What Happened to U.S. Plans to Raise the H-1B Visa Ceiling?

http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2014/09/12/what-happened-to-u-s-plans-to-raise-the-h-1b-work-visa-ceiling/

by prostoalex • 12 years ago

31 57 12 years ago

blogs.wsj.com

chickenfeet2• 12 years ago

Good. We need to ramp down H-1B - there are plenty of out-of-work STEM majors here, there is no need for importing more foreign workers.

colmvp• 12 years ago

there are plenty of out-of-work STEM majors here, there is no need for importing more foreign workers.

Is there a citation for that?

dude3• 12 years ago

First, read this post and understand. If there was a true shortage, wages would be increasing.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-19/only-rich-know-wage...

arenaninja3• 12 years ago

I remember my commencement ceremony by a C-level Sun executive, where he rambled to a class of 600 graduating from STEM fields about the need for more H-1B workers. You could hear the crickets chirping, as Sun never sent a rep to any career fair, and most of us did not have a job offer lined up

fleitz4• 12 years ago

One of the things I like about working in tech is the absence of the "they terk ur gerbs" type crap.

If you're out performed by an H1B you need to step up your game not worry about H1Bs. If you don't have H1Bs they will just out compete you from another country. Did you notice the manufacturing sector leave?

Turns out working hard is a bit more important the graduating from a prestigious school.

How does one have a STEM degree and not have a job? Do they not know about craigslist? Career fairs? Recruiters? elance? etc? Are they somehow physically disabled that prevents them from taking a day labour job? Are they unable to find their library and open a book on Javascript? Ruby? Python? C? C++? UNIX? TCP/IP? HTTP?

Perhaps the real reason they do not have a job is that they feel work is 'beneath' them. Like how can you not find a job... I have a high school education and I get called twice a day, in Vancouver not SF...

mahyarm2• 12 years ago

Canadian's have TN visas, which sidestep the H1-B fiasco.

Why haven't you tried out Seattle yet? Usually it's higher pay and everything is cheaper.

chickenfeet2• 12 years ago

Out-performed? How about it being cheaper for companies to hire and maintain... It's not about quality at all, it's about saving money.

ryandrake• 12 years ago

How does one have a STEM degree and not have a job?

This can't possibly be a serious question. In today's perpetually feeble job market, there are talented folks everywhere with STEM degrees (and experience too) who are unemployed, under-employed, or working in jobs unrelated to their field of study.

prostoalex• 12 years ago

How does one have a STEM degree and not have a job?

The S part of it includes disciplines such as Psychology, Sociology, Food Science, Political Science that have their own employment cycles. The E part includes civic engineering and electrical engineering that have very different cycles from the rest of the technology industry.

econdataus4• 12 years ago

One of the things I like about working in tech is the absence of the "they terk ur gerbs" type crap.

That's better than the "We no terk ur gerb, we kreate moor gerbs!" crap (such as in the upper right of the page at https://www.facebook.com/competeamericaorg ).

JeremyMorgan• 12 years ago

While I'm all for equal opportunity, the hidden side effect I'm noticing from the H1B increase is exploitation by companies, of both the H1B holders and non holders.

Many companies and shops in the "silicon forest" have been pushing people to longer hours, they seek out H1Bs so they can get away with more and those who are not H1Bs have to comply with demands because of the threat of being replaced by an H1B.

In the end, only the big companies win from the program. That's just been my impression the last few years.

gcb0• 12 years ago

who ever said was supposed to be good for workers? remember that the US is the only country to still allow at-will employement... it doesnt care even for the native workers.

those laws are justifyed as "if we dont get those visas we open offices elsewhere and you dont get our taxes". then congress/states allow the conditions the conpanies demands and they avoid taxes anyway via income routing in ireland or who knows where.

makmanalp3• 12 years ago

This is untrue. If you actually look at the data, you'll find that the companies who hire the majority of H-1Bs are actually not the silicon valley usual suspects. Some of them you haven't even heard of.

If you're not in the consulting world or are not a foreign worker in the US, you probably don't know much about Infosys, Wipro, Tata consulting services, Satyam computer services, Larsen & Toubro, HCL. Yet these companies comprise the vast majority of all H-1B petitions, with average salaries ranging from 50k to the 75k, well under market for tech.

Some silicon valley firms are there, yes. IBM averages 82k, not bad for a company which capitalizes on commoditizing engineering. Then there is Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, Google, Amazon, Intel, which form a minority of petitions, and have /average/ salaries of over $100k. How is that not a competitive salary? 6 digits is not wage slavery, and these people were not compelled to settle for that, for christ's sake.

The companies have to pay 5 to 7k in legal costs and fees to get the H-1B, and even more for larger companies. And they have to wait for months for a chance to get it approved. For the former group, given how low the wages are, this is cost effective. For the latter group, it really isn't better.

Facebook, which doesn't even make the top 50 list, has been campaigning for immigration reform and has repeatedly been the target of "taking our jerbs" rhetoric, when their average foreign worker salary is around 120k.

So yes, some companies win, but not the ones you expect. Blame the right companies, and don't throw everyone under the bus.

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Data: http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2013-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx (yes, yes, not all LCA's files actually turn into visas, etc, but they are representative of wages companies intend to pay.)

Disclaimer: I'm on an H-1B, and I'm getting a bit sick and tired of clearing up misconceptions that keep coming up on this subject on HN. An old post on the subject: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5515519

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edit: To clarify, yes, I think the legal immigration process, especially the H-1B is messed up. I think it needs to be fixed and modernized. I think it needs to be untied from company sponsorship, and the workers need to not be tied down to companies, and subject to market forces. I think there needs to be more transparency too in terms of the data. I've even proposed a policy limiting the number of H-1B workers larger companies can have, which addresses the H-1B sweatshop issue somewhat, while not damaging foreign workers. But yeah, I get mad when people talk about a subject so important to me without having any clue about the data, and reach their conclusions through political rhetoric they heard elsewhere.

jazzyk4• 12 years ago

It does NOT matter what the average/median salary is (although you might argue that even 100K in SV is not that much). What _matters_ is - what would the salaries have been, if it were not for the mass import of workers from India. You don't need to be a genius to know that more supply => lower price. I am always amazed that many supposedly bright engineers miss this very simple correlation.

cesarbs• 12 years ago

I don't know if this is really true, since it's something someone at work just told me with no references or anything, but there's also another problem with these Indian consulting companies. Apparently they request loads of H-1Bs for their employees in India "just in case" one of them is to be sent to the US. They kill the cap and in the end a lot of those people don't even come here.

If this is really true, they should create a per-country cap for H-1Bs, the same way it is done with Green Cards.

econdataus4• 12 years ago

You are correct that the companies who hire the majority of H-1Bs are actually outsourcing firms. You can see from the first graph and table at http://econdataus.com/h1binfo.htm that the top 11 companies in the number of H-1Bs approved in 2013 had significant outsourcing components in their business models. Eight of those 11 have their headquarters in India including the top two, Infosys and Tata. However, a number of those workers are contracted out to "the silicon valley usual suspects". I'm not sure that the data is available to determine where those workers are contracted out to.

By the way, your source at http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2013-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx does not seem to work. Regarding LCA's, however, I recently looked at the Labor Condition Applications that are required for each H-1B application (they are disclosed online) and posted the information at http://econdataus.com/lcainfo.htm . As you can see, very few are denied. Worse yet, the certified ones contain hundreds of errors that would seem to make them impossible to process correctly.

Regarding your contention that "Facebook, which doesn't even make the top 50 list", the table at http://www.computerworld.com/article/2489146/technology-law-... shows that they actually were number 25 with 337 H-1B's in 2013. That don't believe that counts any that they may be contracting from outsourcing firms. In any case, Zuckerberg may want to lift the cap so that he can catch up with the big boys.

Regarding Silicon Valley, I've posted tables and graphs at http://econdataus.com/h1bage.htm that show the huge number of non-citizens (likely H-1B's and some green card workers) working there. Also, it shows that the ages of non-citizens working in the industry spikes sharply in the 31 to 35 year range. This demand is likely motivated by the fact that young workers are cheaper, easier to take advantage of, and can be dumped for a new batch of young workers when their visas run out and/or they start standing up for themselves.

zhng• 12 years ago

I've seen this first hand. It does happen.

general_failure2• 12 years ago

I would like to see a entrepreneur visa in the US rather more H1-B. The main thing going for the US is that no other country is really stepping up. (YC, please open a branch in another country!)

mahyarm2• 12 years ago

Stepping up in venture capital funding, or stepping up in other ways?

syntern• 12 years ago

I think E2 is regarded as entrepreneur visa. It requires investment coming into the US though...

general_failure2• 12 years ago

http://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa-guide/e-2-treaty-investor/unde...

E2 is for investors. Your average cofounder is not an investor.

DanielBMarkham• 12 years ago

What the fuck?

Let me see if I understand this. The president wanted to do some things on immigration. He decided against it. [insert long political debate here]

But the things he was going to do had nothing to do with the H-1B Visa Ceiling, which can only be raised by an act of congress. So the reporter writes this piece about the administration's plans, which have nothing to do with H-1B, then kind sticks in that the president could do something about H-1B spouses at the end.

The headline literally has nothing to do with the article.

Now maybe somebody would like to make the case that the toxic atmosphere in Washington, combined with party X doing Y, yadda yadda - -- no increase in H-1B Visas. Which is where the lead kind of promised we were going. Great political wonkery piece. I'd probably read it. But the supporting text was all about administration stuff. If you want to write a piece about what congress is doing or not doing? Call me crazy, but I'm thinking you should have some stuff in there about congress.

I'm kind of at a loss here. Do the folks at the WSJ read the articles before creating headlines?

Mangalor• 12 years ago

It read to me like a puff piece done to prop up the H1-B issue and keep it alive. A lot of New York based, WSJ-friendly companies use H1-B workers because they're cheap, so even though it's a political non-starter, tripling the number of H1-B's is still a priority for them.

AngrySkillzz• 12 years ago

Dunno if it's a big deal. Most of the people coming here on H1-B visas aren't the highly-skilled workers that we actually expect; the vast majority of them go to garbage IT consulting companies like Infosys and Wipro.

shas3• 12 years ago

So throw the baby out with the bathwater? My friend is one of only about 50 experts in his field in the world. He is at the risk of losing his ability to work in the US because he didn't get through the H1B lottery.

novalis78• 12 years ago

H1B visas clearly lead to lower wages, longer hours of work and fierce competition. At times it feels like a modern form of slavery. Interestingly enough, the software industry is one of the few truly innovative industries in the US. Makes you wonder what would happen to healthcare/nuclear/manufacturing if it was as easy to hire foreign skilled workers and even more so if you'd allow them to create their own companies. The H1B system makes it extremely hard for even accomplished developers to stay and get a greencard eventually, start their own business - only the best and (legally) most enduring will prevail. A simple point system for visas a la Canada with a clear path to citizenship and cap on welfare support would attract a lot of creative individuals, methinks...

wittgenstein• 12 years ago

It's unbelievable that the US government is focusing on providing a legal path to citzenship to ILLEGAL immigrants, while legal immigrants who are highly educated (sometimes at Ivy Leage institutions) have to wait for years to get a greencard, depending on their country of citizenship. What's unbelievable is that they can't easily change employers during the green card application process. There is nothing more absurd than American top universities educating thousands of highly qualified international students, only to make their lives miserable with respect to immigration after they graduate and doing everything in their power to encourage them to take their brains to another country instead.

mh_yam• 12 years ago

It's horrible. I have a bachelors from a top US school, working on a masters from another top school, and I can't even take a week off in between jobs because it may cause immigration problems.

Meanwhile Obama goes around making speeches about how kids of illegal immigrants somehow have the 'right' to citizenship and would be able to benefit from US public services (which by the way I and other legal immigrants are paying for).

Completely absurd and needs to change.

jpitzo• 12 years ago

somehow have the 'right' to citizenship

The 14th amendment makes it pretty clear that (with very rare exception) anyone born on US soil is born a US citizen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_in_the_United_State...

arenaninja3• 12 years ago

I feel that your frustration is misguided. I'm pretty sure I've heard Obama talk of retaining immigrants who graduate from STEM fields at US universities. Here's an article from 2012 about this: http://www.trianglecoalition.org/legislation-would-help-reta...

Of course, the lack of action befalls the legislative branch (Congress)

Meanwhile Obama goes around making speeches about how kids of illegal immigrants somehow have the 'right' to citizenship and would be able to benefit from US public services (which by the way I and other legal immigrants are paying for).

Without being political, these illegal immigrants have most likely also paid for these services via sales/state/federal taxes, many for a lot longer than you have. As for citizenship, I think the citizenship argument is usually applied to those who were relocated by their parents at a very young age. If you were deported, you would still be able to communicate in your homeland, while many of those who were brought as children wouldn't be able to communicate if they were forcefully sent back

tippytop• 12 years ago

Higher education has become an export of the US. What's citizenship got to do with it?

yummyfajitas• 12 years ago

Its very simple. Hispanics vote D solidly. A few more h1bs won't ensure a democratic victory in 2016 or 2020.

eli_gottlieb• 12 years ago

I've said it before, I'll say it again: if H1-B was actually about skills, the state would auction off the visas to those firms bidding the highest salary offers, and rake in the resulting payroll and income taxes.

What Happened to U.S. Plans to Raise the H-1B Visa Ceiling?

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