Microsoft & Intel Get a Pass On Higher H-1B Fees 209
theodp writes "Criticizing companies that outsource high-paying American jobs, Senator Charles Schumer described Indian IT company Infosys as a 'chop shop'. (Nine Indian companies accounted for 20,000 H-1B visas as of 2007. In 2008, Infosys held 4,500 of the visas; the number was down by a factor of 10 in 2009.) The comments came as the Senate scrambled to fund the $600M Mexican Border Security Bill by hiking application fees for H-1B and L-1 visas. The Senate measure increases H-1B visa fees by $2,000 per application on firms that have 50% or more of their employees on this visa. Schumer pointed out that the bill would not affect high-tech companies such as Intel or Microsoft 'that play by the rules and recruit workers in America,' although they are among the biggest beneficiaries of the H-1B program."
Legal challenges are a comin' (Score:4, Insightful)
Right or wrong this is going to cause some fur to fly.
Another KDawson Special (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah... 50% total is also easy for big companies to avoid, by making sure to have plenty of employees performing non-skilled labor that count. They could actually aim to hire minimum-wage non-technical employees in advance in order to reduce the proportion of H1B workers. It could still be more cost-effective than hiring skilled labor from local applicants.
They ought to require firms applying for H1Bs to report number of workers in various categories or types of work, and if you have 50% or more of your employees performing any particular type of work on H-1HB visa , then the higher app fees apply for workers in that category...
So e.g. if >50% or your secretaries or H1B, or >50% of your support personnel are H1B, if >50% of your accountants/managers are H1B, or if >50% of your engineers are H1B....
Is that a viable business model? (Score:5, Insightful)
If 50%+ of your employees are H1-B's, I would suggest that your business model is not viable in the United States.
Tax H1-B to fight illegal immigration? (Score:3, Insightful)
Shouldn't we be taxing H1-B applications to increase funding for local schools? After all, a big reason why workers come over on the program is because we genuinely lack enough skilled labor to meet our needs at reasonable price levels. Having come through the California school system myself, I'm a bit shocked that computers can add.
Taxing companies that bring over immigrant workers to pay for border patrol paranoia seems foolish. Tax them to help increase local talent levels. Or require the people to become permanent citizens, thereby permanently increasing the local talent levels.
Re:Is that a viable business model? (Score:5, Insightful)
Care to explain? If a company is doing it there and not going out of business it would appear to me that it's very viable indeed.
Re:Nothing to do with Intel or Microsoft? (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft has 90,000 employees. Intel has 83,000 at least. Considering that there are around 100,000 H1B recipients, you could place nearly all of them at just these two companies and they wouldn't have to pay a dime for any applications, since it would be less than 50% of their employment.
Trickle down tax policies favor monopolies, and anything that taxes a company based on allowed percentage is going to favor huge corporations. But that's entirely the point. Start a ten man company with six H1B recipients, and you're looking at 12,000 in taxes. Microsoft can hire 44,000 H1B recipients and not pay a dime for the application fee.
Every company that hires people from outside the United States should be given zero incentives to do so. Otherwise they have no incentive to train an American for the same job, or to support public education measures so America can produce better workers.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:did i read that right (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:why? (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem I see is the H1-B's are locked in to their jobs, and nearly indentured servants. My problem is that the Hungarian will work for 30k and they expect an American with that level of skill to work for a mere 45k. Though with some relaxing on the H1-B the Hungarian could go on to find 6 figure work. Working at a project appropriate to his skill level.
My take is that we should keep the high end labor.. it makes the US richer, it makes the immigrants richer, and it means we have more top end people working the hard problems.
Storm
Re:Is that a viable business model? (Score:3, Insightful)
You get subsidies for hiring H1-Bs?
Where do I sign up - I'll take a dozen!
Re:did i read that right (Score:5, Insightful)
The mere fact that they're competing against qualified American programmers is indicative of a problem. The H-1B program is predicated on the fiction that there aren't enough qualified Americans to fill the open positions to begin with.
H1 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:did i read that right (Score:2, Insightful)
Uh huh. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
The new sweatshops in the US (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Tax H1-B to fight illegal immigration? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you don't. You, like all non-third-world economies, lack skilled labour willing to work at subsistence wage. This is the corporate definition of "reasonable price level", and is what offshoring and immigration labour is meant to fix. After all, the top 1% holds only a third of all wealth, so there's plenty of room for improvement.
Re:Protectionism by another name (Score:4, Insightful)
They can; but just because a company hired someone does not entitle that person to be allowed to live in (or even visit) the US.
Re:did i read that right (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:did i read that right (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who needs H1Bs anymore? (Score:5, Insightful)
I know your former company, and they have changed their temp labor policy recently. In fact, the mix of foreign workers has been changing from largely Indian nationals to Asian nationals. But the offices worldwide still exist, and show no signs of being dininished.
Offshoring is still in progress. But I'm being converted as we speak.
It's a tangled mess, but I'm still disappointed. We just got a new temp in who is in the U.S. on an H1B. Seriously, they are doing the very same job that dozens of U.S. citizens did in 2008m the VERY SAME JOB. And many of those U.S. citzens that were laid off in 2008 are still looking for that work.
It's abusive, and has been for a long time. H1Bs need to be reduced dramatically. There are, repeat ARE, citizens that can do the work.
Re:did i read that right (Score:4, Insightful)
You left out the part where Microsoft and Intel are keeping the local average wage low by using H-1Bs.
Also, what determines the local average wage and how often are the companies audited for compliance? I think you'll be disappointed by the answer.
Why ignore the top rung US workers or were you implying that US workers can't be top rung?
Re:did i read that right (Score:2, Insightful)
There are very few degrees beyond computer science and engineering, unless your simply lucky, which can expect such high wages. The honeymoon is over, we have more competent people in this sector every year, it's natural for us to want wages to go up, but as our skills become more common place we have less to fall back on. It's funny really, it sounds like in your instance you went on to get another degree, but there is no shortage of people on here actually complaining about struggling to find 65k with a bachelor degree and no experience -- a number which, at least where I'm from, people graduating with degrees in veterinary medicine and law are also aiming for. Perhaps its time we, as a group, get over ourselves.
Re:Border Security? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, this is crazy. There are more than "11 million" illegal* Hispanic immigrants to US. The logic is, that by raising the fees for H1B, more money can be raised to control the immigration at the borders. There is nothing wrong with that, as every country has the right to determine the cost of its visa applications. But then is it logical?
The "total" number of H1B's has been 65,000. Out of this, only 20,000 applications got filled last year. And most of these applications are by people who are educated, English-speaking graduates. It does need some qualifications to get into companies like Intel, Microsoft or Infosys, be it any part of the world.
I am wondering what is more harmful to US? Is it those 60,000 underpaid IT-coolies who almost always have a bachelors or masters degree in their hand, or the millions of almost illiterate immigrants who cannot speak English, and out of which "many of them" rely on not-so-legal means of livelihood in US.
I visited a friend in Westchester, NewYork and found it funny that many people there could/would not speak English. It was even more idiotic that many of them had 5 kids, as US government provides child-support for each of them. This poor friend of mine is a Chinese national with a PhD degree who works as a researcher on an H1B, but it was ironic that his wife cannot legally work here even though she has a bachelors from a top university in China.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_United_States
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa
Re:Who needs H1Bs anymore? (Score:3, Insightful)
There are, repeat ARE, citizens that can do the work.
US citizen, here. been laid off for many months. have been horrified by the lowball offers that come in, trying to take advantage of the perception of the 'poor economy'.
american-born workers are looking for jobs and yet we continue to import and outsource jobs.
if only those in power would feel what its like. that's all I ask. have them walk in our shoes for a while.
not only is there ageism happening in high tech, but its reverse discrimination when local born guys can't even find jobs since its 'cheaper' to hire imports (and then throw them away, which always does happen, btw). its just a mess all around. this isn't leading to any kind of stability, its just a run for short-term profits. it will harm everyone in the long-run, though (short-term thinking often does).
I repeat, this exists because those who control the laws feel none of our pain. they simply don't "get it" or still believe in this misguided concept of 'trickle down' (give the rich company owners lots of power and eventually those 'below' will benefit. that never happens, either, btw.)
Re:did i read that right (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but while that argument might work generally, this is a special case where it does not.