H1-B visas hurt one type of worker and exploit another

https://www.sanders.senate.gov/op-eds/h1-b-visas-hurt-one-type-of-worker-and-exploit-another-this-mess-must-be-fixed/

63 47 1 year ago

sanders.senate.gov

Outsourcing is 1,000% worse.

InkCanon2• 1 year ago

If you look at the numbers, tech layoffs are really offshoring. India is not only untouched by layoffs, they're actually hiring

https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/microsoft-confi....

spwa4• 1 year ago

Well if there's any truth to the idea that "offshoring" to AI is about to start, it'll be a short-lived victory.

fakedang• 1 year ago

I've heard of layoffs happening in the Indian offices too. Just not to the high extents of the US and EU offices, but they are happening.

lispisok• 1 year ago

Workers are being attacked from every direction capital can find.

jgalt212• 1 year ago

Helps explain why the progressive running on pocketbook economics and not the neo-liberal running on identity politics won the dem nomination for Mayor in NYC.

linotype• 1 year ago

It’s going to suck to be a worker in the future. That’s why my wife and I are investing heavily across a broad range of assets: we want to be able to work for less (inevitable) while maintaining our quality of life as it is through investment dividends.

digianarchist8• 1 year ago

Bernie’s right on somethings here and wrong on others.

There’s already a “best and brightest” visa and it’s not H1B. It’s O1.

That said H1B is essentially the only reasonable way for people to immigrate to the United States through employment. Most employers are not going to stick out the convoluted process to obtain an EB2/3 immigrant visa for a worker they haven’t any experience with especially since they can enter the country and immediately work for someone else.

hayd• 1 year ago

L1 is another option.

digianarchist8• 1 year ago

As is TN and E3 but L1 is only an option if you can work for the company abroad for a year which is only possible if the company has some presence in your country.

L1 is also harder to qualify for than H1B in terms of job requirements.

throwawa14223• 1 year ago

Isn’t H1B a temporary worker? That didn’t seem like it should be a path.

digianarchist8• 1 year ago

All non-immigrannt visas are temporary. You adjust status after you enter the United States.

H1Bs can stay indefinitely only if they have a pending Green Card application.

sxp• 1 year ago

And one way to help make that happen is to substantially increase the guest worker fees large corporations pay to fund scholarships, apprenticeships, and job training opportunities for American workers. This is something that I have advocated from my first days as a U.S. senator.

This is the proper solution. Ideally, the H1-B program would remove quotas and lotteries and switch to a pure auction program for the fees. E.g, a Dutch auction for the X thousand available slots where the fee can be deducted from federal income taxes. If companies really want the best talent in the world, they should be willing to pay for it.

digianarchist8• 1 year ago

That’s a great way to screw over every industry that isn’t tech.

Hospitals and labs can’t afford to match tech spending to obtain H1Bs.

If there’s going to be an auction then there needs to be an industry or job code cap too.

jay_kyburz• 1 year ago

You could come up with some other code for industries where you actually need people.

You can let capitalism do its thing, and you can put your finger on the scale for things that society needs but that are not as profitable.

CincinnatiMan• 1 year ago

Are there ways these other industries could increase interest from citizen workers, in the scenario that they can’t obtain H1Bs?

rayiner5• 1 year ago

Hospitals and labs can’t afford to match tech spending to obtain H1Bs.

That's the point! You can train Americans to do those jobs. Visas should be reserved for truly exceptional workers that will create enormous value in the U.S., as opposed to those doing mundane skilled work who wills imply drive down wages for Americans.

ergocoder3• 1 year ago

Hospitals and labs can’t afford to match tech spending to obtain H1Bs.

This is just basic demand-supply. I don't see a problem here.

If hospitals and labs can't afford to match the salaries of other occupations, maybe you have too many American candidates or the end result isn't producing enough value.

Most of the occupations doesn't really need H1B. And that's okay.

cellis• 1 year ago

And why not? Check Kaisers bottom line, they’re not exactly hurting. Same for many hospitals. Also tech is not yet hiring doctors anyway and if there’s a true shortage of medical pros then by all means there will be cash to pay them.

mc32• 1 year ago

I’d say add a 25% payroll tax that is earmarked only to train and support American citizens in the industry the H1Bs are brought into.

rawgabbit• 1 year ago

100% payroll tax would make more sense.

ergocoder3• 1 year ago

I moved to US using H1B a decade ago and worked in FAANG earning 300K - 1.2M a year as an IC engineer. It never screams EXPLOITATION louder than this.

InkCanon2• 1 year ago

The situation now is radically different. In the late 2000s/early 2010s, most H1B applications got approved (something like 80%). For a time before that, the H1B cap wasn't usually maxed out and any application would succeed. If I'm being blunt this is because of one country. H1Bs are dominated by this country. This country makes up 75% of applications and without these, H1Bs would actually be undersubscribed.

The significant shift comes a lot from how this country has massive systems in place to perform wage arbitrage through IT consultancies. Compared to Chinese industrial outsourcing (which requires capex), wage arbitrage is pure profit in that there's almost no overhead. So these IT companies got phenomenally rich. These companies have a US branch, usually having a manager based in the US while the others are based in India. So it's no longer getting the best and brightest through H1B, but just a way to make money off the vast difference in economic conditions between a third and first world country. And there's a direct incentive to depress the economic conditions of workers, because that's money right there. Then this goes into overdrive when many US companies realize it's even cheaper to do it themselves and set up shop in this country.

What happened to the US industrial base/blue collar workers is happening right now to white collar workers, except it'll go much faster because there's no physical equipment to move.

ergocoder3• 1 year ago

I remember. The year that it started maxing out was from 2013.

We all know how to solve this problem e.g. ranked by compensations maybe with some restrictions and diversifying occupations a bit. We know which companies abuse it. The number of H1B with their salaries is public.

Yet this article from Bernie grand-stands random stuff.

unchar1• 1 year ago

Would it make sense to have a per-country H1B cap?

1vuio0pswjnm7• 1 year ago

If you like this topic then you might also like the investigative report dicusseed here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44404726

cadamsdotcom• 1 year ago

First let me say that I support the underlying intention of this piece of writing. However and this is crucial - it is based on a factually wrong premise which invalidates the entire hit piece. Unfortunately that also makes the surrounding discussion and angst misdirected.

I am urging you to go into the rest of this comment with an open mind.

H-1B visas require a “prevailing wage” which the foreign worker must be paid at or above in order to get a visa. Prevailing wages are made based on the area the worker will be in and their title, and are published on the DOL website: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor/wages

Before being allowed to hire a foreign worker a company must advertise the position in the US. This could be improved as right now you can put the ad in the most obscure newspaper you can find or on TV at 3am. But you do have to do something.

The decision to grant or deny a visa is made by a consular officer - a trained human - who carefully considers all the foreign worker’s case materials (called a “petition”).

All this is to say, they thought of this “bringing in foreign workers depresses wages” problem way back when they created this program and invented prevailing wages to mitigate it. They thought of “bringing in foreign workers denies locals opportunities to apply for those roles” way back when they created the program and invented job ad requirements to mitigate it.

Don’t get me wrong the H-1B is definitely being exploited. Bodyshops are a thing. But it’s not at huge scale. It is a problem to be fixed with better enforcement and targeted reforms, not pitchforks.

Mr. Sanders’ argument needs to be backed up differently. As it stands he is misleading the public. It’s surprisingly out of character.

sul_tasto• 1 year ago

Not being done at scale? That is blatantly false. The program needs to end. American workers are being undermined.

UltraSane2• 1 year ago

If H1-B visas are really meant to fill jobs where there are not enough US workers than the minimum salary should be at least twice the prevailing wage. As it is it is just another unfair tool companies use to lower wages.

nbardy• 1 year ago

The local employees would be able to negotiate higher wages given the absent

It provides supply in the market and lowers their bargaining power, so the parity in wages is parity in a lower baseline

Also in practice there are salary ranges and the H1B's usually take the lower of the range AND work longer hours at the fear of visa loss.

silisili• 1 year ago

H-1B visas require a “prevailing wage” which the foreign worker must be paid at or above in order to get a visa

In other words, wage suppression.

What causes wages to rise? Shortage of supply.

What's the fix to that pesky problem? Importing tons of people at, let's call it, current wages.

philosophty• 1 year ago

What happens to the prevailing wage when you add large numbers of workers to the supply side?

Wages are suppressed. Exactly as intended by the major companies abusing the system for their benefit.

kimixa• 1 year ago

There's still plenty of opportunity for playing games with the specific job categorization and level - the definitions are wooly enough and work opaque enough there's functionally no oversight possible.

And because the lottery is purely random and not based on category/level, there's little advantage to the sponsoring company to try for anything but the lowest salaried bucket that kinda fits. At least until it gets to the level where the employee is willing to torpedo their own petition by bringing it up.

Anyone working on software in the USA should check the local prevailing wage for a level 1 "computer programmer", or even "software developer", and ask themselves of they would be interested in applying for their current position at that salary.

hombre_fatal• 1 year ago

You didn’t refute anything. You even conceded the problems but then washed your hands of it.

onetimeusename• 1 year ago

I worked at a place that wanted to hire a foreign worker. Then they just simply hired him. I didn't realize you can't just hire a foreign worker the same way you would a US citizen. They did publish the job ad they hired him for but I don't know if it was even circulated. It seems like a cottage industry of lawyers make a nice living creating a plausible paper trail for that kind of thing but it's all borderline fraudulent. But the job can also be crafted so specifically as to exclude all but one foreign person. I think we're just rubber stamping the visas.

My point here is that what happens when someone from XYZ country comes over, gets in charge of hiring then decides they want more from their country, and then exploits the system to bring over all their friends and maybe family from their country and this goes on for decades and you're kind of hiding it under the carpet as we seem prone to do in these situations. This goes beyond just enforcement and worker protections into a place that's beyond the scope of the purpose of H1B.

UltraSane2• 1 year ago

H1-B visa jobs should have a minimum salary of $200,000 a year for the US median cost of living.

H1-B visas hurt one type of worker and exploit another

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