This is actually a fantastic experiment to evaluate whether people are employed on H1-Bs because of a shortage which can't be met locally, or because indentured workers are cheaper. Ideally there would be another cohort, allocated randomly, where the employee is not tied to any one employer, like a temporary green card.
It is fallacious to say that with decreased supply, demand will dictate wages will go up. It is quite possible that demand is elastic at a particular price point, but at higher prices demand falls to zero (aka set up an office in Canada). There is no reason to assume linearity in any of this.
What's missing is that, even with the potential for high wages after graduation, it is still a big risk for an individual to borrow for a college education. These employers should be taxed, perhaps 10% of their H1-B expenditure, with that tax subsidising education in that field.
> The reality is that some H-1B workers such as an IT analyst would need a starting salary of $208,000 to be eligible – a massive jump over the previous requirement.
> An entry-level programmer would need to make $111,946 instead of the previous $78,125.
I was planning on going down to the states (I'm living in BC Canada), the salaries down there are more than 2x what you can get here. It doesn't look like I'll be able to do that now. With this said, this move by your current administration makes a lot of sense to me, there is an opportunity to grow the American middle class around knowledge work. The United States has the best training institutions and capital structures in the world. They have a healthy demographic profile (they are maintaining their population), there is no reason for them to spoil their own job market with injections of foreign labour. I see no reason for them not to train and hire their own citizens.
One is that foreign labor allows lower wages which can make american companies more competitive over foreign ones.
Second, allowing foreign workers encourages jobs to stay here in the US where at least the wages will be taxed and a large portion of those salaries will be spent here in the U.S., thus further stimulating the economy. Alternatively,if those same jobs move overseas, we see none of the tax revenue and none of it being spent here.
Basically the administration turned the tables on Big Tech. They primarily import H1Bs to dilute the employment pool to let the market take care of wage depression. There is plenty of tech talent pipeline inside the country. Just look at the eager undergrads looking for employment and other US citizens looking to step into tech field via boot camps. Increasing the threshold for the wages to paid for “specialty occupation for which several attempts have been made to hire US Citizens” aka H1B makes the test true to the spirit of the law.
> Basically the administration turned the tables on Big Tech. They primarily import H1Bs to dilute the employment pool to let the market take care of wage depression.
Adding additional context from the article. It primarily impacts Indian outsourcing companies registered as US companies such as Infosys, Cognizant, TCS, HCL, Tech Mahindra, Wipro etc. These companies have been gaming the system and making billions by underpaying their imported staff.
> An analysis [PDF] of the new rules by non-partisan National Foundation for American Policy noted that the H-1B wage minimums will require foreigners to be paid much more than American citizens on market rates. That's not a problem for the likes of Facebook and Apple, though it will be disastrous for organizations like Infosys, that import immigrant workers, as well as small and medium-sized businesses.
Is there data or research to suggest H1B actively dilutes the talent pool? There’s no doubt the system is abused — not too long ago, I was at an oil and gas company who contracted out to a company that brought in H1Bs. Many of the guys spoke zero English and couldn’t write code at all. Yes - that kind of indefensible abusive. But how rampant is this stuff?
Please forgive me for my lacking knowledge of the US immigration system, but does this mean that folks on H-1B currently waiting for a green card must withdraw their applications the next time their H-1B expires unless their salaries are greater than this threshold? Are there any publicly available numbers on how much of the insane GC backlog (greater than a 100 years for Indian nationals) this might affect?
[Not a lawyer, but a former H1-B and Green Card holder]
1) Under current law, that seems unlikely. The hurdles are mostly to get the first H1-B, renewal is practically automatic.
2) If Trump gets re-elected… well, you may have noticed that he, and some of his closest advisors on immigration, e.g. Stephen Miller, consider capriciousness in immigration policy setting a feature, rather than a bug, so who knows?
3) On the other hand, the US has a somewhat functional legal system, and legal immigrants, once admitted, enjoy the presumption to certain rights, so any action is likely to be tied up in legal proceedings for several years.
Actually, you need to invert that. Doctors, at least, make more in rural areas than they do in urban areas. The estimations vary, but they're in the 5-30% more than their urban counterparts range.
The average wage for internal medicine doctors in urban areas (as an aggregate) is still above $208,000. It's actually roughly right, imo, to prevent depressing doctors' wages. It's right around the average, so you're paying above average rates to get an H1B, which is the intended purpose of the program isn't it? The idea being that it drives up salaries for those jobs, encouraging more people to train to do them.
What’s terrible about it? Who needs to import world class talent other than world class companies, working on world class problems?
Let’s take the narrative for the full ride, the mythical unparalleled skilled developer that only exists in these other mystical countries and absolutely could never be found locally, even with remote work within the US being validated. The god-like programmer that must be flown here immediately, for how else will this software be built?
Pay the unicorns, unicorn prices. What’s the issue?
One demographic this policy seems to unintentionally trample is international students. There’s a pretty well-trod path of F1 Visa -> OPT -> (OPT STEM Extension) -> H1B -> (green card, if you’re from the right country). It’s a tall order to expect that all new grads from this path will be able to command such high salaries, and there’s an existing set of international students who have planned their lives on being able to get the H1B before OPT runs out.
In my opinion, we should encourage immigration through our higher-education system (and we have been doing so for decades). I generally agree that the loopholes allowing for below-market H1B roles should be closed, but I think that students/recent graduates should be treated differently. There’s a big difference between sourcing lower-wage foreign workers who don’t already have roots in the USA, and paying entry-level salaries to recent graduates who’ve been living in the US for years already.
Of course, some may take issue with the premise here, and might say that the F1 shouldn’t be issued with intent to immigrate. But I think that’s terrible policy; nearly all of my (uniformly brilliant, top-shelf) friends who came here on F1 had horrendous, soul-crushing experiences with work authorization, even though they provide tremendous value to companies and the country by being here.
> we should encourage immigration through our higher-education system (and we have been doing so for decades)
Having gone through the numbers just yesterday, I was very surprised. So, here's the correction for you. No, america does not encourage immigration through education and subsequent employment. Out of roughly 550k green cards per year, only around 15k are for educated immigrants coming through employment categories (eb1,2,3).
For comparison, there are around 50k diversity visas given in lotteries, and 8k investors visas given out to anyone willing to buy a green card.
Perhaps they should do a better job of taking ties into account somehow. But when there's a line a million people long, the rules need to be very clear and fair, else it's just up to the mood of the agent you end up dealing with that day.
And a problem with any path being a sure thing is that it turns into a route to buy residency. People will line up to hack it. There's a lot of low-tier colleges in the US. And are you including MS degrees? Apparently some can be done in a year, plus internships (CPT) which is yet more work visa.
What makes you think it's unintentional? In addition to depressing educated, skilled immigration, it has the desirable side-effect of depressing revenues for "lefty, liberal, coastal, elitist" universities, who admit those international students and charge them full non-resident tuition.
I am no fan of Trump but this is an interesting experiment. It seems like a last minute grab bag for votes and it would have been more interesting if it happened 2 years ago.
Seems like this would be a problem for smaller companies (not much cash) and startups (remuneration is stock based).
Large companies can absorb the cost if someone is that important. They can also just employ remotely and do an internal company transfer later (L-something visa).
I mean the big people it screws are those companies that abuse the system - the IT "consulting" companies, that are functionally a market undercutting scam.
Why should small companies get subsidized, below market rate programmers?
It’s already pretty expensive in legal fees to sponsor an h1b, so really small companies are already suffering due to big firms.
Software is an industry where size isn’t as important as other industries. A five dev company can do great things and as such can afford market salaries.
Pre-pandemic I would have said that if they were willing to off-shore, they would have already been doing it for those jobs. But the timing for this change is pretty bad because so many companies are learning to work remote anyway.
This is good atleast now Indians will stay in India and develop our country instead of going to the US and contributing to a country which is already ahead in everyway.
[+] [-] angry_octet|5 years ago|reply
It is fallacious to say that with decreased supply, demand will dictate wages will go up. It is quite possible that demand is elastic at a particular price point, but at higher prices demand falls to zero (aka set up an office in Canada). There is no reason to assume linearity in any of this.
What's missing is that, even with the potential for high wages after graduation, it is still a big risk for an individual to borrow for a college education. These employers should be taxed, perhaps 10% of their H1-B expenditure, with that tax subsidising education in that field.
[+] [-] perryizgr8|5 years ago|reply
> An entry-level programmer would need to make $111,946 instead of the previous $78,125.
The title is kind of misleading and inaccurate.
[+] [-] _aleph2c_|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjeaff|5 years ago|reply
One is that foreign labor allows lower wages which can make american companies more competitive over foreign ones.
Second, allowing foreign workers encourages jobs to stay here in the US where at least the wages will be taxed and a large portion of those salaries will be spent here in the U.S., thus further stimulating the economy. Alternatively,if those same jobs move overseas, we see none of the tax revenue and none of it being spent here.
[+] [-] chillacy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ycombonator|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nodamage|5 years ago|reply
Not really, Big Tech pays H1Bs competitive salaries (https://insights.dice.com/2020/05/19/google-apple-amazon-oth...). What this mostly affects is IT consulting firms like Tata and Infosys.
[+] [-] ycombonator|5 years ago|reply
> An analysis [PDF] of the new rules by non-partisan National Foundation for American Policy noted that the H-1B wage minimums will require foreigners to be paid much more than American citizens on market rates. That's not a problem for the likes of Facebook and Apple, though it will be disastrous for organizations like Infosys, that import immigrant workers, as well as small and medium-sized businesses.
[+] [-] tracer4201|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Karishma1234|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] aviraldg|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] microtherion|5 years ago|reply
1) Under current law, that seems unlikely. The hurdles are mostly to get the first H1-B, renewal is practically automatic.
2) If Trump gets re-elected… well, you may have noticed that he, and some of his closest advisors on immigration, e.g. Stephen Miller, consider capriciousness in immigration policy setting a feature, rather than a bug, so who knows?
3) On the other hand, the US has a somewhat functional legal system, and legal immigrants, once admitted, enjoy the presumption to certain rights, so any action is likely to be tied up in legal proceedings for several years.
4) And let's see what happens today.
[+] [-] gbronner|5 years ago|reply
The real issue is decent the number of h1bs, and thus the cutoff
[+] [-] dmode|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mucholove|5 years ago|reply
Moreover, I think this is great for the job market and US immigration in general. Hopefully it motivates Americans to pursue these markets.
For those of us who would have considered H1-B previously, this is a great change. You now get to compete without the racket.
[+] [-] curryst|5 years ago|reply
Actually, you need to invert that. Doctors, at least, make more in rural areas than they do in urban areas. The estimations vary, but they're in the 5-30% more than their urban counterparts range.
The average wage for internal medicine doctors in urban areas (as an aggregate) is still above $208,000. It's actually roughly right, imo, to prevent depressing doctors' wages. It's right around the average, so you're paying above average rates to get an H1B, which is the intended purpose of the program isn't it? The idea being that it drives up salaries for those jobs, encouraging more people to train to do them.
[+] [-] yhoneycomb|5 years ago|reply
Resident doctors gets paid 50k/yr to work 80 hr weeks.
[+] [-] runawaybottle|5 years ago|reply
Let’s take the narrative for the full ride, the mythical unparalleled skilled developer that only exists in these other mystical countries and absolutely could never be found locally, even with remote work within the US being validated. The god-like programmer that must be flown here immediately, for how else will this software be built?
Pay the unicorns, unicorn prices. What’s the issue?
[+] [-] innagadadavida|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] olliej|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] beisner|5 years ago|reply
In my opinion, we should encourage immigration through our higher-education system (and we have been doing so for decades). I generally agree that the loopholes allowing for below-market H1B roles should be closed, but I think that students/recent graduates should be treated differently. There’s a big difference between sourcing lower-wage foreign workers who don’t already have roots in the USA, and paying entry-level salaries to recent graduates who’ve been living in the US for years already.
Of course, some may take issue with the premise here, and might say that the F1 shouldn’t be issued with intent to immigrate. But I think that’s terrible policy; nearly all of my (uniformly brilliant, top-shelf) friends who came here on F1 had horrendous, soul-crushing experiences with work authorization, even though they provide tremendous value to companies and the country by being here.
[+] [-] legolas2412|5 years ago|reply
Having gone through the numbers just yesterday, I was very surprised. So, here's the correction for you. No, america does not encourage immigration through education and subsequent employment. Out of roughly 550k green cards per year, only around 15k are for educated immigrants coming through employment categories (eb1,2,3).
For comparison, there are around 50k diversity visas given in lotteries, and 8k investors visas given out to anyone willing to buy a green card.
[+] [-] unishark|5 years ago|reply
And a problem with any path being a sure thing is that it turns into a route to buy residency. People will line up to hack it. There's a lot of low-tier colleges in the US. And are you including MS degrees? Apparently some can be done in a year, plus internships (CPT) which is yet more work visa.
[+] [-] triceratops|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheCoelacanth|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] b20000|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sjg007|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] olliej|5 years ago|reply
Large companies can absorb the cost if someone is that important. They can also just employ remotely and do an internal company transfer later (L-something visa).
I mean the big people it screws are those companies that abuse the system - the IT "consulting" companies, that are functionally a market undercutting scam.
[+] [-] prepend|5 years ago|reply
It’s already pretty expensive in legal fees to sponsor an h1b, so really small companies are already suffering due to big firms.
Software is an industry where size isn’t as important as other industries. A five dev company can do great things and as such can afford market salaries.
[+] [-] GoblinSlayer|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whoomp12342|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjeaff|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] econcon|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] silexia|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ksaho|5 years ago|reply