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titomc

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ex-H1B Indian here, now permanent resident of Canada. Left US for good, because I was being exploited by tech firms taking advantage of my H1B status.

This is a welcome change in my opinion. H1B workers were exploited by the Indian body shops as well as American employers. Raising the minimum wages will prune the bad apples and make H1B a visa system for the truly skilled candidates.

Quirks:

1. Find & shutdown fake employers running fake payrolls to match the increased wages. A search for *consulting.com will bring up many 'one-room' body shops in the US.

2. Stop the lottery process and award visa to truly skilled candidates who can provide proofs for their skills.

3. H1B LCA process should be changed and made similar to the PERM process, so that it will be a true test of the market.

4. Giving preference to Master degree holders is not a good idea, having a Masters degree from an American University is not an indicator for "highly skilled". Most of the students from India obtain these Masters degree just for the purpose of getting an OPT visa to improve their chances of getting selected in the lottery for H1B.

Many of these 'master' degree holders show fake experiences & do 'proxy' interviews to get into companies. These fake experiences are backed up by experience letters from bogus companies setup for this purpose from India. Many of them also provide 'bonus' services like proxy candidate interview services on Skype.

5. Stop 'future GC'. Many body shops in US do this by taking a huge deposit from the candidates for their 'future GC services'.

Part deux: What Asian students go through once they get their degrees from American Universities.

They go down the rabbit hole of America's broken immigration system, starting with OPT visa, then H1B (read lottery luck, not based on skills) & then the country based quota for green card currently 7 to 9 years for EB2 categories for India & China. Did I forgot to mention the exorbitant out of state tuition fees and the loans they took for it in their home country ?

The companies have these "schemes" in place. If you look at an LCA posting, these scheming companies will post a salary range, eg : 75k-110k. 75k being the prevailing wages from the DOL for that area. This range means the company can pay the employee 75k and its legal. What does it take for the company to pay 110k to the employee as per LCA ? "Depends on relevant skills & relevant experience of the candidate" so that's the blurry line companies use to suppress the salary and its perfectly legal.

" Most of the time it is just easier to hire Asian/Indian employees because they are readily available "

- I doubt that. It's "easier" to hire because they "agree" to lower wages and its easier to retain them, because their visa status is tied to the employer. The employers have H1B workers on a leash.

The process of hiring an H1B worker in short.

- Hire an immigration lawyer.

- Post an LCA.

- Apply petition to USCIS.

- Pay petition fees (higher for fast track process)

- Respond to USCIS queries.

- Get petition approved.

- Done

- Its a different game if the employer wants retain the H1B worker after 6th year of H1B.

So hiring is not easy. But retaining and paying them is "easy". So why do these corporations take this much pain in hiring H1B workers ? No its not the skills they are after. (after all H1B is lottery based not skill based right ? )

I am from the state (Kerala) which is called the "Spice Garden of India". Little did I know about the history of Nutmeg that grows in abundance at my home in my state.

What backups your claim ? The same online articles ? Have you had first hand experience of the same ? I have lived in both countries and have experienced personally what does it take to live as an H1B worker as well as in Dubai on a work permit visa.

Most of the western media articles that you read are very biased and westerners seems kind of jealous of oil rich countries developing at a faster pace than theirs. Western media reports the incidents in an exaggerated manner when it comes to middle east nations.

If women are not allowed to drive a car in Saudi Arabia, Nor are H1B dependents (H4) spouses allowed to work in the US. They are not allowed to have a SSN or a bank account. So what makes US any different ? Isn't just slavery in another form towards the migrant workers no matter in which country they work ?

Amex for Developers 10 years ago

AMEX is closed loop network. The advantage possibly would be huge troves of data about customer spending habits, if they expose those in future(obviously without PII)

A "technical" recruiter asked me "how comfortable are you with 'tomcat' programming language". I said I am not at all comfortable with "tomcat" programming language because I have to invent one. He was furious and hung up.

Very good insights on buying a side project. I too have some side projects. But I never want to go fulltime into it because it's using APIs of some well known services. I always say " Never play soccer in someone else's ground ". You never know when they will throw you out of the ground. If you are basing the business out of github's resources you are at high risk.

What will happen after the 5 years stay ? Should the entrepreneur pack up and leave ? Why should an entrepreneur startup something when he/she is not sure about their residency in US. This rule says 'parole' & self petition, the residency path is not clear. And when it comes to residency, US immigration for skilled immigrants is so broken that you will regret applying for one.

" Uber has become one more casualty in China’s other wall, a towering fortress of restrictions, regulations and unfair play that keeps down American internet companies. "

The government is protecting the home grown companies as any other good government would do. So whats the problem ?