- This does not raise the salary requirement to $130k/yr. This only applies to employers that do not want to do the extra paper work for "attestations regarding recruitment and non-displacement of U.S. workers"
- It takes a "market based" allocation strategy which allows "cash bonuses and similar compensation" to be included. This is a joke.
- Startups and small businesses will get 20% of the visas. It'll be interesting to see how this is gamed
- This does not fix the Corporate/Higher Ed partnership loophole
- This does not fix the power imbalance between visa holders and employers
I personally don't see this bill going anywhere. Zoe just needs to look like she is doing something.
I've been on multiple H1B visas, at both large companies and startups. I've also sponsored H1B visas as an employer. I would support this bill.
The headline is a classic example of sensational journalism by the Times of India.
The $130k salary requirement applies only to "dependent employers", defined as employers with over 15% of their workforce on H1Bs. This is clearly aimed at reducing H1B misuse by TCS, Infosys, and their ilk.
The vast majority of companies who employ people on H1Bs aren't "dependent" employers by this definition, and hence will be unaffected by the salary increase rule. If anything, they'll benefit from more visas being available to non-dependent employers.
Also, startups will likely benefit from the 20% requirement.
As you said, this seems to penalize the Infosys-type companies, and seems to give favorable treatment to Silicon Valley firms. Given that's her district, this should not be surprising.
Regardless of the merits of this particular bill, at least we now have a conversation going with both political sides weighing in.
Here's hoping that they end up somewhere rational.
EOD, this is just a bill, such bills have been introduced in the past but never saw the light of day, its just that, this time around, this is being introduced under Trump.
All in all, there are some benefits in this bill. Does it say anything about green card backlog? or was my interpretation wrong?
Although a startup might only marginally benefit because a single one would be a significant portion of their employees, right? So it would be over 15% right off the bat if they have fewer than 7 people
There are enough unscrupulous actors that will pay 130k on paper and have ways of paying much less in reality. Enforcement and audits will also have to increase correspondingly, and penalties must be severe.
Someone will be using a "startup company name" generator for these wholly owned subsidiaries and be filling out the paperwork for 50 of them all at the same time. No doubt to get a discount on the legal fees.
Basically bills like this will allow Tata, Wipro and others to just absorb all the talent within the industry. Some versions I've seen do restrict the wage increase to companies that have n% of their workers being H1-B employees, which seems a bit more reasonable.
While everyone seems to be focussing on TCS, Infosys etc, the worst abuse of H-1B comes from small staffing firms in US. I foresee them using the 20% set aside for startups.
Well the "startup" still has to pay roughly 15% (or whatever the number is) more than market rate, so this loophole won't work. They can't just reduce the salary once it's "acquired".
EDIT: Also this is one of three H1B related bills in Congress. I suppose there will be some compromise between them, considering that they are sponsored both by Republicans and Democrats.
It relies on the companies own estimate of the value of those bonuses... but bonuses are discretionary and the value of private company stock can be hard to determine. So you could have a salary of $90k, $10k of healthcare benefits, and $30k worth of "assumed" bonuses in the form of options, restricted shares, etc. which:
a) you're not certain to get anyway (because they're bonuses)
Yup. The fact that compensation is included, is useless. Companies give you unvested shares worth tonnes that take > 4 years to fully vest. The attrition rates are so high, the sweat shops can get away with it.
Startups offer equity, consulting companies don't. That would actually tend to favor startups as the equity they grant drives the "compensation" upwards despite it being monopoly money until the shares actually vest and assuming they're even worth printing at this point.
I get the impression that this new bill is like putting lipstick on a pig which is the current system. I was hoping the amendments to the H1-B bill would be one of the silver linings of a Trump presidency, but I guess not anymore.
I'm on an H-1B, and the thing that infuriates me about the dialogue on this is that they are effectively trying to ban skilled immigration, and exclude people like me from coming.
If you don't qualify for the family-based or refugee route, employment-based immigration is the only viable pathway. The amount of hate I see piled on people trying to come here via the employment-based immigration seems insane to me. These people make it seem like employment-based immigration is not as respectable or legitimate, compared to refugee/asylum and family-based immigration.
The problem with requiring higher wagers is that for people like me, who were students in US -- it's very hard to get an ultra-high salary for the first job out of college. (I did my undergrad here, and I don't have a Master's.) I was a student (on an F-1 visa), and my first job out of college offered me $60,000/year. On my first job on my H-1B visa (in NYC), I was offered $85,000 a year (got slightly over $100,000 with bonuses). Then, just about a year and half later, I was paid (incl. lucky cash bonuses) slightly over $200,000 in a single year. (My base salary is $130,000 now.)
If you raised wage requirements, you'd basically be not allowing people like me to continue to stay and work in the US (after graduation from college), and would instead only allow people from outside who have lots of experience (and skill) and can command a much higher salary upfront.
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It's very disappointing to see the level of vitriol directed towards people who are just trying to build a better life in this country, especially here on HN.
This months old Vanity Fair article gives some insight that Trump feels there is a role for immigration policy to make it easy for foreign students getting good jobs in the U.S. and innovating here; while his senior counselor and strategist thinks there are too many asians in Silicon Valley, and that it risks degrading civil society.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-30/trump-s-n...
But most any substantial change to immigration policy that isn't national security related, must come from Congress.
>while his senior counselor and strategist thinks there are too many asians in Silicon Valley
The idea that you can have "too many" of any type of person is about an un-american as one can be. Somehow Trump has no problem with 'too many' chubby white supremacists in the white house. Oh right, whites get a pass on everything. Its only non-whites that have to worry about being too high profile or too successful as to not upset whites. Or dating/marrying white women.
This is straight up racism, open and direct from the white house. I'm not sure how anyone is tolerating this and why there isn't more of an uproar.
I think the shortest fix for the violation part(Corporate/Ed tech loophole and the Implementation/Consultant loophole) is some boots on the ground for DHS to investigate worksites. If there is enough economic incentive vested in any one area, sooner or later people will game it. And the H1B business is very lucrative. Putting in oversight to such a thing is hard without boots on the ground/human resources. AFAIR Visa program is run entirely on applicant fees making to slapstick to a bill even a harder sell given how much congress frowns upon spending.
I think it would be much cheaper and more effective to just auction the the slots (by how much the employer is willing to pay the employee); otherwise, you're just in a quagmire of "is this really a startup for purposes of the exemption", "is this person's role really close enough to Deep Learning Expert", "is this really what similar workers" make, etc -- a hundred loopholes to exploit.
This is not a man in suite arriving at site via Uber asking polite questions. This is mostly a SWAT team storming through all doors and killing dogs if any an then taking away all your documents, interviewing all employees. In short that is end of business to you.
Remember they will not come alone. They will bring sleuths from all other departments and you will be fined for not having appropriate number of fire extinguishers and for not having a separate bin for dry cells.
You clients will avoid you and your landlord will be upset.
Thanks for pointing these things out... I've been saying for a few years now, that H1Bs should have a salary floor of 8-12x minimum wage, or the top 10-15% income bracket... given that it's supposed to be for specialized technical skills that aren't able to be found domestically.
I grant you this is in fact not the perfect reform bill, the question is, is it better than the current situation? To me it looks like it's at least somewhat better, so as a Canadian who may want to move to the US at some point, I'm hoping it passes.
Whoever is working on the bill is disconnected from reality and the damage it is doing long term here.
Why's everyone so focused on IT? Everyone can learn how to code, it's not a real science.. Oh it's hacker news :)
Now walk into any major university science department. See who the newly minted PhD students are in biology, chemistry, physics, math ... Most are foreigners. This bill will send them home after they graduate... USA will lose here and other countries win big time on people with great science backgrounds with brains who are willing to work and move the science forward. It will take decades for American educational system to change (if it ever changes) and generate the replacements.
> Why's everyone so focused on IT? Everyone can learn how to code, it's not a real science.
I think that's exactly why people are focusing on IT. The H-1B program is meant to allow companies to hire foreigners with rare skills that are hard to find domestically. In reality it's abused to import cheap labor and undercut average American workers doing common work like building applications or administering systems. There should be no problem continuing to hire PhDs and other foreigners with actual unique skillsets at $130k.
> In reality it's abused to import cheap labor and undercut average American workers doing common work like building applications or administering systems.
Really? How much should it cost to do common work like building crud applications or administering systems? Right now, (based on all the H1-B, and similar visa holders I know, which is a good amount) it's ~2X the median household income to pay one visa holder to do it.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to make $200-300K to sling crud apps and keep the lights on in a datacenter.
The abuse of h1b program by IT firms is the issue that has to be separated out and resolved on its own.
There is no reason why we should send a freshly graduated physics scientist back to Uganda or whatever because he can't find an employer willing to pay him/her some abstract 130k salary straight out of school (which is A LOT OF MONEY).
Again, when I hire - I do it strictly based on skills and experience. If I have to do a bit more paper work to get this talented guy work for us I'll do it - but there is a limit. And at 130k limit a lot of these brains will flow back overseas. It would be a huge mistake for USA to get rid of willing to work just talent like that.
There aren't a ton of job for PHds in chemistry, biology, chemist, math etc. They end up working at hedge funds or web developers or things not necessarily related to their PHd. Look at big pharama and see how much they spend on R&D or basic research. Its a very small percentage of revenues.
You are clearly outside of the field. There are tons of jobs in the biotech industry for qualified graduates. The issue is finding people with appropriate scientific and industry backgrounds. This is why h1bs are hired. I don't care what color you are and where you come from. If you know your stuff I will hire you.
"Everyone can learn how to code, it's not a real science."
Yes but not everyone who learns to code can get a job coding. Not everyone can get into Google or Facebook just cause they learned to code. The software engineering interviews don't test your ability to code, they test your ability to problem solve w/ data structures & algorithms.
You are exactly right. Single minimum wage doesn't make any sense considering there is such a wide gap between IT and everything else. However keeping minimum wage to the 1989 level hurts H1B IT workers more because many of them literally end up getting just that even if they qualify for far more. I guess the issue is not solvable easily because to create job titles and assign it minimum wage number that is, say, at least 10% more than average current is herculean task in itself.
Also, hard science PhD students are typically hired on J-1 (when they stay in academia/research) or O-1 visas (if they find a relevant position the industry).
You and some other folks seem to be oblivious on how H1-B works and this bill itself. You need to have 12 years of working experience OR bachelors degree OR a mix of both for H1-B eligibility.
Regarding students (PhDs or anyone on F-1 visa), they will get straight path to permanent residence.
I would agree with this. These new changes are clearly attempting to address the rampant abuse of the system by the likes of TCS and Infosys and in the process they are affecting other legitimate h1b candidates.
A potential solution can be something like a different type of work permits or different requirements for h1b applicants applying after they studied here, something along those lines.
And probably for the best. We kind of need the US to take a back seat for a while. Let it be an inbreeding backwater that it clearly wants to be, the world will breathe easier for it.
We've been drifting in this direction for decades now... if someone else wanted to take the wheel, why haven't they done so already? Sure, Putin wants to be the daddy, but he just doesn't have the industry to get there. Other than him? It's like the rest of the world believes the hype, even more than we do.
It does appear that that's what we want to be; I question whether the world will be breathing easier once it happens. The tantrums of an insanely weaponized and idiotic civilization bumbling towards irrelevance don't instill in me a sense of calm.
This makes sense from a distance. Such employees are supposed to be specialists, not hired for the purpose of undercutting wages. I'm not in the bay area, but if you're bringing in a specialist from another country because you can't find one here, this sounds like the sort of wage that person ought to have.
Whether this restriction makes sense in the first place is a different question, but this does sound like it fits the spirit of the h1-b.
I'd be curious to hear an opposing claim on this as I don't know a great deal about it and wonder if I'm missing something.
I think the existing system foments a covert lie-rewarding fear-inducing form of indentured servitude and depresses native nonmanagerial salaries of actual programmers.
I was told early in my career by at least two CEOs that I shouldn't waste my time doing programming (and should join the managerial class) because it would be done overseas or by low cost labor onshore. I do think it's a bummer for those hoping to move/live here from overseas and may slightly reduce US tech industry competitiveness, but it looks to me to be a removal of a capital-favoring wage-surpressing distortionary loophole in our immigration policy that at the end of the day is probably a good thing.
Color me surprised, I commented on many related threads recently but this sounds actually pretty good!
$130k is maybe a little high for seed stage startups but given that we're talking about relocating engineers to the most expensive region in the world, I believe it's fair. And the path from F-1 to Green Card will solve companies taking advantage of people on OPT status, at least partially.
Thing is that the whole of US isn't Silicon Valley or Seattle. Startups in upcoming hubs like Portland and Boulder will suffer(sic) because the salary requirements are too high for them to satisfy given the living costs.
It basically means that the only companies who are gonna be able to hire through H1Bs are the big cos or unicorns.
Companies may have to do something unimaginable and invest in their employees who may not have the exact skill set they need and offer them training or give them time to ramp up....
Started a company in a college town on the east coast with far lower cost of living than the valley. The existing financial H1B requirements and recently the promises of the new administration made it financially unfeasible to even be able to consider hiring the international students working with us after they graduated. Really unfortunate because they were extremely talented employees and not easily replaced here.
For some reason, people like to ignore the 25,000 infosys H1Bs to talk about a hypothetical startup H1B. Can you please name one of those Boulder or Portland startups? Maybe point me to the "who is hiring" post where they are trying to pay the required wage but nobody wants to work for them?
Startups in Portland, etc, are trying to arbitrage their low cost of living, which is great, but the fact that the companies in SF, etc can pay more shows that they're providing a greater economic benefit and should probably get the.immigrants that can justify such a salary.
You're absolutely right, and I've said it myself in the past, this heavily favors one kind of companies in a few high CoL areas. You're better off selling ads than trying to cure cancer or solve the energy crisis, and sadly that's not only true when hiring foreign talent.
Well, and given that the premise of H1-B visas is that "we literally couldn't find a local who could do this", I'm OK with that.
Outside the Bay Area, you're probably not going to pay a frontend website programmer $130K on an H1-B. You're not supposed to, though! You can find plenty of that talent already in the country. If you need specific PhD-level STEM skills that you haven't been able to find locally, you're probably not going to mind paying them $130K because they're likely critical to your business, and that would be their market rate anyway.
There are many loopholes with this logic, although I can see how the "free market will fixit!" philosophy is so common.
The unavailability of required talent does not magically make it economically feasible to pay more for that talent. Especially the process of hiring new employees is an expensive and slow process. The vitality of American businesses depends critically on the availability of great talent at a reasonable cost. And 130k seems like a really really huge expense, especially to non-silicon valley businesses.
> You can find plenty of that talent already in the country.
No you cannot. Sure the H1B is abused horse gets beat a lot and sure there is a lot of abuse. But what shouldn't be missed is that the H1B gives American companies access to a market of the best talent in the world, to allow them to hire that talent for themselves.
History has shown how diversity and pluralism, along with dynamic markets have contributed to the blooming of civilizations. It has also shown how jingoism and trade wars have led to their fall.
If this had been in place when I came to the US, me and many of my friends (petroleum, chemical, electrical and software engineers and possibly nurses, doctors, anesthesiologists and doctors) would have had to have left the US after getting STEM degrees here. Instead of this, just ban skilled immigration to the US and be upfront about not wanting immigrant skilled labor. Everyone will understand. It's your country.
However, if you want to fix the problem, however, let h1b workers move companies as freely as green card holders without having to "transfer" the visa from company to company, and let holders apply for a green card on their own after a year or two. Simple.
Solves the supply problem and balances the relationship between the employer and h1b holder to more closely match a normal employment relationship, not one where they hold all the cards and can literally decide your fate at a moments notice, forcing you to work for lower wages just so they can maybe .. eventually ... sponsor your green card or make you do more work than you should for the same reason.
In very high COL places like NYC and SFBA $130k is barely a living wage unless you can put up with a 2h commute.
OTOH, in low COL markets (eg. KC) this eliminates H1-Bs from consideration for most entry-level positions.
For many markets in the middle (an example doesn't come to mind, perhaps Los Angeles?) where $130k+ is a decent salary for an entry-level position this new minimum works.
What's really needed to make H1-B work on a national scale for a broad range of professions while still limiting abuse is something like a COL adjustment, or scaling the minimum with some formula like 75% of the median salary, or the 30th percentile, or something similar.
Edited to add: I am assuming that no more than 30% of your salary is spent on rent, you save 10% of your salary, that you are working in downtown San Francisco, that your commute is under 30m door to door via public transportation, and you live in a 2-bedroom apartment.
> OTOH, in low COL markets (eg. KC) this eliminates H1-Bs from consideration for most entry-level positions.
Isn't that the point? I thought H1-Bs were supposed to only be used when the skill set required could not be found locally. This does not match up with entry-level positions unless there are no programmers in the area.
Speaking as a New Yorker, $130k is not "barely a living wage", unless you have a really distorted definition of "living."
You do not need to commute 2h for reasonable housing -- I lived in Brooklyn (which, for me, was a very comfortable 25m door-to-door commute), and was very happy there.
"SFBA $130k is barely a living wage unless you can put up with a 2h commute."
Goto craigslist, look for single bedroom in a house or apartment.
You can easily find a place for < $1700/mo not in the ghetto.
People like you (and the media) always like to blow things out of proportion (sensationalism) but never actually look at any real data.
I lived in sf for < 130k a year at one point in my career. The majority of employee's in the energy sector / startups in the bay area also are making < 130k / year
It is not. I am lost of what 'barely living' here means.
130k is totally decent, however it is also not rare. For entry level job to big companies/good startups, the market price is between 110k-120k, and it usually takes 2 years or so to bump up your salary to 130k level(one raise is good enough), assuming you are a reasonable(above average but maybe not excellent) engineer.
So, no, I completely disagree with this 'barely living salary' bullshit, it makes us software engineers look like spoiled ungrateful whiny babies. Not GOOD!
Well, I may be exagerating the 2h commute part, but RE prices in SF (and therefore rents) are completely ridiculous at this point, and East Bay places near any BART (light rail) station are too. Sharing an apartment doesn't help much since the sharing seems to be built into the price of apartments with more rooms.
Taxes in CA are a bit higher than elsewhere in the US as well, but at least there you're getting a halfway decent safety net. Rents are high only due to the suppression of the housing supply.
I think this is the entirely wrong solution because it misunderstands the problem.
The problem isn't that the H1B requirements are off a bit. The problem is that H1B visa holders are essentially indentured servants. Say you're a foreigner who applies for an H1B job. Your employer does a bunch of paperwork, gets you an H1B visa, and imports you. Now you can't quit because you can't get a new job. Of course you get underpaid, and of course companies love their H1B workers.
The US should scrap the whole system and replace it with some kind of merit- or point-based visa system for skilled foreigners. The replacement system should have portable visas so that the foreigners aren't inherently cheaper to employ than citizens, permanent residents, and holders of less broken visas.
(Frankly, I agree a bit with the anti-immigrant save-our-job perspective right now. Citizens, permanent residents, etc do have an unfair disadvantage to H1B workers because of the broken structure of the H1B visa.)
> The problem is that H1B visa holders are essentially indentured servants. Say you're a foreigner who applies for an H1B job. Your employer does a bunch of paperwork, gets you an H1B visa, and imports you. Now you can't quit because you can't get a new job. Of course you get underpaid, and of course companies love their H1B workers.
Actually, the program dictates that people are paid above prevailing wage for their position.
But... people get miscategorized all the time. And they also get into big company loans from contractors like TCS for their travel to the US that they couldn't hope to pay without continued employment through them. They also get into bad contracts that include substantial financial penalties for leaving. And just because a company in the US is paying above prevailing wage, that doesn't mean that the employee doing the work is getting it. All of that leads to an environment that is very disappointing.
I do agree that doubling the salary requirement will not fix the real problems, but I don't see it as a problem either. If anything, people close to the edge will end up with a pay bump.
Readit News
A few points:
- This does not raise the salary requirement to $130k/yr. This only applies to employers that do not want to do the extra paper work for "attestations regarding recruitment and non-displacement of U.S. workers"
- It takes a "market based" allocation strategy which allows "cash bonuses and similar compensation" to be included. This is a joke.
- Startups and small businesses will get 20% of the visas. It'll be interesting to see how this is gamed
- This does not fix the Corporate/Higher Ed partnership loophole
- This does not fix the power imbalance between visa holders and employers
I personally don't see this bill going anywhere. Zoe just needs to look like she is doing something.
I've been on multiple H1B visas, at both large companies and startups. I've also sponsored H1B visas as an employer. I would support this bill.
The headline is a classic example of sensational journalism by the Times of India.
The $130k salary requirement applies only to "dependent employers", defined as employers with over 15% of their workforce on H1Bs. This is clearly aimed at reducing H1B misuse by TCS, Infosys, and their ilk.
The vast majority of companies who employ people on H1Bs aren't "dependent" employers by this definition, and hence will be unaffected by the salary increase rule. If anything, they'll benefit from more visas being available to non-dependent employers.
Also, startups will likely benefit from the 20% requirement.
Regardless of the merits of this particular bill, at least we now have a conversation going with both political sides weighing in.
Here's hoping that they end up somewhere rational.
All in all, there are some benefits in this bill. Does it say anything about green card backlog? or was my interpretation wrong?
https://www.murthy.com/2017/01/31/possible-executive-order-t...
Probably the old fashioned way: Tata Startup Services, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Consulting Services.
http://fightthefuture.org/articles/hr-170-will-all-large-com...
Basically bills like this will allow Tata, Wipro and others to just absorb all the talent within the industry. Some versions I've seen do restrict the wage increase to companies that have n% of their workers being H1-B employees, which seems a bit more reasonable.
EDIT: Also this is one of three H1B related bills in Congress. I suppose there will be some compromise between them, considering that they are sponsored both by Republicans and Democrats.
Honest question, why is this a joke?
a) you're not certain to get anyway (because they're bonuses)
b) might not really be worth $30k
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I'm on an H-1B, and the thing that infuriates me about the dialogue on this is that they are effectively trying to ban skilled immigration, and exclude people like me from coming.
If you don't qualify for the family-based or refugee route, employment-based immigration is the only viable pathway. The amount of hate I see piled on people trying to come here via the employment-based immigration seems insane to me. These people make it seem like employment-based immigration is not as respectable or legitimate, compared to refugee/asylum and family-based immigration.
The problem with requiring higher wagers is that for people like me, who were students in US -- it's very hard to get an ultra-high salary for the first job out of college. (I did my undergrad here, and I don't have a Master's.) I was a student (on an F-1 visa), and my first job out of college offered me $60,000/year. On my first job on my H-1B visa (in NYC), I was offered $85,000 a year (got slightly over $100,000 with bonuses). Then, just about a year and half later, I was paid (incl. lucky cash bonuses) slightly over $200,000 in a single year. (My base salary is $130,000 now.)
If you raised wage requirements, you'd basically be not allowing people like me to continue to stay and work in the US (after graduation from college), and would instead only allow people from outside who have lots of experience (and skill) and can command a much higher salary upfront.
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It's very disappointing to see the level of vitriol directed towards people who are just trying to build a better life in this country, especially here on HN.
Thankfully it has zero chance of passing.
This months old Vanity Fair article gives some insight that Trump feels there is a role for immigration policy to make it easy for foreign students getting good jobs in the U.S. and innovating here; while his senior counselor and strategist thinks there are too many asians in Silicon Valley, and that it risks degrading civil society. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-30/trump-s-n...
But most any substantial change to immigration policy that isn't national security related, must come from Congress.
The idea that you can have "too many" of any type of person is about an un-american as one can be. Somehow Trump has no problem with 'too many' chubby white supremacists in the white house. Oh right, whites get a pass on everything. Its only non-whites that have to worry about being too high profile or too successful as to not upset whites. Or dating/marrying white women.
This is straight up racism, open and direct from the white house. I'm not sure how anyone is tolerating this and why there isn't more of an uproar.
This is not a man in suite arriving at site via Uber asking polite questions. This is mostly a SWAT team storming through all doors and killing dogs if any an then taking away all your documents, interviewing all employees. In short that is end of business to you.
Remember they will not come alone. They will bring sleuths from all other departments and you will be fined for not having appropriate number of fire extinguishers and for not having a separate bin for dry cells.
You clients will avoid you and your landlord will be upset.
Probably in exactly the same ways Federal contracts are gamed.
You can move to the US on the TN visa (as long as NAFTA is still valid). I've met programmers from Canada and Mexico who are on the TN visa.
Why would it affect you?
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Isn't the compliance enforcement budget zeroed out?
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Why's everyone so focused on IT? Everyone can learn how to code, it's not a real science.. Oh it's hacker news :)
Now walk into any major university science department. See who the newly minted PhD students are in biology, chemistry, physics, math ... Most are foreigners. This bill will send them home after they graduate... USA will lose here and other countries win big time on people with great science backgrounds with brains who are willing to work and move the science forward. It will take decades for American educational system to change (if it ever changes) and generate the replacements.
I think that's exactly why people are focusing on IT. The H-1B program is meant to allow companies to hire foreigners with rare skills that are hard to find domestically. In reality it's abused to import cheap labor and undercut average American workers doing common work like building applications or administering systems. There should be no problem continuing to hire PhDs and other foreigners with actual unique skillsets at $130k.
Really? How much should it cost to do common work like building crud applications or administering systems? Right now, (based on all the H1-B, and similar visa holders I know, which is a good amount) it's ~2X the median household income to pay one visa holder to do it.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to make $200-300K to sling crud apps and keep the lights on in a datacenter.
You're applying your software-dev tainted view of salaries to the sciences - how much do you think a typical PhD-holding research scientist earns?
There is no reason why we should send a freshly graduated physics scientist back to Uganda or whatever because he can't find an employer willing to pay him/her some abstract 130k salary straight out of school (which is A LOT OF MONEY).
Again, when I hire - I do it strictly based on skills and experience. If I have to do a bit more paper work to get this talented guy work for us I'll do it - but there is a limit. And at 130k limit a lot of these brains will flow back overseas. It would be a huge mistake for USA to get rid of willing to work just talent like that.
Regarding students (PhDs or anyone on F-1 visa), they will get straight path to permanent residence.
Also, F1 visa students provide good enough subsidies and education discounts to American students (both in-state & out-of-state tuition).
A potential solution can be something like a different type of work permits or different requirements for h1b applicants applying after they studied here, something along those lines.
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Or maybe the hype is true?
Whether this restriction makes sense in the first place is a different question, but this does sound like it fits the spirit of the h1-b.
I'd be curious to hear an opposing claim on this as I don't know a great deal about it and wonder if I'm missing something.
I was told early in my career by at least two CEOs that I shouldn't waste my time doing programming (and should join the managerial class) because it would be done overseas or by low cost labor onshore. I do think it's a bummer for those hoping to move/live here from overseas and may slightly reduce US tech industry competitiveness, but it looks to me to be a removal of a capital-favoring wage-surpressing distortionary loophole in our immigration policy that at the end of the day is probably a good thing.
$130k is maybe a little high for seed stage startups but given that we're talking about relocating engineers to the most expensive region in the world, I believe it's fair. And the path from F-1 to Green Card will solve companies taking advantage of people on OPT status, at least partially.
It basically means that the only companies who are gonna be able to hire through H1Bs are the big cos or unicorns.
It also means that there is an economic incentive at all levels to consider hiring Americans first. Which is the point.
Outside the Bay Area, you're probably not going to pay a frontend website programmer $130K on an H1-B. You're not supposed to, though! You can find plenty of that talent already in the country. If you need specific PhD-level STEM skills that you haven't been able to find locally, you're probably not going to mind paying them $130K because they're likely critical to your business, and that would be their market rate anyway.
The unavailability of required talent does not magically make it economically feasible to pay more for that talent. Especially the process of hiring new employees is an expensive and slow process. The vitality of American businesses depends critically on the availability of great talent at a reasonable cost. And 130k seems like a really really huge expense, especially to non-silicon valley businesses.
> You can find plenty of that talent already in the country.
No you cannot. Sure the H1B is abused horse gets beat a lot and sure there is a lot of abuse. But what shouldn't be missed is that the H1B gives American companies access to a market of the best talent in the world, to allow them to hire that talent for themselves.
History has shown how diversity and pluralism, along with dynamic markets have contributed to the blooming of civilizations. It has also shown how jingoism and trade wars have led to their fall.
H-1B visa does not have such a premise. Green card applications do though - are you confusing the two?
Those seed stage startups are going to need more capital! Go back to what valuations in 1989 looked like too.
If this had been in place when I came to the US, me and many of my friends (petroleum, chemical, electrical and software engineers and possibly nurses, doctors, anesthesiologists and doctors) would have had to have left the US after getting STEM degrees here. Instead of this, just ban skilled immigration to the US and be upfront about not wanting immigrant skilled labor. Everyone will understand. It's your country.
However, if you want to fix the problem, however, let h1b workers move companies as freely as green card holders without having to "transfer" the visa from company to company, and let holders apply for a green card on their own after a year or two. Simple.
Solves the supply problem and balances the relationship between the employer and h1b holder to more closely match a normal employment relationship, not one where they hold all the cards and can literally decide your fate at a moments notice, forcing you to work for lower wages just so they can maybe .. eventually ... sponsor your green card or make you do more work than you should for the same reason.
In very high COL places like NYC and SFBA $130k is barely a living wage unless you can put up with a 2h commute.
OTOH, in low COL markets (eg. KC) this eliminates H1-Bs from consideration for most entry-level positions.
For many markets in the middle (an example doesn't come to mind, perhaps Los Angeles?) where $130k+ is a decent salary for an entry-level position this new minimum works.
What's really needed to make H1-B work on a national scale for a broad range of professions while still limiting abuse is something like a COL adjustment, or scaling the minimum with some formula like 75% of the median salary, or the 30th percentile, or something similar.
Edited to add: I am assuming that no more than 30% of your salary is spent on rent, you save 10% of your salary, that you are working in downtown San Francisco, that your commute is under 30m door to door via public transportation, and you live in a 2-bedroom apartment.
Also: https://smartasset.com/mortgage/what-is-the-cost-of-living-i...
Isn't that the point? I thought H1-Bs were supposed to only be used when the skill set required could not be found locally. This does not match up with entry-level positions unless there are no programmers in the area.
I'm not sure the US should have as a goal keeping every foreign grad here.
You do not need to commute 2h for reasonable housing -- I lived in Brooklyn (which, for me, was a very comfortable 25m door-to-door commute), and was very happy there.
NYC actually has neighborhoods that are affordable, often only a few blocks away from expensive ones.
Really ? Surely it can't be that expensive ?
130k is totally decent, however it is also not rare. For entry level job to big companies/good startups, the market price is between 110k-120k, and it usually takes 2 years or so to bump up your salary to 130k level(one raise is good enough), assuming you are a reasonable(above average but maybe not excellent) engineer.
So, no, I completely disagree with this 'barely living salary' bullshit, it makes us software engineers look like spoiled ungrateful whiny babies. Not GOOD!
$130K is not "barely a living wage". It's a very good salary in the Bay Area and 1.5 times the average wage in SF.
You can live well and have savings as a single guy on $130k in both those areas.
Taxes in CA are a bit higher than elsewhere in the US as well, but at least there you're getting a halfway decent safety net. Rents are high only due to the suppression of the housing supply.
The problem isn't that the H1B requirements are off a bit. The problem is that H1B visa holders are essentially indentured servants. Say you're a foreigner who applies for an H1B job. Your employer does a bunch of paperwork, gets you an H1B visa, and imports you. Now you can't quit because you can't get a new job. Of course you get underpaid, and of course companies love their H1B workers.
The US should scrap the whole system and replace it with some kind of merit- or point-based visa system for skilled foreigners. The replacement system should have portable visas so that the foreigners aren't inherently cheaper to employ than citizens, permanent residents, and holders of less broken visas.
(Frankly, I agree a bit with the anti-immigrant save-our-job perspective right now. Citizens, permanent residents, etc do have an unfair disadvantage to H1B workers because of the broken structure of the H1B visa.)
Actually, the program dictates that people are paid above prevailing wage for their position.
But... people get miscategorized all the time. And they also get into big company loans from contractors like TCS for their travel to the US that they couldn't hope to pay without continued employment through them. They also get into bad contracts that include substantial financial penalties for leaving. And just because a company in the US is paying above prevailing wage, that doesn't mean that the employee doing the work is getting it. All of that leads to an environment that is very disappointing.
I do agree that doubling the salary requirement will not fix the real problems, but I don't see it as a problem either. If anything, people close to the edge will end up with a pay bump.