Biden promises to reform H-1B visa system

[Dr. Acula]

@Pressure Got a lot more for you breh

No evidence of worker shortage (older link, so data may be outdated but this isn't an imaginary problem)
H-1B Visa Numbers: No Relationship to Economic Need

A good portion of STEM graduates can't find jobs in their field
Full Page Reload
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Swallow’s company and others in the A&D industry are pushing hard to increase the total number of STEM students (especially from minority groups and women) in order to meet their needs. But as another speaker, Professor Ron Hira from Rochester Institute of Technology pointed out in his talk on the globalization of engineering and its impact, the US economy has created less than 50,000 new engineering jobs in the past decade. That lackluster performance can be attributed to both increased global competition and the outsourcing of engineering and other STEM-related jobs even as 900,000 engineering students were graduating from colleges and universities. The use of H-1B visas has also negatively impacted the availability of STEM jobs in the US, Hira argued.

All these factors may help explain why only about half of those graduating with undergraduate STEM degrees actually work in the STEM-related fields after college, and after 10 years, only some eight percent still do. I should note that those with STEM degrees do seem to enjoy higher salaries than non-STEM degree co-workers in any field they so choose, which may be the best reason to get one.

The indirect threat towards employment and staying in the US discussed here
https://www.nber.org/chapters/c13842.pdf
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One worker called it an “ecosystem of fear.”

It’s a shadow world that can turn a worker’s dream of self-betterment into a financial nightmare. Shackling workers to their jobs is such an entrenched business practice that it has even spread to U.S. nationals.

This bullying persists at the bottom of a complex system that supplies workers to some of America’s richest and most successful companies, such as Cisco Systems Inc., Verizon and Apple Inc.

“You can pretty much see a leash on my neck with my employer,” said Saravanan Ranganathan, a Washington-area computer security expert here on an H-1B visa. “It’s kind of like a hidden chain … and you’d better shut up, or you’ll lose everything.”

https://www.cio.com/article/3401147/5-shocking-examples-of-h-1b-visa-program-abuse.html

Large Companies Game H-1B Visa Program, Costing the U.S. Jobs

The H-1B Visa Debate, Explained



Outside of this, make the argument to me why any American tech worker should support the H1B program, at least a more open one that Biden is proposing. Don't lean back on accusing anyone of just hating immigrants. Make it make sense from strictly a job and logic standpoint how this helps. Not every H1B visa holder is the next Elon Musk. In fact, more times than not they are far from it. I'll keep it coming and when I have more free time maybe dig into some of the 60-page study documents to drive the point home some more.

 

[Dr. Acula]

One more for good measure
H-1B visas and prevailing wage levels: A majority of H-1B employers—including major U.S. tech firms—use the program to pay migrant workers well below market wages

Key takeaways
H-1B is a flawed visa program:

• DOL lets H-1B employers undercut local wages. Sixty percent of H-1B positions certified by the U.S. Department of Labor are assigned wage levels well below the local median wage for the occupation. While H-1B program rules allow this, DOL has the authority to change it—but hasn’t.
• A small number of employers dominate the program. While over 53,000 employers used the H-1B program in 2019, the top 30 H-1B employers accounted for more than one in four of all 389,000 H-1B petitions approved by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in 2019.
• Outsourcing firms make heavy use of the H-1B program. Half of the top 30 H-1B employers use an outsourcing business model to provide staff for third-party clients, rather than employing H-1B workers directly to fill a special need at the company that applies for the visa.
• Major U.S. firms use the H-1B program to pay low wages. Among the top 30 H-1B employers are major U.S. firms including Amazon, Microsoft, Walmart, Google, Apple, and Facebook. All of them take advantage of program rules in order to legally pay many of their H-1B workers below the local median wage for the jobs they fill.

 

[theworldismine13]

You and nap are both 2nd generation immigrants.

H1B Visas have nothing to do with low skilled workers and has nothing to do with illegal immigration.


I'm merely pointing out Trump's aggressive immigration policies have done nothing to improve the standing of black Americans. Doubling down won't either.

but that's why I mentioned it, we have been making the argument t that immigration hurts black people with low skills, not really about h1b

h1b is a side issue but it has everything to do with the overall immigration policies

 

[theworldismine13]

No my argument is a critique on your faulty logic.

it's just a horrible sounding argument---h1b is ok because the recipients make 150k? Lol

 

[sosayeth]

At the end of the day, Netflix employees and higher-ups will BART, MUNI or lyft past hundreds of black kids already in the school-to-prison pipeline... to spend millions on "research" and "consultants" who will throw together some corny marketing "BLM! Black Movies to Watch" strategy instead of investing that money in a direct school-to-industry pipeline, *while begging the government for cheap labor from Southeast Asia.

Anyone who capes for H1B visas does not give a damn about the black community at all.

 

[Pressure]

but that's why I mentioned it, we have been making the argument t that immigration hurts black people with low skills, not really about h1b

h1b is a side issue but it has everything to do with the overall immigration policies

This thread is about H1-B. H1-b workers are college graduates.

 

[Pressure]

it's just a horrible sounding argument---h1b is ok because the recipients make 150k? Lol

My ask was for you to prove that H1-B visas are depressing the wages of American workers. So far all I have seen from you all is proof that H1-B workers make LESS than their American counterparts and that some seek out workers for less money.

The problem is no one has quantitatively proven that lower pay is a result of immigrants and not just the effects of low regulation free market capitalism and the erosion of labor protections.

Again, my initial statement was Biden lifting the H1-B restrictions put into place in response to the Coronavirus is merely reverting back to normal.

 

[Pressure]

Outside of this, make the argument to me why any American tech worker should support the H1B program, at least a more open one that Biden is proposing. Don't lean back on accusing anyone of just hating immigrants. Make it make sense from strictly a job and logic standpoint how this helps. Not every H1B visa holder is the next Elon Musk. In fact, more times than not they are far from it. I'll keep it coming and when I have more free time maybe dig into some of the 60-page study documents to drive the point home some more

Biden merely proposed rolling back the covid change put into place by the Trump administration.

I can give you a real life practical example of why the H1-B program is useful. There was a very specific enterprise product I needed someone to fill out the rest of my team. There was a foreign worker who had previously worked on the project as a contingent worker. We brought him on full time because we had a deadline we'd like to meet and we didn't want to spend 4 months ramping up a new hire and his contract expired and he'd have to wait over a year before he could come back as a contingent.

He's paid the same as anyone else would be paid as well as the additional cost of moving him stateside.

H1-B workers shouldn't be paid less than other workers for the same job, but assuming that's the main reason why they're being hired is flawed. It also disregards the fact that many companies will underpay people just because they can and that may have had little to do with who they chose to hire.

 

[Dr. Acula]

Biden merely proposed rolling back the covid change put into place by the Trump administration.

I can give you a real life practical example of why the H1-B program is useful. There was a very specific enterprise product I needed someone to fill out the rest of my team. There was a foreign worker who had previously worked on the project as a contingent worker. We brought him on full time because we had a deadline we'd like to meet and we didn't want to spend 4 months ramping up a new hire and his contract expired and he'd have to wait over a year before he could come back as a contingent.

He's paid the same as anyone else would be paid as well as the additional cost of moving him stateside.

H1-B workers shouldn't be paid less than other workers for the same job, but assuming that's the main reason why they're being hired is flawed. It also disregards the fact that many companies will underpay people just because they can and that may have had little to do with who they chose to hire.

I acknowledge that not every H1b is underpaid. In the heat of making an argument, it is easy to make claims that may not account for more nuance usually out of a passionate opinion about the subject. However, as I said, I acknowledge that there are plenty of H1Bs who are hired not to undercut workers or strictly for lower-paid positions. Also depends on what industry were are talking about. As I said, an Indian doctor who is hired to come work in the US on an H1B because no American doctor wants to go work in rural podunk Iowa are legit use of the H1B program and there are legitimate uses in the tech field too.

But again, I don't want to just post a bunch of links but I did provide some information to show that on the other hand it is used by for example IT outsourcing companies like infosys to be a middle man to provide fast, but more importantly cheaper immigrant labor when a company decides that from a bottom-line perspective it is better to hire a foreign worker at a lower age. The loophole currently in the H1B system from my understanding is that it does require employers to pay an equal wage until after the 60k salary mark. At that point, the requirement is no longer required. This impacts a lot of professional careers, especially in engineering and software development. It negates the supposed protections that are supposed to be in place in the first place.

I actually took some time and read through his "plan of securing a nation of immigrants" or whatever it was that was his big immigration policy proposal. It put me at ease a little bit and given like I said I have a bit of a stake in this subject personally, I'm sensitive about it.

The Biden Plan for Securing Our Values as a Nation of Immigrants | Joe Biden for President: Official Campaign Website

Words are useless so, we'll see. But at the very least I'm glad to see some acknowledgment here that acknowledges pitfalls and potential for abuse with a general consideration of making sure it is not being used to undermine American workers. Again talk is cheap though and I'm still reasonably, I think, skeptical of what he will truly end up doing. One of my biggest issues with Biden is he too compromising with individuals who do not have our best interests in heart. When the guy even comes out to entertain the idea of having a Republican vice president during a time when Republicans slap your hand away and spit in your face, its not hard to feel iffy about where this dude's sympathies and therefore his policy decisions will lie.

As far as just rolling back to "pre-covid" he has stated he is actually looking at some of the ideas in the 2013 immigration reform bill that didn't get a hearing in the senate as a way to approach this issue. In that, and he has restated it himself recently, it wants to up the number of visa to 200k from something like 80k. That is a big increase. When you have 1 out of 2 STEM recent graduates having a hard time find a job in their field, and with what is probably going to be a longer-term impact economically due to COVID for the foreseeable future, why introduce this now? I would argue that putting a restriction on this right now was the right move and it should be in place until the economy and unemployment are back to normal.

 

[theworldismine13]

My ask was for you to prove that H1-B visas are depressing the wages of American workers. So far all I have seen from you all is proof that H1-B workers make LESS than their American counterparts and that some seek out workers for less money.

The problem is no one has quantitatively proven that lower pay is a result of immigrants and not just the effects of low regulation free market capitalism and the erosion of labor protections.

Again, my initial statement was Biden lifting the H1-B restrictions put into place in response to the Coronavirus is merely reverting back to normal.

my bad on one thing, looks like y'all were having a previous convo on this, I wasnt a part of it, I've never really commented on h1b

I don't support h1b and there is no reason to undo any restrictions trump put in imo

I do think the whole entire immigration system should be scrapped and there should be a point system

 

[Pressure]

my bad on one thing, looks like y'all were having a previous convo on this, I wasnt a part of it, I've never really commented on h1b

I don't support h1b and there is no reason to undo any restrictions trump put in imo

I do think the whole entire immigration system should be scrapped and there should be a point system

There's plenty that needs to be changed about the immigration system. I'm not arguing against it.

There also needs to be a strong emphasis on creating more opportunities for black workers (required).