H1B Madness - $100k fee?

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heelfan108

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Friday Sept 19th, White house issues $100k fee executive order
www.whitehouse.gov

Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA A PROCLAMATION The H-1B nonimmigrant visa program was created to bring temporary workers into the United
www.whitehouse.gov www.whitehouse.gov

H1B orders ordered to return to US by Sunday. Cancel travel plans to leave US
www.reuters.com

'Fast and furious': H-1B workers abroad race to US as Trump order sparks dismay, confusion

Panicked and angry workers from India and China abandoned travel plans and rushed back to the U.S.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com

The white house then said nothing is changing in the short-term and it only applies to new applicants.
 
Someone I work with had just booked a last minute trip to visit her dying grandmother in the Philippines after going through a lot of red tape to get an emergency visa and employer approval. Only to have her employer tell her that she might not be employed if she left the country...
 
I do think the H1B program needs a lot of reform. It was originally meant to bring in needed talent but it has become a program to bring in indentured servants who employers could abuse for a few years. That in turn made Americans less employable with their stronger worker protections.

I'm not sure if Trump's method is best. I would prefer it was more along the lines of the Visa was portable and these companies couldn't demand draconian working conditions for immigrants that were somewhat desperate to stay in the country. I think if you put the immigrants on a level playing field with Americans, then it would only be used for truly exceptional individuals.

But I suspect that this wouldn't be as acceptable politically. I remember Ted Cruz tried to raise the minimum wage of H-1B immigrants to something like $200k/yr to ensure that it was focused on hard to find valuable talent as opposed to low-level IT work but it never got anywhere. Too many companies with too many bribes/campaign donations liked it the way it was.
 
Whatever reform is or isn't needed, it clearly needs to be phased in and not announced as a policy effective next week.

I have no strong feelings about H1-B visas. When I married my first wife, she was on an H1-B. There are valuable people here in the country who wouldn't be without the program. She was able to quit her job and take a new one after marrying me and getting a green card, lol. That's often how they break free of the restrictions.

There is an element of cultural destruction here. A lot of Indian communities are built around H1Bs. I mean, there are no communities I know of where the majority of residents are on H1-Bs, but I'd imagine there are some places, especially in NJ, where the majority of people were on H1-Bs at some point. But the communities are structured to provide support for the newly arrived workers, who are usually single. It is part of the social scene. It also helps the communities feel connected to India, though this point was only emphasized to me by one guy a while back, so I'm not sure how widespread that consideration is.

Low-level IT work is valuable talent. It's like farm work, in that there aren't enough Americans who want those jobs and are willing to do them. It's a much better job than farm work; it pays more and the living conditions are better. But in terms of office jobs in the U.S., these jobs are pretty crappy. And the American talent competing for those positions tends to be bozos from Chubb or Devry who can't actually do anything. This was true of Indian H1Bs as well back in the 1990s, but that was a scam that to my knowledge was fixed.

I was victim of that scam. I was hiring for a programming project and my interviewee had a pretty great resume. He had a masters', and I looked at his thesis and it was decent. But he was strangely unable to explain his ideas very well at all. He was from Bangladesh, and his English was rough, so maybe he was just tripped up by the language. Plus, the other candidates were bad, so the opportunity cost was low. I decided to go with the guy with the masters' degree.

Only later did I find out how it worked. There would be one or two really smart guys from a village or neighborhood, and he would get established in America. Then he would proceed to bring over the village, by puffing up their resumes. Basically, the first couple of guys would do the work of the next six, until they got established. Then they would bring over more of the village. Pretty soon, there might be 15-20 guys from the village. Maybe three or four of them were good; maybe another four or five were competent, and the other half were like the guy I ended up hiring.
 
Calheel said:
And passed by Congress, not a buffoon who thinks he is a king.
Click to expand...
Exactly.

I am no fan of the program as it is, but this is stupid.

But yeah it's been abused greatly. And tech is like the worst sector to be in right now, so H1Bs are going to really come under fire
 
nycfan said:
And a key to this change is that the Administration is granting itself the right to waive the fee as they see fit, so gives them more leverage over employees who will be seeking waivers to help fill key positions ...
Click to expand...
It's entirely possible that it is THE key. That it's just an opportunity to skim, or to have companies sucking Trump's ass.
 
Its been a rollercoaster this weekend since the announcement on Friday. Some thoughts after having delved into the issue:

-there has definitely been some abuse with H1B visas with low level programmers. I'd like to see better numbers, but I could see how that might suppress entry level jobs and wages for domestic workers in the field. Seems to be a cluster of IT companies (TATA comes to mind ) that has exploited the system by bringing in a high amount of Indian programmers and paying them relatively low salaries.

-Not all H1B visas follow that pattern, however, not even all of those from India. I saw a great graph, but can't seem to find it: it had % of Indian H1B visas on the vertical axis and H1B visas with advanced degrees on the horizontal axis and then showed companies with a bubble chart (bigger the circle, the more hires). The chart clearly showed two clusters: 1) Companies with high % of Indian H1Bs, but a low amount of advanced degrees (a lot of IT consulting subcontracting firms like TATA and Wipro had pretty large circles). There was another cluster of companies with low % of Indians (lower than 30%) and a high amount of advanced degrees. In that cluster you had companies like Google, Apple, Amazon and other traditional tech. Feels like the abuse is coming from the previous group rather than the latter.

-Per usual, they never go after the abusing enterprise, but rather the individual. If companies are hiring scores of below-market programmers, or rigging the H1B system with spotty credentials, go after the abusers, don't nuke the entre system.

-Even after the clarifications that came out on Sunday (which feels like backtracking), there seems to be some unintended consequences they have not thought through. First, big tech firms will just shell out the money if they have to, raising a competitive moat around their talent. Startups on the other hand will get fucked. Much harder for them to spend that type of resources, even when they're incredible lean. And there's a fair amount of foreign born talent involved in startups, both currently and historically. That will have an impact on innovation in the US.

-This will provide an incentive for work to be done elsewhere. Cheap programmers will just stay in other countries and code there. Talented individuals can be drawn out to other places (Singapore, Canada, UK/Europe). I could see some of those tech firms deciding that instead of paying the big bucks for those fees, they will redeploy the talent to other places

-25% of foreign born doctors are in the US on H1B visas, with a good amount of those in rural areas (one of the condition of your visa). I don't see hospitals paying those fees. I'm guessing we will eventually see an exemption for the health care industry...but again, why drop the nuke.

-There were some clarifications made today that this will only apply to new applicants from overseas, not to rentals or international students applying over from their student visa/OPT (my son is in that bucket...he was freaking out). But of course that can change on a whim any day, particularly given Trump's war on universities. Really hard to make career decisions in such an uncertain environment.

-Whatever happened to the core value of attracting the world's best talent? Beyond the abuses, which I agree need to be fixed. There was a principle in US immigration policy to bring the best and the brightest. So now we're curbing legal immigration too, and not just legal but the cream of the crop. Just another step in nativism.

-Finally, giving the administration the power to carve out exceptions at their sole discretion in such a subjective way is terribly policy.
 
heelfan108 said:
Friday Sept 19th, White house issues $100k fee executive order
www.whitehouse.gov

Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA A PROCLAMATION The H-1B nonimmigrant visa program was created to bring temporary workers into the United
www.whitehouse.gov www.whitehouse.gov

H1B orders ordered to return to US by Sunday. Cancel travel plans to leave US
www.reuters.com

'Fast and furious': H-1B workers abroad race to US as Trump order sparks dismay, confusion

Panicked and angry workers from India and China abandoned travel plans and rushed back to the U.S.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com

The white house then said nothing is changing in the short-term and it only applies to new applicants.
Click to expand...
How many people lose their jobs when companies don't want to pay this new extortion?

I'm in trouble if they start revoking these visas, my neighborhood is 75% people working under visas.

But, I read that Elon is going to fight this. Not holding my breath.

I also keep reading people on the internet stating how great this is as it will open up jobs for Americans. BULLSHIT, if Americans could fill these jobs we wouldn't need so many visas issued.
 
This will hit rural hospitals hard, as they rely on foreign Docs and nurses. Same with Postdoc fellows at Universities. As usual a very unwise and destructive action that will hurt the country
 
Kingpin said:
This will hit rural hospitals hard, as they rely on foreign Docs and nurses. Same with Postdoc fellows at Universities. As usual a very unwise and destructive action that will hurt the country
Click to expand...
Indeed. I can seriously see some rural hospitals and clinics closing because of this, creating even more "medical deserts" in rural areas. And yet those rural folk will vote MAGA even as they have to drive further and further to see a doctor or receive medical help.
 
Mulberry Heel said:
Indeed. I can seriously see some rural hospitals and clinics closing because of this, creating even more "medical deserts" in rural areas. And yet those rural folk will vote MAGA even as they have to drive further and further to see a doctor or receive medical help.
Click to expand...
Well, they may be bankrupt since they will have no Medicaid or a hospital to go to. FAFO
 
superrific said:
There would be one or two really smart guys from a village or neighborhood, and he would get established in America. Then he would proceed to bring over the village, by puffing up their resumes. Basically, the first couple of guys would do the work of the next six, until they got established. Then they would bring over more of the village. Pretty soon, there might be 15-20 guys from the village. Maybe three or four of them were good; maybe another four or five were competent, and the other half were like the guy I ended up hiring.
Click to expand...
I have seen this in Nursing at Large Hospitals
 
Kingpin said:
This will hit rural hospitals hard, as they rely on foreign Docs and nurses. Same with Postdoc fellows at Universities. As usual a very unwise and destructive action that will hurt the country
Click to expand...
I'm guessing exceptions for doctors and nurses will be the rule. The White House is already talking about it. This is targeted towards IT workers which is the majority of H1B.
 
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