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The Hill: Trump to overhaul visa program for high-skilled workers (H1-B visas)
- Thread starter Tripon
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You think there is no discrepancy between the number of positions and the number of qualified domestic workers? You'd be wrong. The demand is greater than the supply and the vacancies need to be filled.
How can any of you agree with this without knowing what he's planning.
Thousands of students like me came to the US, spending thousands of dollars on the education system here with the hope the promise that we will get a path to legal employment here.
Trump's god awful record of inconsistent policies makes me fear for my loan and future here.
Thousands of students like me came to the US, spending thousands of dollars on the education system here with the hope the promise that we will get a path to legal employment here.
Trump's god awful record of inconsistent policies makes me fear for my loan and future here.
Roland_Gunner
Member
There are issues with H1-B but this is a gross over-simplification. There's only like 60 - 80K visas issued per year and that covers IT, medical research, and other kinds of engineering too. My office has one person through the program and its because we needed someone familiar with European banking software. It took months of paperwork to get approved and is only something we'd do again for a very senior position.
GameAddict411
Member
Trump is not doing this for the right reasons. It's basically a fuck you for companies that hire foreign workers regardless of their skills. Now, I know that the system is being abused by some tech companies, but I doubt this will stop them from hiring low skill workers. Outsourcing is even more cost effective than abusing h1b visas. What Trump just did is that he gave the companies more reasons to take business elsewhere. I highly doubt this will help the us economy in anyway.
Just_myles
Member
I understand what you meant. I don't want this to turn into a tech skill/work debate but, I have met plenty of kids straight out of college that are having a hard time landing the jobs that are supposed to be there.
Muppet of a Man
Member
I can vouch for this anecdote. I also work with many people from Tech Mahindra, and in general, their development work is subpar. Yet, the company I work for keeps replacing more and more of the domestic developers (contractors and in-house employees) with Tech Mahindra developers due to their extremely low bids. To exacerbate the issue even more since the H-1B visa program is definitely being abused in this case, the extremely high turnover is hard to deal with because you get used to working with someone, then all of a sudden their temporary work visa expires and they have to return back home to India.
djplaeskool
Member
I question whether or not companies will choose to fill the vacuum with American workers.
As others have mentioned, it's likely to accelerate the off-shoring of low and mid-level tech positions.
As others have mentioned, it's likely to accelerate the off-shoring of low and mid-level tech positions.
I had the same brief dream long ago and went home empty-handed. Still apologizing to my parents for wasting their hard-earned money.Man, I'm really worried about this. I'm studying my Masters at Berkeley on an F-1 visa and I've taken out a substantial loan with the hope that I can stay on in the US and work here to pay off my loan.
Don't think I'll ever be able to pay off my loan if I have to move back to my home country.
I had Muslim Indian college friends who were so ridiculously smart they could watch cricket all night then ace the final exam tomorrow. Oracle took them on helicopter rides round the campus and they settled there easy. My takeaway from this is that talent always finds a way there.
Just_myles
Member
In which positions? I know information security has been on the rise but, I don't think domestic or foreign workers are clamoring for these positions.
There is also manufacturing automation jobs that need software engineers. If we're talking general run of the mill software engineers, I believe they are not trying hard enough. Again, I don't want to get into that debate.
GameAddict411
Member
The path to employment or immigration for an international student is never and was never well defined. The US immigration system was designed so that anyone holding non immigrant status will never be able to change their status easily. A person with an engineering degree for example will more likely to be sponsored because the US has a huge deficit in that field. And it's also based on luck and connections, but even still if you are not part of the lucky 65k people every year you will have to wait for longer. You will also wait for a few years before you can get a green card. Knowing the right people can get you sponsored, but it's a long rough road ahead of you.
I would advise considering other developed nation if your field is desirable. I also advise taking dating much more seriously. Getting married is the easiest way to get residency and it's a relatively quick process.
I generally think there is, at least in terms of software but a lot of it is underutilized and too centralized in Silicon Valley. Hiring is still a very difficult problem, much of it is still whiteboards, hyperspecificity in terms of tools and stacks, and mostly an unwillingness to train and expect every hire to be a veteran. Generally when a company like Google drops an office somewhere it tends to radically accelerate the tech industry growth in that area.
Muppet of a Man
Member
Ironically, for those international students in this thread worrying about work life after university here in the States, YOU are who the H-1B visa program was originally intended. If the program is fixed and works as it was originally intended, then immigrants studying in the States, taking on debt here, and willing to naturalize themselves is exactly what the outcome of the whole program should be.
What it should not be used for is to perpetually cycle in foreign workers for a period of time, only for them to be replaced by another H-1B visa holder for a time, so on and so forth, since this puts domestic workers, both citizens born here and immigrants who are naturalized permanent residents or citizens, at an inherent competitive disadvantage from a demanded salary perspective due to the higher cost of living and the debt taken on to study at universities in the States.
What it should not be used for is to perpetually cycle in foreign workers for a period of time, only for them to be replaced by another H-1B visa holder for a time, so on and so forth, since this puts domestic workers, both citizens born here and immigrants who are naturalized permanent residents or citizens, at an inherent competitive disadvantage from a demanded salary perspective due to the higher cost of living and the debt taken on to study at universities in the States.
AbortedWalrusFetus
Member
The H1-B program needs to be entirely removed and replaced with a better program.
Somewhat related, my brother just finished a 10 week long coding bootcamp. It was about eight hours a day, five days a week, and had lots of homework. If you failed two of the weekly tests you failed the entire course. He also did a month long self learning portion that they provided before the 10 week program. It was really tough, but as a computer scientist I think he got a good enough education and came out with all skills necessary to set him on a pathway of being a professional web developer. It would be nice if companies could maybe invest in students. I get it was expensive, his program was $15k (obviously a lot of that is profit for the program he took), but it would be nice if companies could invest in training potential hires. They're already paying $2k a pop just for the filing fees for an H1-B, then they have no guarantee those workers will have the necessary skills after they come to this country. With a government subsidy or tax credit for this sort of thing costs could be very reasonable, and they could come with employment requirements with whatever company sponsors it. Educating domestic workers is a far superior idea to importing labor, and 10 weeks is a very reasonable amount of time.
Regardless, even if that's not a route our country wants to go, H1-B visas need to be gone. If the country has a skilled labor shortage and foreign workers can fill the gap then they should be given permanent residency. As it is now we bring in the H1-B workers, they get on the job training, extremely valuable job experience, and then at the end of it they take it all home to their home country, and probably ship most of their wages back to that country to support family, meaning the local US economy sees less benefit. Instead, the approach should be to permanently fill the skilled labor gap. There are currently 650,000-800,000 H1-B workers in the country. Change immigration laws to give the ones here a rapid path to citizenship. Let them keep their valuable job training here, let them keep their valuable experience here, and permanently fill the gap rather than use a stopgap measure to deal with it.
It will also do a lot to stop the abuses of H1-B labor that you currently see. These people would be citizens so they couldn't be held hostage in poor job conditions, they could freely move jobs to increase their wages, or they'd be able to go off and start their own businesses to grow our economy. Their newfound freedom of job mobility and advancement would mean that instead of dragging wages down for the rest of the industry it would balance out and keep wages fair.
Couple that with job training to prevent the gap from regrowing and you've got a solid plan. Until that happens, I'll take any change to H1-B laws that fixes the abuses. I also don't think limiting the program will increase offshoring. There's a reason companies would rather import labor than deal with it overseas. Fred Brooks touches on it very well in his book The Mythical Man Month, which I highly recommend people read to understand the problem in relation to software projects.
Somewhat related, my brother just finished a 10 week long coding bootcamp. It was about eight hours a day, five days a week, and had lots of homework. If you failed two of the weekly tests you failed the entire course. He also did a month long self learning portion that they provided before the 10 week program. It was really tough, but as a computer scientist I think he got a good enough education and came out with all skills necessary to set him on a pathway of being a professional web developer. It would be nice if companies could maybe invest in students. I get it was expensive, his program was $15k (obviously a lot of that is profit for the program he took), but it would be nice if companies could invest in training potential hires. They're already paying $2k a pop just for the filing fees for an H1-B, then they have no guarantee those workers will have the necessary skills after they come to this country. With a government subsidy or tax credit for this sort of thing costs could be very reasonable, and they could come with employment requirements with whatever company sponsors it. Educating domestic workers is a far superior idea to importing labor, and 10 weeks is a very reasonable amount of time.
Regardless, even if that's not a route our country wants to go, H1-B visas need to be gone. If the country has a skilled labor shortage and foreign workers can fill the gap then they should be given permanent residency. As it is now we bring in the H1-B workers, they get on the job training, extremely valuable job experience, and then at the end of it they take it all home to their home country, and probably ship most of their wages back to that country to support family, meaning the local US economy sees less benefit. Instead, the approach should be to permanently fill the skilled labor gap. There are currently 650,000-800,000 H1-B workers in the country. Change immigration laws to give the ones here a rapid path to citizenship. Let them keep their valuable job training here, let them keep their valuable experience here, and permanently fill the gap rather than use a stopgap measure to deal with it.
It will also do a lot to stop the abuses of H1-B labor that you currently see. These people would be citizens so they couldn't be held hostage in poor job conditions, they could freely move jobs to increase their wages, or they'd be able to go off and start their own businesses to grow our economy. Their newfound freedom of job mobility and advancement would mean that instead of dragging wages down for the rest of the industry it would balance out and keep wages fair.
Couple that with job training to prevent the gap from regrowing and you've got a solid plan. Until that happens, I'll take any change to H1-B laws that fixes the abuses. I also don't think limiting the program will increase offshoring. There's a reason companies would rather import labor than deal with it overseas. Fred Brooks touches on it very well in his book The Mythical Man Month, which I highly recommend people read to understand the problem in relation to software projects.
Just_myles
Member
I checked the link another gaffer posted earlier in the thread :
http://h1bdata.info/index.php?year=2016&city=LOS+ANGELES
I gotta say, I definitely have a problem here. I did not check every single position in this list but, I did a simple search for common jobs:
Software developer
Systems Analyst
Business systems analyst
Programmer analyst
Accountant
Associate
and most of the salary ranges are barely in the mid-range level(I would even say entry level in a lot of cases). Tell me there are no domestic workers available that can fill those positions?
My point is, maybe we should re-examine how we determine who is qualified for a H1b and truly hold businesses accountable(like infosys) who seek to abuse it. You know, just maybe not Trump, though.
Right on. That is another issue however.
http://h1bdata.info/index.php?year=2016&city=LOS+ANGELES
I gotta say, I definitely have a problem here. I did not check every single position in this list but, I did a simple search for common jobs:
Software developer
Systems Analyst
Business systems analyst
Programmer analyst
Accountant
Associate
and most of the salary ranges are barely in the mid-range level(I would even say entry level in a lot of cases). Tell me there are no domestic workers available that can fill those positions?
My point is, maybe we should re-examine how we determine who is qualified for a H1b and truly hold businesses accountable(like infosys) who seek to abuse it. You know, just maybe not Trump, though.
Right on. That is another issue however.
I came to America on an H1-B in '96. I had immigration lawyers assist me to get it right. First I pretty much had to have at least a bachelors degree. Second the company had to advertise my position in several local trade papers for a duration of time and keep records of all applicants. If asked they would have to justify why I was more qualified than any American who wanted or applied for the job. Third my salary had to be decent. Worthy of importing talent. There was a floor. So I'm not sure how companies are exploiting this in the tech sector. Maybe it's because my proffession was different? Or the rules have changed?
How many of these H1-B jobs were/are actually unionized?
It's not really. If you setup your process to have a low pass rather than to discover good talent, it makes it easy to just excuse it as "there's not enough good people." I mean in no way can I believe that's true. Imagine for a second what the talent pool would look like if gender representation in STEM was 50/50. We've literally pushed out candidates.
The rules got changed heavily and companies like Tata / Infosys / Cyient started basically flooding the H1-B visa lottery and screwing people who wanted to actually come to the US and settle in many cases.
He's doing (possibly) the right thing for probably the wrong reasons, and I say this as someone who is South Asian. Silicon Valley / Seattle has been abusing this for some time, and much of silicon valley is in open collusion (which is illegal, but SV donates enough money to all politicians that everyone turns a blind eye) to reduce middle level programmer salaries (see Google / Apple spats and lawsuits). Though I suspect this will just end up getting rewritten to be abused even more by companies who are close to Trump.\
That's fine, honestly. There is a lot lost by having people live off site, much less in a different country. The lower wages only go so far.
Like almost none. I'm not sure why unions would care.
BarringGaffner
Member
I know this doesn't apply to the vfx industry.This will certainly help Vancouver/London/Montreal bring in international skilled workers that the US will no longer accept.
AbortedWalrusFetus
Member
The AFL-CIO has always stood for labor rights in general, not just the rights of union members. Many unions do.
David H Wong
Banned
Me neither, but can everyone see now that "Companies abusing foreign worker policies to drive down wages" does not equal "Wants all people with brown skin in concentration camps?" The companies that are doing this stuff aren't doing it because they believe in the power of diversity and the people calling for change aren't all trying to preserve a Master Race.
It would be nice if the people calling for reform weren't also shitheads but reform is still needed, and it has nothing to do with racism.
Just_myles
Member
You know if those positions actually required a specific stack, I can actually understand that. But given what I posted previously, I'm not so sure if that is happening as most positions in that list I posted earlier look barely entry level.
I saw 3D artist in the list for los angeles jobs.
Muppet of a Man
Member
I would be much more comfortable with reform of this sort if it was Bernie as president heading it up. Because he'd do it an inclusionary way, like pushing for an increase in diversity in the tech field, just composed of more domestic workers (i.e., born citizens and permanent residents / naturalized citizens).
Vestal
Junior Member
Not when a lot of times those jobs were leveraged in the past as a first job in IT type deal, to get peoples foot in the door. I am talking about the low skill follow Procedure type deal... Be it Operational work, or Help Desk type work.
dr3upmushroom
Banned
The American Dream. This is some backwards thinking and will only lead to more brain drain.
Lol what? Im trying to get put on. SDET, Web... Something
Vestal
Junior Member
This is a much more complex problem than that.... HB1 visa is a fucking problem in the tech industry.
Those are filled by illegal immigrants.
This is competitive high-skill work where companies are undercutting US workers by abusing the law.
While there are non-racist motivating factors, I do believe based on Trump's general xenophobia that he's at least in part motivated by racism.
Grizzle_Dat
Banned
When I used to be a consultant I applied for a perm job at T-Mobile. I was more then qualified for the position but didn't even get a call. A couple years later I was working for the same office as part of a 3rd party company. I learned directly from the manager that the positions were ghost positions. They had no intention on filling them. They had a couple of H1 employees and by law they have to post those positions each year to attempt to fill them with american workers. So they just go through the motions of posting the positions.
I worked along side these guys and spoke to them about it and obviously they want to stay but they are also not making the $$ that their position requires so yes this system needs an overhaul, its a long time coming.
I worked along side these guys and spoke to them about it and obviously they want to stay but they are also not making the $$ that their position requires so yes this system needs an overhaul, its a long time coming.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
What's that I hear.... tech companies moving more projects to foreign offices?
Im surprised at the comments here. All the h1b people I've ever known or worked with have been pretty high qualified. Some of them do work shit (QA usually) jobs to try and work their ways up. Most are us college grads though, graduated high in their class, went to work at Google or apple afterwards. Because they're smarter than me or you.
I don't think I've ever met someone on an h1b who wasn't smart and great at their job.
I don't think I've ever met someone on an h1b who wasn't smart and great at their job.
Jaguar Victory
Member
You work for a good company. Mine is an international powerhouse bank that thrives on being the cheapest. Offshores everything they can and works every tax loophole.
I can't stand Trump and I'm a hard Democrat but this one I did believe needs overhaul.
No derision towards the workers. They're good workers. It's just that companies exploit them for cheap labor. They're not bringing in folks from Europe or Japan. They're from lower labor countries generally. There are of course exceptions and companies who use it the way it was intended.
Is it mostly mid-sized companies abusing this or just some larger companies?
The places I've worked at have positions advertised sometimes for months that just go unfilled for various engineers. Maybe I've just been lucky, but so many of the larger companies here are just hiring as many engineers as they can get their hands on.
I've never had to look more than like 3-4 weeks to find a good job. Granted, I did have to move to a larger city, but still.
This sounds like it would actually encourage offshoring. If folks are doing this as much as people suggest, why not just expand offices? Many of them are starting to open multiple offices anyway, and it probably just makes it easier to shift more money overseas anyway. It's only a matter of time until some country or city offers some huge incentives, and they start pulling talented workers from the US to some other country.
The places I've worked at have positions advertised sometimes for months that just go unfilled for various engineers. Maybe I've just been lucky, but so many of the larger companies here are just hiring as many engineers as they can get their hands on.
I've never had to look more than like 3-4 weeks to find a good job. Granted, I did have to move to a larger city, but still.
This sounds like it would actually encourage offshoring. If folks are doing this as much as people suggest, why not just expand offices? Many of them are starting to open multiple offices anyway, and it probably just makes it easier to shift more money overseas anyway. It's only a matter of time until some country or city offers some huge incentives, and they start pulling talented workers from the US to some other country.
AbsolutBro
Member
Please understand that I am not referring to you specifically, but this is part of the problem with the "We can't recruit US talent" excuse the IT sector likes to throw about. Because higher education in the US has become such a for-profit system, we see more and more classes being filled with foreign students who pay more per seat than a local student would. Even when I was in college (over a decade ago), at least half of my computer science classes (this was before tech degrees split into multiple specializations) were foreign students. I will say it directly in case it's not clear: there is nothing wrong with colleges admitting foreign students.
There is everything wrong with a system that charges foreign students exorbitant prices to attend a US college, reducing the number of US attendees, then laments the lack of US talent while hiring underpaid workers.
Giant Panda
Member
This might just cause companies to move offshore. I guess we'll see.
Particle Physicist
between a quark and a baryon
This seems like it would affect foreign physicians wanting to do residency in the US. Unless I am misreading it.
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