H1B worker here. I understand the sentiments of being replaced by an H1B worker. I just want to emphasize that the worker is not be blamed for this. The fault is with the H1B system & the consultancies which exploit the H1B system.
1. The H1B visa is supposed to be a "skilled visa". But currently this visa is purely based on luck and not on skills & that's how many bad apples game the system. The DOL approves LCA based on minimum wages. The consultancies just pay the minimum wages and bring in the H1B employee. This minimum wage should be increased to match the salary of a skilled American worker. So that this exploitation will stop.
eg: (the salaries are approximate)
In Arizona , the minimum annual salary for LCA is 62K, the average salary paid to an American worker is 115K. Consultancy firms like TCS,Infosys and many other local "one room" consultancies pays 62K and bring in H1B employees because 62K is the minimum stipulated by Department of Labor. Increasing this minimum 62K to a realistic salary like 115K will stop this abuse.
2. There is no easy job portability for H1B workers. Switching jobs on H1B is a precarious act and if something goes wrong, you will have to be out of the country immediately, no grace period. So to be on the safer side, many H1B employees stay silent and accept lowball offers. They also have kids who are going to school and a spouse who cannot work because they are on H4. So H1B workers job portability is not really easy.
Make H1B jobs portable without any strings attached. So that if an H1B employee is paid less and abused by the employer. He/She can switch jobs easily. So this will prevent H1B abuse by the employers and they will think twice before low balling an H1B worker.
3. H1B is a dual intent visa. Once the employer starts GreenCard process for the worker. The H1B worker is literally on shackles. The rules are so strict that the worker cannot change jobs easily. Cannot accept promotions or title change for years. The worker silently accepts this because he/she has a family & kids to support just like any other American worker.
All I want to convey is: The H1B employee is not be blamed for this. The very rules of the H1B system are being gamed by the consultancy companies from India.
Stopping H1B system is not the solution because all the large companies in US has huge dependency on H1B employees.
So to stop this abuse,
1. Increase the minimum wages to a more realistic one.
2. Stop lottery system and grant visas based on top salary.
3. Make the H1B job easily portable.
Replacing the lottery with a salary-based assignment seems like just common sense to me. Why should we allow over someone the employer says is worth $62k, when we could allow over someone the employer says is worth $110k?
As a bonus, it means that the minimum wages aren't relevant, since supply and demand of skilled international workers will set the lowest wage that gets admitted to the US.
This rule would unfortunately favor employers in high cost-of-living areas over low COL ones. Employees are approximately ambivalent between taking home $5k/mo and paying $2k/mo in rent, and taking home $4k/mo and paying $1k/mo in rent. But, the higher rent + higher pay scenario will get admitted well before the lower rent + lower pay.
It also incentivizes putting as much of the compensation in salary as possible, and as little as possible in other benefits.
The challenge here will be for international undergrads graduating from US universities. How are they expected to find a job when the minimum salary reqd to get an H1 is $150k+? This is why they have Level 1 Computer Programmers and Level 4 Software Engineers. That Level 1 is meant for undergrads so that they can have a chance to enter the workforce. Of course, Indian companies misuse that a lot and do classify their workers as Level 1 as well to save on cost.
Also, you are not accounting for non tech professions. For example, fashion industry doesn't generally pay as well. Do you expect that none of them are granted an H1 in that case?
The solution is much more complex than you have laid out here..
115k minimum is insane, and too high in most cases outside software engineering in certain geographical areas. There are many many other high-skilled professions that don't pay as much. I would go further and argue that current H1B regime already favors IT consulting and services companies more than any other professions. Generic skilled software engineers are pushed into the country in bulk by services companies. A completely hypothetical example: an industrial engineer with specific skills in supply chain working in say, Kentucky wouldn't earn 115k till may be 10 years into their career.
Heck, sidestepping academic/research quotas, 115k would even exclude professors from many top-ranked non-big city universities. Salary will unfortunately bias the H1B in favor of software engineering and high-cost-of-living geographical locations. Skilled professions earning < 115k in H1B include, professors, researchers, postdocs, resident doctors everywhere, engineers and accountants of all types outside big cities, etc. etc.
Working in your IT silos, it is easy for you to lose sight of the big picture.
Edit: To give you a sense of how dumb the idea is, look up assistant professor salaries at UIUC ECE, arguably one of the top 5 universities in this area in the country (or top 10 in the world, in fact), you'll find almost all assistant profs earn < 115k.
It's a natural/normal reaction to have negative feelings towards the H1B worker. However, the people to blame are American companies (Big Business/Corporate America), U.S. universities & colleges (who charge foreign student 3-4 times higher tuition by offering chance to work in the US and then provide American companies with cheap labor via the F1 OPT loophole), corrupt politicians in Washington DC (most are bought), the US Dept of Commerce and the Dept of Labor.
The wage metric to use in the hiring of an H1B worker is the top end of the salary range of that job description for the city or area PLUS a 10-20% premium. This ensures that the company really needs to bring someone in. An entry level engineer in SF/SV would have the tier 1 salary apply to them while a senior engineer would get the higher tier.
The problem isn't just the definition of 'prevailing wage' or the use of the lower tier 1 salary figures for senior positions. The problem is the lack of enforcement by the goverment agencies approving these visa applications.
Is this true? I thought that the salary of H1b worker must match an average paid for this kind of position in this area. In fact, I'm fairly certain that the company sponsoring H1B must supply documents showing they did the research, on both wages and the fact that they couldn't find anyone in the US to do this kind of work.
Unfortunately, if the changes you propose are implemented then that means a lot of H1Bs will lose their jobs.
Like it or not, the value proposition for employers is that H1Bs are cheaper and more dependent. Remove those two factors and US companies will just hire currently unemployed US workers.
This is fine for everyone except the H1B workers, so while you plan is well-meaning in its intent not to blame H1Bs it would have the effect massive job losses for them!
> 2. Stop lottery system and grant visas based on top salary.
> 3. Make the H1B job easily portable.
These two seem at odds.
Granting H1 to top salaries mean only big companies will be able to afford these visas.
What happens to an H1 holder that starts off in a 200k position and wants to leave to a 150k+equity position?
Giving out visas based on salary will expose the system as the unfair and useless system that it is.
Suppose we raise the minimum salary to say 120k/yr, or if we use the salary to determine the order, what this will signal is that the more you are paid the more you are needed. And since this visa is for the best and brightest we will see that, hey, my manager/dentist/lawyer/doctor makes double what I make, that would indicate to me that we need more of those best and brightest from around the world.
But that's not what this is, there is no shortage that we need to address. We educate and train plenty of American citizens to fill these rolls. It is corporate welfare that the government is all to willing to play along with.
H1-B and Outsourcing to offshore are two completely different things. As outsourcing means hand part of a job to contactor firm which could either be local or foreign. Foreign contracting firm don't need visas, and local contracting firm can either hire Americans or sponsor visas.
The real problem is that a foreign worker should not get paid less doing the same job American do. That will kill the incentive and it's also very inhumane and racist to pay less for the same work based just on citizenship.
It's never made sense that H1B Visas are awarded by lottery instead of salary. In a lottery system a company can game the system by applying for thousands of visas.
If they were to do it based on highest salary it would offer U.S. workers more pay protection, and it would still allow companies to bring over the high-quality talent they need.
Correct, the structure of those 2 are different yet is is often the case that an Outsource company will be brought onsite and be badge direct replacements to employees. They are awarded a giant contract as Staff Aug to the enitre IT org or department.
If I'm reading the situation correctly, the foreign workers are NOT on H1-B, but on internal "company transfer" visas. The way it works (and someone can correct me if I'm wrong) is that the company, say TCS, brings in workers from India in the B1 (?) visa category, which is unlimited and for internal company transfers. It then sends these workers (who are still working for TCS) to the client's site. This way, they avoid the H1-B mess altogether.
Not sure how a simple statement of, "I was a full-time employee of company XYZ until I was laid off, with severance, after training my H1B contractor replacement," is at all disparaging. It is simply a statement of fact.
> Leo Perrero, an IT worker at Disney who was laid off after training his foreign replacement, says non-disparagement agreements hinder the debate over the H-1B visa. Without such agreements, "you would have a lot more people speaking out - real human beings with real stories, not just anonymous persons speaking out," said Perrero.
> "Their freedom of speech is being taken away from them with the non-disparagement agreements," he said.
Stating a fact is probably not disparaging. (Not a lawyer; I dunno.) But that's not a debate, either. If you want to debate about it, you basically have to say that this act hurt you, which may count as disparaging or discrediting your former employer.
The problem is, if the statement is word in a very open ended manner and the firing company perceives the comments as disparaging in any way, they come after you. The company could argue revealing they're completely replacing departments with outsourced staffing as detrimental to the company's reputation due to the stigma associated with outsourcing. They go to court and whip out multiple blog posts/forum comments/editorials to prove their point. Now you're stuck. You're helping perpetuate a damaging stigma against your former employer that negatively impacts their business reputation. Doesn't matter if it's "fact" or not. Is the fact disparaging?
They might also get you on NDA violations if your NDA includes not revealing corporate staffing strategies.
IAMNAL but I've been around enough to know it's possible to spin anything with an open-ended clause.
You do wonder how much of the "silence" on this issue is due to all major US media outlets now being owned by large corporations who don't want this issue to see the light of day.
To wit, how much of the American government's dysfunction is made possible by today's captive press?
You know I think this has been a debate for longer than just H-1B. Take consulting companies and the recent huge expansion of companies like TATA/TCS.
I've worked for two companies now that completely replaced their operations teams with TCS, and it's been a disaster each time, but it's cheaper and the tradeoff in ops quality doesn't matter when you have millions in labor off the bottom line instantly.
It's much easier to see that than any negative perception or lost sales.
Is the US Government not also to blame for this? I had thought that one of the major rules about immigrant worker visas was that they can only be granted for workers whom are doing a job for which no available citizen worker can be found.
H1B stipulates this. Here is how the companies work around this. The ADs that they put for this position should have the salary too. The salary will be the bare minimum specified by the Department of Labor for that work location. eg: Arizona I think its not more than 62K per year. There will not be any American worker who will be willing to work for that. So the AD will yield zero American applicants for that position and thus they hire an H1B worker.
If your company has H1B workers, go to to your company's public notice boards usually in the break rooms. You can find notices like "Labor condition application for a foreign worker". Take a look at the second page or the third one and see the salary for that position. Usually it will be a bare minimum or minimum + ~10K.
The main reason why severance is offered is to keep people from portraying the company in a bad light. If anti-disparagement clauses were made illegal, fewer companies would offer severance.
The major issue with the H-1B isn't the Indian consultancies, who contribute to some of the more egregious abuses, but the regular tech companies: The Intels, Microsofts, IBMs, EMCs, Googles, Facebooks, Amazons, etc. It's not that they are replacing employees that are citizens it's that they are preferring the H-1B and OPT for open positions.
Modern tech corporations have been automated to the point that the biggest cost is labor, so they are now spending a lot of effort to address this cost. The claim that there is a STEM shortage is a myth invented by these corporations in order to lobby and expand these programs. They operate within the letter of the law but not in the spirit, with misleading job advertisements and preferential hiring practices. This becomes a self fullfilling prophecy in that the smart people who are paying attention are driven away from technology.
Microsoft is the first big 'tech' company on the list at no. 11 with 3600 applications. Compare that to Infosys which had over 23,000 applications, or Tata with 14,000.
Its also conspicuous that the consultancy companies pay much less and seem to apply for drastically less green card labour certs as a percentage of H1B's than the tech companies.
Umm, no. If you've worked at Facebook/Amazon/Google, you'd know that is not true. They do not prefer H1-Bs over citizens. They simply hire people who pass interviews. Also, what makes you think the industry's smartest people aren't working at these companies? I'd say on the contrary, they have the smartest folk in the CS industry at these companies.
In singapore, work permit class are all based on salary you earn and associated rights.
EP1 above 8k you can apply long term visa for your parents.
EP2 above 6k you can think about applying permanent residency.
SP you cannot bring your own spouse.
WP you cannot marry to local.
It is a bit brutal. but effective.
IT outsourcing is like training you while you on pay. once entry level engineers get experienced and they will ask to migrate to US. eventually a local hire become out of job.
Things I don't understand is why all these IT jobs require degree. why cannot we train school dropout to do the works? don't listen to outsource company when they say we have 80% graduate/16% masters/4% PHD etc. see what skills you really want.
I'm completely in favor of H-1B. I've been trying to hire an American CEO for years, but there is a critical shortage of CEOs (willing to work for a reasonable salary). I'm certain there are plenty of MBAs we could import to fix this shortage.
Not really, foreigners governments are minions of the US Military, it just for war reasons they are painted as real enemies. In reality any country fighting the US in any way would be like being a skinny kid who fights Mike Tyson in his prime and Mike Tyson has a bat and a gun and the referee is Tyson Mother.
Why do I have a nasty feeling that Disney's severance contract was written by a H1-B lawyer? Whoever it is I think will be looking for a new job if they aren't already.
[+] [-] titomc|10 years ago|reply
1. The H1B visa is supposed to be a "skilled visa". But currently this visa is purely based on luck and not on skills & that's how many bad apples game the system. The DOL approves LCA based on minimum wages. The consultancies just pay the minimum wages and bring in the H1B employee. This minimum wage should be increased to match the salary of a skilled American worker. So that this exploitation will stop.
eg: (the salaries are approximate)
In Arizona , the minimum annual salary for LCA is 62K, the average salary paid to an American worker is 115K. Consultancy firms like TCS,Infosys and many other local "one room" consultancies pays 62K and bring in H1B employees because 62K is the minimum stipulated by Department of Labor. Increasing this minimum 62K to a realistic salary like 115K will stop this abuse.
2. There is no easy job portability for H1B workers. Switching jobs on H1B is a precarious act and if something goes wrong, you will have to be out of the country immediately, no grace period. So to be on the safer side, many H1B employees stay silent and accept lowball offers. They also have kids who are going to school and a spouse who cannot work because they are on H4. So H1B workers job portability is not really easy.
Make H1B jobs portable without any strings attached. So that if an H1B employee is paid less and abused by the employer. He/She can switch jobs easily. So this will prevent H1B abuse by the employers and they will think twice before low balling an H1B worker.
3. H1B is a dual intent visa. Once the employer starts GreenCard process for the worker. The H1B worker is literally on shackles. The rules are so strict that the worker cannot change jobs easily. Cannot accept promotions or title change for years. The worker silently accepts this because he/she has a family & kids to support just like any other American worker.
All I want to convey is: The H1B employee is not be blamed for this. The very rules of the H1B system are being gamed by the consultancy companies from India. Stopping H1B system is not the solution because all the large companies in US has huge dependency on H1B employees.
So to stop this abuse, 1. Increase the minimum wages to a more realistic one. 2. Stop lottery system and grant visas based on top salary. 3. Make the H1B job easily portable.
[+] [-] ThrustVectoring|10 years ago|reply
As a bonus, it means that the minimum wages aren't relevant, since supply and demand of skilled international workers will set the lowest wage that gets admitted to the US.
This rule would unfortunately favor employers in high cost-of-living areas over low COL ones. Employees are approximately ambivalent between taking home $5k/mo and paying $2k/mo in rent, and taking home $4k/mo and paying $1k/mo in rent. But, the higher rent + higher pay scenario will get admitted well before the lower rent + lower pay.
It also incentivizes putting as much of the compensation in salary as possible, and as little as possible in other benefits.
[+] [-] product50|10 years ago|reply
Also, you are not accounting for non tech professions. For example, fashion industry doesn't generally pay as well. Do you expect that none of them are granted an H1 in that case?
The solution is much more complex than you have laid out here..
[+] [-] shas3|10 years ago|reply
Heck, sidestepping academic/research quotas, 115k would even exclude professors from many top-ranked non-big city universities. Salary will unfortunately bias the H1B in favor of software engineering and high-cost-of-living geographical locations. Skilled professions earning < 115k in H1B include, professors, researchers, postdocs, resident doctors everywhere, engineers and accountants of all types outside big cities, etc. etc.
Working in your IT silos, it is easy for you to lose sight of the big picture.
Edit: To give you a sense of how dumb the idea is, look up assistant professor salaries at UIUC ECE, arguably one of the top 5 universities in this area in the country (or top 10 in the world, in fact), you'll find almost all assistant profs earn < 115k.
[+] [-] uglysexy|10 years ago|reply
The wage metric to use in the hiring of an H1B worker is the top end of the salary range of that job description for the city or area PLUS a 10-20% premium. This ensures that the company really needs to bring someone in. An entry level engineer in SF/SV would have the tier 1 salary apply to them while a senior engineer would get the higher tier.
The problem isn't just the definition of 'prevailing wage' or the use of the lower tier 1 salary figures for senior positions. The problem is the lack of enforcement by the goverment agencies approving these visa applications.
[+] [-] ppoint|10 years ago|reply
Is this true? I thought that the salary of H1b worker must match an average paid for this kind of position in this area. In fact, I'm fairly certain that the company sponsoring H1B must supply documents showing they did the research, on both wages and the fact that they couldn't find anyone in the US to do this kind of work.
[+] [-] tryitnow|10 years ago|reply
Unfortunately, if the changes you propose are implemented then that means a lot of H1Bs will lose their jobs.
Like it or not, the value proposition for employers is that H1Bs are cheaper and more dependent. Remove those two factors and US companies will just hire currently unemployed US workers.
This is fine for everyone except the H1B workers, so while you plan is well-meaning in its intent not to blame H1Bs it would have the effect massive job losses for them!
[+] [-] phyous|10 years ago|reply
Granting H1 to top salaries mean only big companies will be able to afford these visas. What happens to an H1 holder that starts off in a 200k position and wants to leave to a 150k+equity position?
[+] [-] ones_and_zeros|10 years ago|reply
Suppose we raise the minimum salary to say 120k/yr, or if we use the salary to determine the order, what this will signal is that the more you are paid the more you are needed. And since this visa is for the best and brightest we will see that, hey, my manager/dentist/lawyer/doctor makes double what I make, that would indicate to me that we need more of those best and brightest from around the world.
But that's not what this is, there is no shortage that we need to address. We educate and train plenty of American citizens to fill these rolls. It is corporate welfare that the government is all to willing to play along with.
[+] [-] hwstar|10 years ago|reply
C-Level Management->Shareholders->Customers->Employees
In this environment, one must be financially prepared to retire early once you reach your 50's because you will likely be replaced.
Replacement by H-1B's is just a symptom of a greater underlying problem: The need to enrich management and shareholders.
Instead of C-corporations which put profit above everything else, we need more public benefit corporations (B-corps) which have balanced priorities.
[+] [-] qihqi|10 years ago|reply
The real problem is that a foreign worker should not get paid less doing the same job American do. That will kill the incentive and it's also very inhumane and racist to pay less for the same work based just on citizenship.
[+] [-] jobu|10 years ago|reply
If they were to do it based on highest salary it would offer U.S. workers more pay protection, and it would still allow companies to bring over the high-quality talent they need.
[+] [-] GBond|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] discardorama|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mring33621|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pavel_lishin|10 years ago|reply
> Leo Perrero, an IT worker at Disney who was laid off after training his foreign replacement, says non-disparagement agreements hinder the debate over the H-1B visa. Without such agreements, "you would have a lot more people speaking out - real human beings with real stories, not just anonymous persons speaking out," said Perrero.
> "Their freedom of speech is being taken away from them with the non-disparagement agreements," he said.
Stating a fact is probably not disparaging. (Not a lawyer; I dunno.) But that's not a debate, either. If you want to debate about it, you basically have to say that this act hurt you, which may count as disparaging or discrediting your former employer.
[+] [-] floppydisk|10 years ago|reply
They might also get you on NDA violations if your NDA includes not revealing corporate staffing strategies.
IAMNAL but I've been around enough to know it's possible to spin anything with an open-ended clause.
[+] [-] randcraw|10 years ago|reply
To wit, how much of the American government's dysfunction is made possible by today's captive press?
[+] [-] seivan|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] supergeek133|10 years ago|reply
I've worked for two companies now that completely replaced their operations teams with TCS, and it's been a disaster each time, but it's cheaper and the tradeoff in ops quality doesn't matter when you have millions in labor off the bottom line instantly.
It's much easier to see that than any negative perception or lost sales.
[+] [-] Zikes|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] titomc|10 years ago|reply
H1B stipulates this. Here is how the companies work around this. The ADs that they put for this position should have the salary too. The salary will be the bare minimum specified by the Department of Labor for that work location. eg: Arizona I think its not more than 62K per year. There will not be any American worker who will be willing to work for that. So the AD will yield zero American applicants for that position and thus they hire an H1B worker.
If your company has H1B workers, go to to your company's public notice boards usually in the break rooms. You can find notices like "Labor condition application for a foreign worker". Take a look at the second page or the third one and see the salary for that position. Usually it will be a bare minimum or minimum + ~10K.
[+] [-] mingfli|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ck2|10 years ago|reply
Holy hell. I couldn't do it, I'd starve first.
And can you imagine sitting with and being trained by someone that you knew you were causing them to lose their job?
Corporations making people hate each other, it's the American way.
Those H1B replacements should be keeping those American flags - what other country would allow this kind of nonsense to happen.
[+] [-] gorbachev|10 years ago|reply
The H1-B program was designed to prevent abuses like these. It looks like enforcement is sorely lacking.
[+] [-] anon987|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] st3v3r|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hwstar|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wang_li|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ones_and_zeros|10 years ago|reply
Modern tech corporations have been automated to the point that the biggest cost is labor, so they are now spending a lot of effort to address this cost. The claim that there is a STEM shortage is a myth invented by these corporations in order to lobby and expand these programs. They operate within the letter of the law but not in the spirit, with misleading job advertisements and preferential hiring practices. This becomes a self fullfilling prophecy in that the smart people who are paying attention are driven away from technology.
[+] [-] mrsharpoblunto|10 years ago|reply
http://foreign-employment.findthedata.com/
Microsoft is the first big 'tech' company on the list at no. 11 with 3600 applications. Compare that to Infosys which had over 23,000 applications, or Tata with 14,000.
Its also conspicuous that the consultancy companies pay much less and seem to apply for drastically less green card labour certs as a percentage of H1B's than the tech companies.
[+] [-] curiousDog|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] archlight|10 years ago|reply
It is a bit brutal. but effective.
IT outsourcing is like training you while you on pay. once entry level engineers get experienced and they will ask to migrate to US. eventually a local hire become out of job.
Things I don't understand is why all these IT jobs require degree. why cannot we train school dropout to do the works? don't listen to outsource company when they say we have 80% graduate/16% masters/4% PHD etc. see what skills you really want.
[+] [-] johngalt|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidw|10 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoHCT2bUjwg
My views:
http://journal.dedasys.com/2014/12/29/people-places-and-jobs...
[+] [-] theklub|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcslzr|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] LorenPechtel|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pc86|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] protomyth|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bobmno|10 years ago|reply