top | item 9543897

H-1B Visa Cap: The Imminent Threat to US Tech Innovation

5 points| sunilkumarc | 11 years ago |blog.hackerrank.com | reply

13 comments

order
[+] dudul|11 years ago|reply
"Immigrants are a Big Force in Driving American Innovation" but h1b workers are not immigrants. They and their family have very little rights as workers in the US.

If the motivation is really to bring innovation to the US, cancel the h1b status and simplify the green card sponsorship via employment. But let's be real, that's not the goal. The goal is to bring servile underpaid peons to the valley to drag tech wages down.

I was an h1b for 4 years.

[+] pliftkl|11 years ago|reply
Or, as proposed elsewhere, keep the cap and remove the lottery system. Grant visas to the top paid applicants. This removes allows companies with a need to great engineers to pay for them, and reduces the influx of lower quality H1-B's.
[+] dudul|11 years ago|reply
That's an idea. But the problem is once the petition is accepted the employer could reduce the non-immigrant's salary. I'm not a lawyer but I don't think it's illegal.

The main issue is that H1B workers have very little rights. If they get let go, they technically have to leave the country in the next 24 hours - the 30 day grace period is a myth. They are very easy to bully and put up with a lot of shit from their employer simply to be able to stay in the country.

One solution would be to grant an H1B that would be valid even after termination/resignation - maybe for a certain amount of time like a month or two. This would allow a worker to leave an unreasonable employer and give him a chance to find a new gig.

However, I also believe that there is no talent shortage in tech and the H1B program is used to try to drag wages down.

[+] vilmosi|11 years ago|reply
If quality is your concern, shouldn't you propose a point based system instead?
[+] venomsnake|11 years ago|reply
Us companies can open offices overseas, and remote collaboration for me surpasses regular one nowadays.
[+] annon23|11 years ago|reply
Remote collaboration depends on so many variables that I think you are more likely a bigo.t who wants immigrant out of your country