Tech Startups Say New Pay Rules for H-1B Visas Are Unaffordable (wsj.com) 236
New rules from the Trump administration restricting skilled foreign workers are unnerving U.S. startup hubs, as founders and investors say the limitations will hamstring their ability to recruit top-tier talent to grow their businesses [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; free syndicated source]. From a report: The changes to the H-1B visa program announced in October will make qualifying for the work visas much tougher and compel employers to pay foreign workers drastically higher wages. Those rules hit especially hard for technology startups, whose founders and rank-and-file are often immigrants and which usually pay employees a lower salary but compensate with stock options. Many salaries under the new rules start at $208,000, even for inexperienced workers. "It's already expensive, it was already a high bar, and we are making it prohibitive," Kate Mitchell, co-founder of venture-capital firm Scale, said of the H1-B program. The administration has said the rules are designed to ensure U.S. workers get priority for jobs. "For too long, foreign worker programs have been abused at the expense of American workers," a spokesperson for the Labor Department said. The new rules "will help put an end to these harms." The H1-B rules are the latest in a string of immigration restrictions dating back to the travel ban against citizens from predominantly Muslim countries that Mr. Trump issued a week after his inauguration.
The cumulative effect has left some tech startups weary of doing business here, founders say. Some founders say they are shifting hiring and growth plans away from the U.S., establishing engineering hubs in Eastern Europe and sending new recruits from American universities who would require a U.S. visa to work instead at satellite offices in Canada. Nearly a third of all venture-backed startups are founded by immigrants, according to a 2016 report from the National Bureau of Economic Research. More than half of startups valued at $1 billion or more have at least one immigrant founder, according to a 2018 paper from the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonpartisan think tank. Several of the highest-valued venture-backed companies today, including payments company Stripe and stock-trading app Robinhood, have at least one immigrant founder and collectively thousands of employees. Much of the high-tech industry has long wanted overhauls to the H-1B program so companies have an easier path to obtain visas in a competitive hiring environment. The administration says low-cost foreign workers are taking jobs from Americans.
The cumulative effect has left some tech startups weary of doing business here, founders say. Some founders say they are shifting hiring and growth plans away from the U.S., establishing engineering hubs in Eastern Europe and sending new recruits from American universities who would require a U.S. visa to work instead at satellite offices in Canada. Nearly a third of all venture-backed startups are founded by immigrants, according to a 2016 report from the National Bureau of Economic Research. More than half of startups valued at $1 billion or more have at least one immigrant founder, according to a 2018 paper from the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonpartisan think tank. Several of the highest-valued venture-backed companies today, including payments company Stripe and stock-trading app Robinhood, have at least one immigrant founder and collectively thousands of employees. Much of the high-tech industry has long wanted overhauls to the H-1B program so companies have an easier path to obtain visas in a competitive hiring environment. The administration says low-cost foreign workers are taking jobs from Americans.
Hell train and hire (Score:5, Insightful)
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These are superstars, the cream of the crop (Score:4, Funny)
These are superstars, the cream of the crop. The possess superior skills that are unavailable locally.
You have to pay top dollar for such talent.
Re:These are superstars, the cream of the crop (Score:5, Insightful)
LOL..you certainly haven't ever worked with the level of these employees I have had to suffer through....
Re:These are superstars, the cream of the crop (Score:5, Interesting)
Then you were working for an employer that was blatantly abusing the H1-B program to secure cheap labor and drive down salaries, rather than for its explicitly stated purpose of recruiting top talent unavailable in the US.
Re:These are superstars, the cream of the crop (Score:5, Insightful)
The stated purpose for the H1-B program is rarely the motivating factor for businesses that use it.
The vast majority of employers blatantly abuse the H1-B program to secure cheap labor and drive down salaries. What fantasyland have you been working in where that hasn't been the case.
Re:These are superstars, the cream of the crop (Score:4, Insightful)
And what fantasyland do these businesses live in, crying foul when the government starts enforcing the law?
Re:These are superstars, the cream of the crop (Score:4, Insightful)
The land where they think they run the place. You know, since they have for 150 years.
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To be fair to OP, they've always been supposed to be superstars, rare talents that can't be found domestically. That implies that they should be expected to cost $$$.
Want a one of a kind amphibious SUV that can climb Pike's peak or cross the Atlantic? It's gonna cost more than an old Ford Pinto at Bob's very used cars.
The fact that you've found the H1-Bs you work with to be closer to Pinto than super SUV means the H1-B program has been severely abused, just as many here have complained for years.
inexperienced workers should not be H1-B's (Score:3)
inexperienced workers should not be H1-B's.
But they used to say we can't find an USC willing to put in 60-80 hours an week in the bay area for $70K/year so we need an H1-B
Re:That's not true (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently, it is you who are ignorant of the law. From The Department of Labor [dol.gov]:
The H-1B program applies to employers seeking to hire nonimmigrant aliens as workers in specialty occupations or as fashion models of distinguished merit and ability. A specialty occupation is one that requires the application of a body of highly specialized knowledge and the attainment of at least a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent. The intent of the H-1B provisions is to help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce by authorizing the temporary employment of qualified individuals who are not otherwise authorized to work in the United States.
I bolded the key parts for you.
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If hiring 5 H1-Bs who are willing to work harder for a salary (under threat of deportation) increases the salary/productivity ratio for everyone else, then it's a win.
Addressing the salaries of H1-Bs is not the solution to the problem. Their salaries are already fairly competitive.
You're deluding yourself, are outright disingenuous, or were born yesterday. The threat of deportation may be an incentive for the H1B visa holder to work harder, but the major motivation is to depress the salary expectations for a particular skill set. If the talent required was so scarce locally that you had to import someone with the skills, you should pay them accordingly, not less just because you "own them" until they can get a GC.
This is an old topic that /. has been reporting about since at least 20
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Normally, there is some equivalent talent in the USA. But you have to pay _more_ for it, especially in fields where US law and policy interfere with it. I'm particularly thinking of encryption, where Israel is a leader in the field and exporting talent. I'm also thinking of stem cell transplants, where US abortion law is so politically burdened that even transplantation of adult stem cells raises the specter of fetal stem cell harvesting and is hindered in funding and in the human experimentation reviews, a
Re:These are superstars, the cream of the crop (Score:5, Insightful)
These are superstars, the cream of the crop. The possess superior skills that are unavailable locally.
You have to pay top dollar for such talent.
Bullshit. Only in extreme niche situations can local people, or relatively local people, not be found.
This is the same crap we hear about executives heading international companies being paid millions in salary and bonuses only to have the company run into the ground (HP as an example) or declare bankruptcy.
It's an excuse. That's all.
Re: These are superstars, the cream of the crop (Score:2)
Must be that round roof of yours that makes things whoosh over so smoothly.
Re: These are superstars, the cream of the crop (Score:5, Insightful)
Must be that round roof of yours that makes things whoosh over so smoothly.
Finally, someone that gets it.
I've worked with a number of H1-B's. Most were mediocre. A couple were very good. But regardless of their actual skill level, if the hiring company is swearing that they are specialists that possess super skills then they should be forced to pay them accordingly. They shouldn't be paid "average" for the position, if they are such superstars they should be the highest paid around.
If the company can't afford superstars that's just too bad. Hire some locals and train them.
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Do you have a rough numeric estimate of that good/mediocre ratio [effectiviology.com]?
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That’s kind of the point, if H1B’s are superstars and cream of the crop, then paying top dollar won’t be a problem. The one’s who are going to howl are the people are looking for H1B indentured servitude at below market wages. Those low bid contract shops, they’re gonna be hurting.
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Mossing something (Score:5, Insightful)
"Many salaries under the new rules start at $208,000, even for inexperienced workers. "
I thought H1B visas were for high end jobs where employers could not find comparable skills in the USA. What am I missing?
Re:Mossing something (Score:5, Informative)
But the reality of it for the last decade or two has been wildly abused by h1b farms stuffed full of the most useless, street shitting, rote learning, braindeads you'd ever have the misfortune to work with. They get paid peanuts, their VISA's used to basically enslave them into working 80 hours a week or being deported, and they don't know shit about what they do.
This recent change is just bringing back the original intent of H1B to the actual function of H1B.
Re:Mossing something (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing. You are missing nothing.
The companies' claim has always been that H-1B visas are used to bring workers here who have skill sets that are simply unavailable otherwise. The reality has always been that the vast majority of H-1B visas are used to fill positions that require only bog-standard skills, but where the employer did not want to pay a bog-standard US salary.
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Re:Mossing something (Score:5, Informative)
So? They do not need to pay that for local talent. The point is to get rid of paying rock bottom prices for general meh talent that a slightly more expensive canidate can be found locally.
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So? They do not need to pay that for local talent. The point is to get rid of paying rock bottom prices for general meh talent that a slightly more expensive canidate can be found locally.
Have you been living under a rock? There is no "slightly more expensive" local talent. Heck, there is no "really more expensive" talent as well. The overall unemployment in IT is under 2% (it was an unheard of 2.2% in May during the height of the pandemic!), way less than the normal "full employment" rate of 4%.
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I still see plenty of available talent in the burbs to rural (maybe big cities where people no longer want to live) but if you think they can not find local talent at 200k seems reasonable to require them to pay the H1B's that vs the cut rates they have for decades.
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I still see plenty of available talent in the burbs to rural
Then switch to HR and get rich! Companies pay $10-20k for referrals.
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That's how supply and demand works. If your offer of $130K doesn't have enough takers, the market is signaling your offer is too low. If you offered a $500K starting salary, you'd almost certainly have an endless supply of qualified engineers. However, you're in luck, you only need to offer $208K to get back into the H1B pool.
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I see you have doubled down on your denial.
Let's inject a little more reality, because you are ignoring lots of externalities that you really do need to consider, because unlike your parent corporation, individual employees cannot conveniently sidestep them with a call to a lobbyist.
For starters, your naive computation completely ignores taxation.
So, let's do some computations here. There's a handy income tax calculator one can use for the state of California.
https://smartasset.com/taxes/c... [smartasset.com]
We will conside
Recruiting smart kids (Score:2)
The only part your missing is where the smartest kids in India or China or other places want to come to the US for college. We want to make sure those kids can stay here. But that should be the continuation of a college visa, not an H1-B.
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IF they have been here and obtained a needed degree, then we should offer them a green card, not an H1B. After all, they have already been here for at least 2 years and had to learn enough English/Culture to make it through college.
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They cannot find workers with comparable skill sets in the USA. This is done through the standard practice advertising job requirements including 10 years experience in 5 year old technology and 5 years hands on with 1 year old technology and some how no Americans apply or if they do they lied on there resume. But fresh graduates of Indian colleges have been working with this stuff since before they started school and you have to believe them, or the H1B factories that say it's so.
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You answered your own question. Do all positions where you cannot find the skills in the USA pay 200K ? I don't see why it would, especially outside of silicon valley.
I, for one, have complained about Indian consulting companies flooding and abusing the H1B process, making it ineffective. And I'm the first to acknowledge that the Trump administration, contrary to the previous one, actually did something about it that probably had some real effects. Problem is they didn't go for the best solution, just went
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What if the top of a given skill set, that the highest any American will get paid for, is under 200k? Meaning that no American would ever get paid 200k? What if the cream of the crop for a given position gets paid 150k, thus an H1 B would be legitimate at 175k?
And the rules indicate it STARTS at that. Haven't we heard PLENTY of whining about how Silicon Valley salaries are off the chart nuts? And here we are demanding for H1B to be paid something NO ONE would pay outside of the valley.
I do see it destroying
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According to the law the term “specialty occupation” requires
(A) theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge, and
(B) attainment of a bachelor’s or higher degree in the specific specialty
What constitutes "highly specialized" is debatable. I think we can all agree that the low-skilled IT workers that some companies use H1B for aren't "highly specialized" workers. At the other extreme, I think "there isn't a single person in the country who could do this job" is too high of a bar.
In the past, the H1B has often been used as a bridge between an education visa and a green card. These folks weren't always "without peer", but
Like nearly everything Washington does for... (Score:5, Interesting)
big globalist companies, no matter if Republicans or Democrats are running the place, it's a policy aimed to help the businesses but it's sold as something else and will never live up to the billing, since it's never designed to.
H1-B visas were never meant to be noticed by most people, and for those who asked, it was sold as a program that would import a steady stream of Werner Von Brauns, Elon Musks, Enrico Fermis, etc. High-profile, super-talented, smart people who would start new industries or boost existing ones and create a ton of new jobs for Americans. Musk is the sort that we're supposed to imagine: Starts PayPal, then SpaceX and Tesla, employs thousands of Americans with good pay and benefits while pushing technology forward. It's actual intention, however, is exactly what we all know it's doing: import thousands of cheap Indian IT folks to replace middle class IT workers at Microsoft, Disney, etc. and cheap foreign programmers to replace the Americans at Boeing...
H1-Bs are hardly unique in this. A large part of the tax code is similarly tweaked like this, in fact the federal income tax IS one of these things: it was advertised to the public as something that would only ever affect the top 100 people in the USA, but it was actually designed to (and DID) shift the burden for the costs of the federal government away from tariffs (which hit big companies importing goods, and rich people importing luxuries) where our founders put it, and onto the average American worker (upon whom who our founders put ZERO federal income or property taxes).
Question: What three things in US history have been most politically divisive?
I would asset that it was:
Slavery: businessmen using imported non-white labor which would work in appalling conditions and for no wages - The average American was not for it, and it lead to an actual shooting civil war.
Vietnam: arguably businesses were making mountains of money on military equipment, ammunition, supplies, uniforms, etc in America's first never-ending war which the average American came to oppose as it became clear it was NOT about national security, had no planned victory, and was grinding-up the cheap labor of American lower- and middle-class kids who were drafted into service at miniscule wages while at risk of death (sort of like slaves).
Trump: The man got elected making a loud argument to build a wall, attack H1-B visas, and end illegal immigration, all of which threatened the supply of cheap imported labor for big business. Corporate America and establishment Washington (both parties) went insane when the guy got elected, and they've been trying to undo it ever since. They told themselves he could never win, and then he won even in the face of unprecedented efforts to derail him using every lever of power available to the people in Washington DC and New York City. Not a single big media company or social media company has maintained any neutrality in this fight. None of big corporate America actually cares about stuff like social policy; they'll just use anything available to stir-up efforts to oppose anybody blocking access to cheap labor.
Cheap labor, cheap labor, cheap labor... the never-ending demand of the typical businessman.
That's Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)
Then maybe they'll have to start hiring Americans, and American kids will see the value of getting a software education, and then maybe they'll be "enough" Americans to fill those jobs.
What would help would be to not tax the H out of American companies and thus "subsidize" them into having enough $$$ to pay Americans so that they don't "have" to take their SW development outside the country.
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They might, but do realize that there just may not be any American to hire, regardless? Software engineering is defintely one of those professions where not only do you get what you pay for, you REALLY get punished for screwing up. Everyone here who's had to clean up after a substandard engineer knows this to be true, all the time you spend cleaning up may as well be lighting money on fire. How many tales have we heard of code bases so bad, you just have to scrap them entirely?
At the end of the day, I do be
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The better (though still kind of corporate welfare) plan would be to let them take a tax deduction of the "surplus" between a lower skilled US worker than the H1-B minimum salary *when used to provide training for that worker*.
The real bullshit, beyond the abuse of H1-B, is the abuse of the education system as a "can I hire this person" credential mill for corporations. They started wanting a college degree for non-credentialed jobs as a way to filter out the wheat from the chaff. It didn't have anything
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RTFS.
"Some founders say they are shifting hiring and growth plans away from the U.S., establishing engineering hubs in Eastern Europe and sending new recruits from American universities who would require a U.S. visa to work instead at satellite offices in Canada."
Re: That's Excellent! (Score:2)
Setting up shop in random countries is not exactly smart if the host country decides it wants a return for the privilege of a company being there.
Well if it's going to be THIS expensive.... (Score:4, Funny)
....we might as well fucking hire AMERICANS, sheesh.
h-1b program needs to be scrapped period (Score:3, Insightful)
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Far too many worthless middle men that are simply skiming massive amounts of $ off.
Good! End the H1B sham (Score:5, Insightful)
https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
Don’t even try and claim they can’t afford it, or raising wages will cost jobs, or some other neo-liberal capitalist nonsense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I couldn't decide how to spend my mod points... +1 informative, or -1 Flamebait... the latter because it's not neo-liberal capitalists, it's neo-conservatives who believe in a "job creator" class.
H1Bs are not a way to find cheap labor. (Score:5, Insightful)
They're to find the best of the best outside our borders. If you want to hire cheaply, hire domestically. That's the intended purpose of H1B, and this change only brings the program back in line with its intended purpose.
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I personally worked at a company where there were plenty of local talent, but ownership wanted to bring in H1B's because they were less than 1/2 citizen talent. I was part of the c-room discussion and was adamantly against it I left soon after.
That's not the totality of how they are used. (Score:2)
The best misuse (from corporate America's point of view) is the one that most people do not notice. Consider:
A cheaper foreign worker is imported and effectively held hostage over his/her visa. That worker (partly by being a pseudo-hostage over the visa, and partly because he/she is likely earning more than possible back home) has several important benefits to both the specific company and to the industry as a whole:
1. He/she is more likely to be a "yes man" doing anything ordered no matter how ethical/lega
Percentile of Incomes (Score:2)
+ COL 88k/yr is low in the bayarea! (Score:2)
+ COL 88k/yr is low in the bayarea!
Blame Trump (Score:2)
Time to focus on getting Americans educated (Score:3)
Waah! Bring back sweatshops! (Score:2)
Will social media companies have to cancel still more conservatives in retaliation, or will they just wait until Biden takes office?
Cost of production (Score:2)
Is there anyone who gains long term from a high cost of production? No. Goods and services will increase in price and become rarer .. meaning fewer people will enjoy them. How can that be good for anyone? We should find ways to reduce the cost of production as much as possible, while ensuring open competition.
Excellent result! (Score:2)
If H1-Bs start at 200k, then they'll hire more US developers.
If they really need an expert then that expert deserves that salary. This is not the salary for some new kid out of Mumbai, this is a salary for someone that mostly knows what they're doing.
Tit for tat. (Score:2)
For computer tech I would say the minimum should be 120K at least for hiring someone foreign. They need talented superstars right? So they should have no problem paying that. Oh you mean you only hire the foreign workers because they are cheaper than Americans?
208K is high but I have not read the rules myself and I'm pretty sure the article is biased. I have no problem with jobs staying over seas. Companies that do that find they are ultimately training their own competition 10 years down the line. But I ha
Stop abusing H1-B (Score:2)
Many salaries under the new rules start at $208,000, even for inexperienced workers. "It's already expensive, it was already a high bar, and we are making it prohibitive," Kate Mitchell, co-founder of venture-capital firm Scale, said of the H1-B program.
Then stop abusing the program! Hiring an inexperienced foreign worker when there are plenty of inexperienced American workers to choose from is an abuse and SHOULD be prohibitively expensive.
H1-B is supposed to be a way to bring in rare top-talents that can't be found domestically. Those will and should cost a good bit based on supply and demand. Rare + desired = expensive.
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This is the first Trump policy I agree on (Score:2)
Fair wages? Oh, no! (Score:2)
H1-B visas were always intended for the recruitment of overseas talent that was scarce or unavailable in the US. For years now, it has been used by tech moguls to hire educated overseas workers to fill ordinary jobs that could easily have been performed by Americans because the third-world laborers would work for much less money. Waves of American workers have been laid off and replaced by these less expensive foreign workers and we have complained bitterly about it. And now, President Trump has finally
How about just chuck the H-1B plan completely? (Score:2)
How about just chuck the entire H-1B visa program? If someone is so valuable to the economy that they are needed here, they should get permanent residency (aka "Green Card") status? This way, someone fired from a job can't be deported, and people who are that valuable to the US ecosystem have options and not be subject to abuse.
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H1-B rules say it all about the "intended purpose" (Score:2)
The H1-B rules make it's purpose pretty clear when they give the visa to the company doing the hiring rather than the employee being hired. That's what made the H1-B so open to abuse, the fact that once a person was hired they were basically indentured labor. Since the visa belongs to the company, if the employee accepts a higher-paying offer elsewhere they lose their visa as soon as they resign, meaning they can no longer legally work at the new job, and it takes longer to qualify for a new visa than they'
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At the same time, why wouldn't the US want up and coming talent trying to establish themselves in the US? This administration has been falling over itself to try and encourage companies to have a greater presence here. I understand of course that the idea is that this will provide jobs to Americans, not migrants, but it can't be all or nothing. If the rule changes push aspiring startups out of the US entirely then this is surely not what any government wants for the country. I don't personally make any conc
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The US certainly would. But think about it. Why would real talent want to shackle themselves to an H1-B visa? Even if they weren't being underpaid, any talented engineer knows they'll eventually get an offer they like better than their current job so why would they knowingly put themselves on terms where they couldn't accept it even if they wanted to? They wouldn't. And from what I've seen, the companies that use the H1-B heavily don't want to hire talented engineers. All the talented engineers I've met fro
Hire Americans if the issue is money. (Score:2)
If the issue is not money but talent - as you have repeatedly claimed - then PAY THEM WHAT THEY ARE WORTH.
Wasn't That the POINT? (Score:2)
"compel employers to pay foreign workers drastically higher wages. "
H1B visas are supposed to admit skilled workers, and ONLY when no Americans are available who have suitable skills.It's NOT SUPPOSED to be a way for tech companies to import hordes of programmers and pay them low wages.
Instead, Intel and the rest of the tech firms are hiring Indian and Chinese programmers and paying them Indian and Chinese salaries, because they can't hire American workers for Chinese wages. That's not how it's supposed to
Write your f'ing Congressmen (Score:4, Informative)
Every time H1-B's come up, people start bitching and moaning how the program is abused and should be changed or scrapped. Why don't you CC your reps tomorrow and let them know how you feel about it. Deepfake some letters.
Look, if Biden wins, Kamala Harris, who is an Indian American from California will become VP. That means there will be much more abuse of the H1-B program and more Americans will be replaced with cheap Indian labor. And if you think I'm unfairly picking on Indians, Indians get 74.5% of H1-Bs, followed by Chinese 11.8%, then Canadians 1.0%. So apparently, 74.5% of global geniuses/tech craftsmen are Indian and 11.8% are Chinese. What are the odds that that's true?
So instead of JUST complaining in a tiny corner of the Internet, write your Reps and let them know your reasoning and how passionate you are about it
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To be clear, I'm still voting for Biden, because Trump is a racist dumpster fire. But I still think the H1-B program is abused by tech companies, as you can tell by the unbalanced source country numbers.
Hooray!! Thank you Trump!! (Score:2)
He earned my vote again.
I'm okay with that (Score:5, Interesting)
I've actually been on the other side of this. I have been brought in overseas for my expertise when no one in the country could do what I did a few times. I went in and did my work as someone with a skill that truly did not exist in that country. I even did some training of some locals while I was there. I then left when my work was done and went back home.
That's exactly what the H1B was supposed to be, bringing in outside expertise when the expertise do what you needed simply does not exist. It was never supposed to be a cheaper means of getting labor. In fact checks and balances were put in try to prevent the very abuse that happened from occurring.
Those checks and balances failed because they were rarely enforced. When they were it was cheaper to pay the fines than to stop the behavior. Companies were allowed to wholesale lay off entire departments and replace them with H1B's. I've seen countless colleagues lose out to H1B's over the years. I've even seen people who emigrated from India years ago, become citizens and then turn around and get laid off after getting replaced with H1B's.
H1B's should include costs that make each one a company has more expensive than the last. They should also be tied to the average age of the worker (not employee) at employee. This way companies that want to only hire young and cheap workers (Silicon Valley which has had an average worker age in the 20's for decades) are the most limited in the number that they can hire. Their use should also be directly tied to the ratio of permanent workers at an employer. These simple steps would dramatically reduce discrimination against Americans by American companies as well as age discrimination.
The H1B and similar programs need to include costs that go directly towards training for Americans that have been laid off by outsourcing. Whistleblower bounties need to be added and enforced like you see with the SEC that offer rewards for turning in abuse. Companies that are H1B dependant need to break their H1B addiction and start hiring Americans. There is, and never has been a shortage of tech workers in America.
Put the H1B and similar programs back to their intended use and start auditing companies for the widespread fraud that has already been committed. I've seen good people come through H1B, however very few of the people I have seen come through were ever qualified to come in to begin with.
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And to support what you (and I) have experienced, the obligatory Cohen & Grigsby video [youtube.com] outlining strategies to avoid hiring qualified domestic workers while technically staying within the law.
Slashdot has a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Slashdot has a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Bingo! Trump shut it down and wanted to shut it down completely and shut down the wars too. But orange man bad because cnn told us so! Trump got a lot of powerful people angry and now they are trying to get Biden back in so the gravy train can continue
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Trump may have tried to shutdown wars yet he still wants to spend even more on military equipment that even the military says isn't needed.
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but for the wrong reasons
Re: Slashdot has a problem (Score:3)
Rather, it appears he thinks, Americans first, others, you better bloody well be exceptional.
Re: Slashdot has a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Trumps policies improved the lot of every section of American society. Blacks, women, hispanics, asians, white... the real wage growth increased more under Trump in less time than Obama. Drastically more. He put citizens first. He always has, and always will.
Re:Slashdot has a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
I am not a fan or supporter of Trump. At the same time, I recognize that his administration is capable of enacting policy that I like. This is one of those. I find that the bulk of the Trump Administration's policies are not to my liking. I am totally willing to give Trump credit for this, but it's not enough to tip the scales in his favor.
BTW, I generally liked Obama, but his administration also implemented some policies I liked and some I did not. The staggering idiocy of something like the "Fast & Furious" gun tracing program go in the negative column, but I found that there was enough in the positive column that my opinion of him and his administration was positive.
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The irony of the 'ATF gunwalking scandal', is the that FBI has a long history of getting involved with con men in sting operations with mixed results, yet none of them were claimed to be say... Reagan's fault. Also, while being mostly propped up by 2nd Amendment activists, most of the scandal is around detailing the 'end use' of the weapons, because we all know how guns are dangerous and should be restricted from sale.
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It's not a dilemma at all because if a stopped clock can be right twice a day, then Trump can be right twice in four years!
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Re: Slashdot has a problem (Score:2)
For all too many people, that they are breathing is problematic. But then, thatâ(TM)s a consequence of cancel culture.
Note that factual reporting is no longer a thing.
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After years of screaming about H1Bs being an issue, Trump of all people did something about it. So what does Slashdot do? Truly a dilemma for the ages.
What they usually do; act like a 60s scifi robot caught in a contradiction. "Does not compute, does not computer, bztt bzt ... boom!"
Re:Slashdot has a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, that's not true. Trump's changes to disallow the spouse of the H1B holder to have a work permit for instance, was already driving tech jobs into Canada and that change was already a couple of years ago.
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Canada you say?! Oh no! How will we ever develop the next shitty CRM implementation that a Fortune 500 will sink in millions and then throw in the toilette because of how unmaintainable it is?!
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The impeachment was not a charade. It was based on something that should have been investigated.
It was not investigated, the Senate just made a shameful decision.
The pandemic has killed 200k+ people so far, so, not a shamdemic.
Trump's performance on this was not stellar. Could have been much better.
Trump is correct on limiting the H1B program, in my opinion.
H1B is supposed to be about bringing the worlds best to work with us.
H1B is used to fill tech worker positions with people who are paid less and over
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Remember, your allowed standard of living is a defined constant.
Their ever increasing profit is all important.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree.
H1-Bs for rare talents are great. Let the best of the best flow to America. But those people are all worth 208k or more a year.
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Agreed. If your business model relies on undercutting your employee pay, you should go out of business. The whole point of the price hike was to make hiring cheap import labor more expensive. It's the same idea as using tariffs to raise the price of cheap imports so the locals are a more competitive choice. It's a tariff on labor.
Re:now firing (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want cheap labor, yes, that's exactly what you do. H1Bs aren't meant to cheapen labor by importing greenhorns from abroad and underpaying. They're meant to bring in the best of the best and only the best of the best - which obviously will demand top dollar. Someone clearly doesn't understand what the H1B visa program is meant for.
Re: now firing (Score:2)
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And yet, unemployed journalists are offended when you tell them to learn to code.
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So they should train some of the people making $30K a year in non-IT jobs.
Re:Hypocrisy of the Big Tech firms (Score:5, Insightful)
> Trump has issued more H1-B visas each year than the Obama/Biden administration did in their largest year.
That's because you're conflating renewed with new. The topic is about new, but I see what you did there, which is an important distinction. I don't think there's any momentum to remove existing workers. The worry is about cannibalizing job growth, afaik.
I am interested in new H-1B visa numbers.
The USCIS totals for NEW visas - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Obama's 2nd term is easy enough to total, but where do you get the numbers for 2018-2020?
There is a reference to ~139k for 2019 here: https://www.shrm.org/resources... [shrm.org].
> There's no reason to expect Biden to increase the number of H1-Bs issued
Other than him saying he would - During his campaign, Biden has promised to be less harsh with H-1B restrictions, expand the number of available visas, and even do away with country quotas for green cards—the reason why most Indians have to wait for several decades to get one.
> In case anyone still hasn't decided who to vote for and found your claim persuasive.
You will have to do better than posting on a random forum with no citations to make your point, much less have someone make up their mind or change their mind about their vote.
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There's no reason to expect Biden to increase the number of H1-Bs issued. Trump has issued more H1-B visas each year than the Obama/Biden administration did in their largest year.
In case anyone still hasn't decided who to vote for and found your claim persuasive.
Biden absolutely will increase the H1-B. Kamala Harris is Indian from California. All restrictions will go out the door. I'm still voting for Biden but I'm realistic about what that means for American tech workers: Americans will all be fired for cheap H1-B labor
EVERYBODY benefitted from those cuts (Score:2)
As well illustrated in this chart [taxfoundation.org], people in every single tax bracket benefitted, and while it's true that the rich got a bigger reduction in dollars (because they PAY more) it's also true that the number of dollars was more noticeable to people in lower income brackets where each dollar matters more. Furthermore, the charts on the tax cuts do not reflect the fact that many employers boosted employee salaries in response to the cuts - so actually employees did better than any of the tax charts show.
Biden an