved, not how many were requested. Maybe there were many more that were requested, so that even with the lottery they got a huge number of accepted requests.

semerda3• 7 years ago

Not lottery. There are allocations (or were) per country to give it a more even spread. I know greencard applications still work like that based on origin of birth.

Also the H1B process has always felt like who can create the most compelling application. Remember this is a specialization visa and you are basically demonstrating why (a) you cannot find such talent locally and (b) the value it will add to the US economy. So large companies with creative legal counsel do have an advantage over small shops.

kec• 7 years ago

The really sad part about it was as we were leaving, they were establishing a training program for junior H1-B’s with liberal arts degrees to learn programming. I have no idea how they got the visa licenses for those folks

H1b places no requirement on the degree you have, only that you have one.

triceratops5• 7 years ago

They offer one likely non-sinister explanation right in the article:

“The software engineer market, it’s so saturated with H-1Bs that some of the people who are laid off are almost inevitably H-1Bs and some of the people that are being hired are inevitably H-1Bs,” Bier said. “I don’t read into it anything like this is obviously job displacement.”

carapace2• 7 years ago

"What's the most important part of any message?"

"The name of the messenger."

The quote is from

Immigration policy analyst David Bier of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, [who] didn’t see evidence of H-1B abuse by Uber in its increased visa approvals and efforts to obtain more.

wheelerwj• 7 years ago

Cato is far from a libertarian think tank, its a Republican think tank, originally it was the Charles Koch Foundation.

hn_throwaway_992• 7 years ago

That whole "it doesn't look like job replacement" is completely ludicrous, because math.

H-1B exists solely because industry says they can't find needed talent. If you've just had a huge number of layoffs of said talent, you should be getting 0 H-1Bs.

toomuchtodo8• 7 years ago

WARN notices should trigger an H1B lockout/cool off period for at least a year.

dmode26• 7 years ago

There is no legal requirement like that. H1 has a simple rule - that you should have a degree and work on a field that USCIS considers specialized. Comp engineering is one of them

mattnewton2• 7 years ago

I agree that this looks fishy, but they could be replacing different skillsets or firing people who they thought had a skillset but didn't demonstrate it after a year.

daveFNbuck2• 7 years ago

The thing that doesn't make sense to me here is that layoffs are supposed to be about having too many employees rather than about having low-quality employees. Why are they hiring at all? Shouldn't they have just laid off fewer people if they need more than they have now?

triceratops5• 7 years ago

That assumes employees are fungible. Which they are not, especially in tech roles. They may have too many employees in some departments and not enough in others. They may also need to replace people who quit of their own volition.

taurath2• 7 years ago

Something that is bugging me about my company - we have a hard time hiring people, because we’re almost but not quite competitive on pay. And we see H1B notices go up in the boardroom. I can’t help but think if we were better competitive on pay we would not have a problem hiring - were not doing the most complicated thing in the world.

novok• 7 years ago

There is another aspect in how interesting the thing you are doing is, or how much it will improve people's careers to work on the things your company is working on and so on.

toomuchtodo8• 7 years ago

H1Bs have no (EDIT: limited) mobility. They are indentured servants to their sponsor. If you hired citizens, they’d bounce for better pay sooner rather than later. Your company possibly does this because the power imbalance is useful.

dmode26• 7 years ago

This is categorically incorrect and you should probably spend 5 mins researching before labeling others as indentured servants. H1B holders have 100% mobility, as it takes <15 days to transfer your visa via premium processing.

emufeshie3• 7 years ago

This is wrong. I am a consultant for a major consulting firm and I have worked at three different client locations this year. I don't know where this idea of limited mobility comes from. Sure there are some restriction but they aren't as bad you have made them sound like.

overcast• 7 years ago

If you're not doing the most complicated thing in the world, why would they have to be competitive with pay?

monocasa• 7 years ago

Because you're not hiring enough people otherwise.

carlmr• 7 years ago

Competitive just means it's on a similar level as your competition. If your competition is paying more for this simple work you're not competitive.

heavyset_go• 7 years ago

Because they're losing potential hires to better paying competitors, and if they don't hire, they're leaving money on the table.

hysan• 7 years ago

Well depends on who you are targeting. The messaging from most companies is that they want the best of the best even from those who aren't doing the most complicated things in the world. If you target that population of developers, be prepared to also pay at the same level. Otherwise, lower the bar and be willing to accept that the only people you'll be able to hire and retain are those that aren't at the very top of your candidate list. It's that level of self-reflection and nuance that is often missing from management at these companies.

CydeWeys5• 7 years ago

My previous company had this triple threat of compensation problems going on: (1) Didn't offer high enough pay, (2) Got burned badly when they did try to offer higher pay to get senior engineers because they weren't good at identifying top talent anyway (I repeatedly complained and tried to fix this but no one cared), and (3) Was not in an amazingly profitable industry anyway, so they were never going to be able to come close to FANG salaries regardless.

It was sad to see the slow/inevitable march of good engineer being hired essentially by accident (the hiring process didn't recognize them as such and didn't tend to offer them more) and then leaving to greener pastures when they weren't being rewarded properly. When I left, they offered me a near 50% raise as retention offer (why weren't they paying me that already since I was clearly worth it?!), but despite that being a director title, it still couldn't touch the SWE offer at Google ... so here I am.

The biggest overarching problem I would say with most businesses like that is they aren't profitable enough, and engineers can't produce enough value in those companies, to justify really top-tier compensation like what would be necessary to get and retain top talent engineers long-term.

taurath2• 7 years ago

Not really the case at mine. They COULD pay and the amt would be justified.

djsumdog2• 7 years ago

FANG? I am not familiar with this acronym.

dx87• 7 years ago

Same thing where I work. The last H1B notice I saw was for a junior web developer. It's pretty simple work, but the pay wasn't any better than what you'd get taking a government job that requires similar experience. The work is remote as well, so there's no excuse for not being able to find a junior web developer in the entire country.

Madmallard• 7 years ago

Do everything in your power to make the people deciding to skimp out on pay feel like shit for being greedy.

fivre• 7 years ago

Our H1-B notices are posted behind a large potted plant, well below eye level :)

Can't imagine the reason for that.

DrScump• 7 years ago

The best, and perhaps the original, use of this concept: in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"[0] as Arthur complains about the surprise demolition of his home:

"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”

“That’s the display department.”

“With a flashlight.”

“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”

“So had the stairs.”

“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard!'"

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/40705-but-the-plans-were-on...

cylinder• 7 years ago

LCA are publicly available and searchable anyways.

democracy• 7 years ago

Of course, it is money saving and also visa people are "yes men" which is good for a corporation. My generous Amazon offer had 1 day notification if they fire me, 10 days to leave the country and i will have to pay back all their expenses (rellocation etc).

Havoc• 7 years ago

All this is just noise.

Globalized world. You can throw some visa restrictions in the path of that tornado but it won't stop it. Profit seeking companies will always gravitate towards optimizing quality per unit of cost.

The solution isn't more complex regulation...the solution is become more competitive globally. It's the only way to win - anything else...regulations, rules, red tape...people with incentive will find a way to circumvent.

ThomPete• 7 years ago

Blue collar workers cant be more competitive than the cost of living supports.

dmode26• 7 years ago

Dumbest headline ever. I sincerely wish people would stop voting this clickbait rag Mercury News in Hacker News. It says Uber received 299 approvals for the year. First, this is a miniscule number. Second, H1b approval is rolling. So I assume they would have gotten these approvals throughout the year. But the article, with its ignorance goes on to claim that it is unclear when they will start. That makes no sense. Finally, they don’t make any mention of comp.Pretty sure these are at least >$200k per position

pandaman4• 7 years ago

I got you, friend. The salaries for those are public and readily available to you here: https://www.h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Uber+Technologies+Inc&... About a dozen are really >$200k.

dmode26• 7 years ago

These are base salaries. Now filter your list by software engineer and San Francisco. Median base salary is close $150k. Now add yearly bonus and Uber's RSUs and see how many have total comp >200k. Cheap labor narrative violated.

Edit: I also filtered your list by "Senior Software Engineer" in SF and the results are mind blowing with cheap H1 pulling 150-200k base salaries. I will not be surprised if some of these are TC $400k, as FAANG typically pays as much in base salaries

Sincerely hoping I was able to help you as a "friend" giving you better information

djsumdog2• 7 years ago

Uber received 299 approvals for the year. First, this is a miniscule number.

That is NOT a small number. They obviously won't be able to fill all of them, but 300 people is larger than the entire IT departments of some relatively large tech companies I've worked for. I realize Uber is global and there is a lot of infrastructure there, but I still don't see how this is a small number at all.

belltaco6• 7 years ago

It also counts extensions. Some of those could be someone who got their first visa in 2009 when Uber started and is still going through extensions because of the country based limits on green cards that disadvantage people born in large countries.

masonic• 7 years ago

  this is a miniscule number

You could argue that it's a smallish number for a growing company, but it's a ridiculously large number for a company that is shedding hundreds of employees in the same job category.

tyingq2• 7 years ago

Specialization is crazy rampant these days. I can't, for example, afford most of our "cloud architect" or "security architect" candidates. Most of them are asking for bigger numbers than I make, two levels above. Maybe time to ask for a raise? :)

bsder5• 7 years ago

I can't, for example, afford most of our "cloud architect" or "security architect" candidates.

First, you can generally read "architect" as "waste of oxygen" on most software resumes. I have known 4 people who were actually good "architects", and none of them put it on their resume.

Second, perhaps you should grow those people in house, hmmmm?

Third, be prepared for those people to leave when they get better than the "architects" you are seeing.

Maybe time to ask for a raise?

Probably. But if you're one of the principals in a startup, you understand silly things like "cashflow" and "bankruptcy".

tyingq2• 7 years ago

I totally get your view, but stand by my team. "Architect" deserves the skeptisicm, but if you're doing the right thing, it does add a ton of value. I concede that there are "architecture orgs" that drain more value than they add. Basically, we are "city planners", which is needed, and useful if done the right way.

toomuchtodo8• 7 years ago

Can’t speak for cloud architect roles, but the roles I’ve been offered for security architect are $150k-$220k/year base comp with various levels of bonus and RSUs. That’s the market reality.

In the current labor market, you should be asking for a raise regardless.

ilaksh• 7 years ago

It seems like the issue is that this is just a systemic abuse, so it's easy to say "everyone else is doing it".

I have a feeling the reason it is tolerated is because some people are genuinely uncertain about what the right thing to do is. In other words, there are business people in government who are saying to themselves, "well, if foreign workers are willing to do the same jobs for less money in exchange for being able to move to a wealthy country, who are we to stop them?"

So I think that side of it needs to be out in the open because I have a feeling a lot of people feel very strongly the other way. And just leaving it as a sort of lax policy without discussion is probably not going to be ideal for anyone.

semerda3• 7 years ago

Clever & greedy strategy. H1Bs are often paid a lower salary with 0 stock options. H1Bs are brainwashed into thinking this is their breakout. Grass is greener nonsense. Locked in by H1B from jumping ship. Even if a company agrees to a Green Card they often tie the employee for few more years through payback of fees should they exit early. At will employment can’t exempt one from this. It’s a dirty process and most stay quiet in fear of having their visa terminated.

baby2• 7 years ago

0 stocks? Source?

rockinghigh2• 7 years ago

They made it up. I got stock options and RSUs at multiple companies while on H1B. It may happen but it’s not the norm.

Swizec• 7 years ago

Even if a company agrees to a Green Card they often tie the employee for few more years through payback of fees should they exit early.

To be fair, if you're a software engineer the fees, while high, are pretty doable. Especially with a few years of savings under your belt.

source: just signed some papers to start and pay for a green card process.

rockinghigh2• 7 years ago

Uber’s stock compensation is with RSUs, not options. H1Bs receive RSUs just like other employees. There is no discrimination based on visa status at these companies. You can also transfer companies while on H1Bs and also transfer some of the green card process.

jypepin• 7 years ago

I can say that, at least at Uber, this is not true. Salaries, stock options and everything else is the same, no matter if you have a work visa or not.

bsder5• 7 years ago

Really, we need a general rule of "Lay people off and your access to H1-B's is blocked for 5 years." You get to keep the H1-B's you have, but no more.

vinay4275• 7 years ago

Good luck retraining people from some arbitrary department to fill the role of a PhD researcher, for example, on very short notice. Workers have specific qualifications so they are not freely transferrable.

bsder5• 7 years ago

Tough. If you really need an H1-B, then apparently you had best not lay off those people, hmmmm?

The calculation is up to the people in charge. Suspending H1-Bs simply tips the cost benefit ratio.

tempsy5• 7 years ago

H1Bs are basically modern day wage slaves.

Anyone who thinks the technical interview process is based on merit/technical proficiency alone needs a very big wake up call.

tziki4• 7 years ago

H1B salaries must be at least as high as the average salary for that profession in the area. How is above average salary 'wage slavery'?

tempsy5• 7 years ago

No...usually they fall in the bottom quartile as far as total compensation goes. That is exactly why companies like hiring them.

The "slave" part of it is that they are totally dependent on the company in the sense that they will be kicked out of the country if they don't follow orders, which usually means being overworked and underpaid.

kevin_thibedeau2• 7 years ago

Many H1Bs are expected to work longer hours. Failure to comply can have negative consequences.

vzaliva3• 7 years ago

The assumption that they are hiring H1B employees to save money does not hold the water. It is a condition of H1B visa approval for the company to offer a competitive wage. The company must advertise a similar position and offer an H1B employee a salary in the market range.

As someone who was on H1B once myself, I find articles like this as a disturbing example of anti-immigration hysteria which is quite common in current political climate in the US. "Indians/Mexicans are coming for your jobs!" For people who really think this is the case, I suggest comparing size of the US job market and H1B visa cap. The amount of H1B holder is relatively small.

As someone who lives in the Bay Area, I know the demand for qualified engineers and I am pretty sure all the good engineers of 300 people they laid of will be snatched by other companies immediately.

dgzl• 7 years ago

From my experience, people are upset about "Mexicans are coming for your jobs!" because of employers hiring illegal immigrants to do labor work at a discount.

rosybox• 7 years ago

Yes, companies applying for H1B visas are not doing so in an attempt to save money, they are paying a premium to acquire desirable talent. However regarding your comment about "anti-immigration hysteria" US tech companies use foreign contractors to save on headcount costs. These are not H1B visas, these are contractors that are paid a very small fraction of the salaries of software engineers. These contractors are working along side US engineers and doing the same job for much lower pay. That is a concern to me as I cannot compete with the salary of someone living in Eastern Europe, Macedonia, India or Argentina. If you want to label my concern hysteria, you may do so, but it's still something I'm concerned about.

belltaco6• 7 years ago

The ironic thing is that extra restrictions on H1Bs and the insane green card wait times will lead to accelerating offshoring and use of foreign contractors. In fact, it's already happening. Not only does it badly hurt the US economy and tax collection, when whole new teams are hired offshore, and the company is used to working with offshore teams, they will tend to hire new people in those places.

E.g Canada is reaping rewards https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2019/09/16/canad...

greglindahl7• 7 years ago

The person you're replying to was not speaking of all foreign contractors, they were speaking of H1Bs in particular. So it sure doesn't seem that your particular concern was labeled hysteria, because it's a different one.

amiga_500• 7 years ago

People on visas cannot get raises. And they can't refuse to work late.

dmode26• 7 years ago

Do you have references to back this up ? Or did you just make it up ?

confidantlake3• 7 years ago

This has been my experience as well. The company I worked at never promoted h1bs and all of them worked around 60 hour weeks. Not surprisingly the turnover of citizens was extremely high and the turnover of h1bs was virtually none.

winrid• 7 years ago

Not in my experience.

sergiotapia• 7 years ago

Give me a break, I've seen first hand how H1B's are treated like dogshit by management.

What are they gonna do? Quit and go back home? It's modern slavery.

dmode26• 7 years ago

Lol, you can quit and go to another employer, no ?

vzaliva3• 7 years ago

They gonna find a new job and transfer their H1B there. It is difficult to get the first H1B as you must fit the limited annual cap. But once you got it, you can relatively easily transfer to new employer. Speaking from experience...

Glyptodon3• 7 years ago

Oh please. They game competitive wages, make the position ridiculous in terms of requirements, or give it abusive attributes nobody with self respect and freedom would accept, write descriptions to match specific people, compare to lowest common denominator, and "advertise" the positions in places nobody will look, etc.

Let me give you an example: A university near me hires postdocs on H1B despite there being an absolute glut of postdoctoral researchers available. They count some of the University benefits as contributing to the salary despite not being part of pay, and make the job requirements list items impossible to fulfill unless you've already done work with whichever researcher is hiring by making "experience" with their one off research projects or very narrow (but not hard to understand) areas of expertise a requirement.

The whole thing is an absolute joke and is used to import workers by the bucket load.

Often times entire labs will be from the same country as a researcher despite them mostly doing lab grunt work undergrads could be trained to do in a semester or less.

Mind you I'm not against foreign workers, but the H1B program is an indentured servant sham.

It's easy to fix, though. Accept H1 apps based on compensation: high pay to low, no lottery, and grant green cards after 18 months work.

vsskanth7• 7 years ago

They count some of the University benefits as contributing to the salary

This is not true and simply can't happen. Every single H1B filing data is online and public so if you want to refute me you are free to post the exact filing.

make the job requirements list items impossible to fulfill unless you've already done work with whichever researcher is hiring by making "experience" with their one off research projects or very narrow (but not hard to understand) areas of expertise a requirement.

Also not true since there is no job posting requirement for H1Bs. Only for EB2/3 green cards. Universities generally don't sponsor green cards unless it's EB1B so this can't happen either.

I agree with your last suggestion though.

SecretZeros• 7 years ago

Check out this "competitive wage:"

https://imgur.com/a/Sao5CKy

(Saw this on a university bulletin board a few years ago and snapped a picture.)

Frost1x3• 7 years ago

It is absolutely not a condition of the visa approval process that H-1B receive competitive wages. The language specifies recipients must be paid "prevailing wage" and that is defined and determined in a variety of ambiguous ways that allow lots of ambiguity for wage suppression

I personally know at least 8 H-1Bs that are not being paid competitive wages as specialists in the medical industry who in many cases earn 50% or less than their actual peers.

The current person I've been dating for four years is one of the people whose wage jumped 200% once they obtained their green card and had leverage to ask for a raise or switch employers at will as part of that negotiation process. I know those wages are not competitive because there were several friends working in the same area in a small community as full citizens who disclosed their salaries. In addition, others who went through the immigration process in that community frequently explain the process to H-1Bs that their salaries will jump significantly.

Underpaid H-1B is most certainly not a myth, it's a very real abuse of the system. Now, I'm sure there are plenty of legitimate competitively paid workers on H-1B, but my sampling of exposure to that world leans towards continual employer abuse of the system, at least for the healthcare industry.

I don't hold this abuse against people going through the immigration process, but I do find it highly unethical where many employers use the system akin to past forms of indentured servitude when the individuals are highly capable but make the sacrifice to gain more opportunity. These folks should be getting paid what their peers do (less some of the legal overhead required to manage the H1B aspect which is less significant for large companies than smaller businesses).

pembrook• 7 years ago

This would be easily fixed if H-1Bs were not tied to the employer.

This is fatal design flaw in the program, and if fixed, any worker who is underpaid could easily jump to another job that actually paid market rate without having to worry about any visa issues.

In fact, many employment issues in the US are rooted in the poor decision to tie things to an employer. Healthcare being the worst offender, but also shitty high-fee 401k plans, etc.

aSplash0fDerp3• 7 years ago

With the number of CS degrees produced from China and India alone each year, the evolution of slave labor is going to make the H-1B horror stories from the 90's to the present sound like fairy tales.

aksx2• 7 years ago

the evolution of slave labor is going to make the H-1B horror stories from the 90's to the present sound like fairy tales.

Sorry, english is not my first language. can you please elaborate on what you mean?

aSplash0fDerp3• 7 years ago

At what point does it make better economical sense to send a well paid project manager to oversee dozens or hundreds of engineers being paid artificially deflated local rates?

Looking at the STEM numbers, there will definitely be a glut of engineers. At least with an H-1B visa, they got a ticket to Disneyland.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/02/02/the-co...

bruceb• 7 years ago

Quantity doesn't equal quality.

aSplash0fDerp3• 7 years ago

Agreed

Bubbadoo2• 7 years ago

Both, the Indian and Chinese universities emphasize rote learning over problem solving. Essentially, the memorize the subject matter.

vsskanth7• 7 years ago

These H1Bs might be for renewal of 3 yr extensions, transfer from another employer or a first time H1B selected through lottery. The article doesn't mention the spread. Usually you have to dig deeper into USCIS data to differentiate. Since Indians have to be on H1B forever, it will look like a company is filing more H1Bs every year while in reality they are just maintaining visa status for their existing employees.

There are staffing and consulting service companies out there that exploit H1Bs for profit but I don't believe uber is one of them or the type that uses H1 to save money.

dmode26• 7 years ago

You are 100% accurate. This publication has no idea how visas work but constantly publishes click bait article to trigger the outrage machine

vsskanth7• 7 years ago

This is an unfortunate reality of journalism today. I've even seen bigger news outlets operate in a similar manner. They just look for data that fits a narrative without bothering to actually dig deeper and find out why.

This case is especially egregious since the data is available from USCIS in a CSV file and they still didn't bother.

gundmc• 7 years ago

Can you share some of your examples of Mercury News "publishing click bait articles to trigger the outrage machine"?

I've found them to be pretty even-kiltered overall, but am always happy to reevaluate my impression.

emufeshie3• 7 years ago

There are two different things at play here. Uber firing people and Uber hiring people on H1b. Both are extremely common practices in all big companies. Unless Uber fired local employees and hired H1bs to replace them for lower pay, I don't see an issue here.

thallavajhula• 7 years ago

This is a spammy website. Why is this on the front page of HN?!

arugulum3• 7 years ago

Reposting my quick immigration quiz:

1. An international student graduates at the top of their class in Stanford in CS, and goes to work for a tech company. What visa do they use?

The correct answer is F1 (OPT) for one year, with OPT STEM extension for 2 extra years, while they apply for H-1B. If they weren't a STEM major, regardless of their actual role, they have a single year to apply for H-1B, with a ~30% chance of success, before being asked to leave the country. Regardless of their qualifications.

2. Instead of going to a tech company, they work for a year in a tech firm, then go to MIT for CS grad school. They perform excellently, having many publications under their name, doing several industry internships at Microsoft/Google labs. They then get accepted to a tenure track Assistant Professor position at Columbia. What visa do they apply for?

Still H-1B.

I say this because I think most Americans don't have a good idea of how widely H-1B applies. To repeat the caricature of "H-1Bs" being majority underpaid indentured slaves whose employers manipulate salary paperwork while hanging the threat of revoking their visa sponsorship every other week is laughable, if not downright insulting.

vsskanth7• 7 years ago

The reality is both highly skilled professionals and the run-of-the-mill IT contractor jobs end up in the same H1B bucket. This leads to skewed perceptions since the latter seems to be massively exploited by certain companies.

arugulum3• 7 years ago

Exactly. I have no doubt that H-1B has been and continues to be abuse. But it's also literally the only viable work visa in the majority of cases, so painting with a broad paintbrush about the exploitation of H-1Bs is a bad idea.

jmpman6• 7 years ago

That’s why H1Bs need to be bid on, and the generated revenue should go to fund STEM scholarships for US citizens.

vsskanth7• 7 years ago

I wonder what the government has done so far with the ACIWA fee paid with every H1B filed.

This is in addition to the premium processing fee which enables USCIS to run a budget surplus.

rubyn00bie• 7 years ago

That would be quite literally horrible for everyone involved.

The price would skyrocket and the market would be completely out of balance... this would then have at least two horrible effects:

1. The top 500 corporations become gatekeepers to citizenship, as they outbid _everyone_ else for the H1-Bs, they then use their stash of H1-Bs to drive the price of wages down for US citizens...

E.g. "A doctor wants YOUR job, brah. Are you a doctor? NO. I only pay doctors the TOP SALARY. Take your $[shit wage] or leave it"

2. It would force highly-skilled people who have immigrated here, learned from our best systems, integrated into our communities and live, to be completely, mind-boggling enslaved by their corporate overlords... OR give up the lives and loves they've built, take all the knowledge they've gotten, and GTFO.

E.g. "Well if you don't show up 7 days a week for a menial job, FRIEND, it'll effect your review and you could lose citizenship if you lose your job. NO ONE ELSE WILL HIRE YOU."

I could not imagine a worse system if I tried.

swebs3• 7 years ago

Or just apply for a work-based permanent immigration permit, rather than jumping through hoops for a temp worker visa.

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/immigrat...

dmode26• 7 years ago

H1B is the first step towards a permanent visa because it is dual intent

throwaway-asdhj• 7 years ago

Looking at the numbers they give, they're probably talking about base pay without RSUs. Uber, like most tech companies, pays senior engineers proportionally higher quantities of stock than junior engineers, so they can fire low performers before their vesting cliff without losing as much money. The total pay for L5s on visas and for L5s in general is 50/50 cash and RSUs, while L3s are more like 30/70.

It's surprising that Ron Hira is questioning why the pay packages are close together. If he's studying the use of tech H1Bs he should know that their actual income will be much higher than the number written on the LCA.

confidantlake3• 7 years ago

There are so many people graduating college in cs that are spending more than year without being able to job in the best economy in living memory. The idea that we need h1bs is ludicrous. They are brought in to suppress wages and for companies to able to get away with poor working conditions.

valley-green• 7 years ago

Ah so this is why I can’t find work as a SWE

throwaway_45• 7 years ago

Just tax the employer 1x on H1b workers salary. If employee gets 100k then government gets a 100k. That will probably solve the h1b problem quickly. If employer truly believes this person is that valuable they will have no problem paying the tax.

dmode26• 7 years ago

Yeah, that would nicely solve the problem by moving even more jobs to another country.

Uber receives more foreign-worker visas as it lays off hundreds of employees

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