So why not just grant H1-Bs to the companies that are willing to pay their talent the most?
Let any company apply and list a salary which they have to agree to pay for at least two years, and then just issue them highest salary first until they hit the quota for the year. No country based quotas or any other kind. Just straight up salary. And make the visa transferrable if another company wants to take it over after say the first two years at the same or better salary.
If people are so skilled then they must be valuable, right? This would be good for both the employee and the country, bringing in the most highly paid people.
The only ones that would get hurt in this process are the companies that abuse the system to underpay people and then get them beholden to the company.
> foreigners with special skills that can't be found amongst US citizens
This is honestly rare, unless you couple it with a wage level that is lower than the domestic market will bear. Some individuals involved in R&D, but outside of that there are few skills that are not found in the US. I believe the condition isn't not found, but rather, in low supply?
> make the visa transferrable if another company wants to take it over after say the first two years at the same or better salary.
This would be a huge boon.
I am not satisfied with my job/employer -- bad environment, bad culture, etc.. I have coworkers from all over. Of the non-US native ones that I interact with, they all absolutely love our job and/or employer.
I've asked them about it, and I generally get the sense that I could not survive in the conditions from which they originally came -- both at work and outside of work.
If a dumb drone like me could figure that out, then I am sure plenty of employers found out long before me.
Hence the idea of prevailing wage, and paying somehow above that.
This of course creates an avenue to game the system, because prevailing wage for basically any work in SF or NYC is likely higher than on average over the entire US. You can undercut local markets a bit by bringing in smart people from abroad, and paying them less than they would make in SF or NYC if hired as locals, but more that the country-wide average.
(Smart, hard-working, educated people from underprivileged places get a chance of having a better life while working to improve the US economy! What's not to like?)
Yes, it alters market dynamics and the whole reason it's done is that the same skills are not available domestically for that price (or at all) - but talking about "low-wage labor" and "exploitation" as the whole point of the program is pretty rich.
As others have pointed out, you're assuming highest salary == most valuable, but what your idea will lead to is a bunch of talented people working on new ways to get people to click ads or write yet-another trading algorithm.
IMHO, you'd fix the H1-B program by doing two things:
1. Eliminate the requirement that the visa-holder have a sponsor past the start date, so the they can quit immediately and take a different job if they are underpaid or the working conditions are poor. That will eliminate any potential exploitation enforced by the program.
2. Limit the sponsors to legitimate US-based companies who will employ the workers for in-house work. Working out a precise definition may be hard, but it should be possible because it's pretty clear when we see it. Basically, something to prevent foreign contracting/outsourcing companies from even using the program.
A lot of the appeal of an immigrant is that they can't quit or take a better deal.
A system based entirely on salary would bias towards only senior roles, preventing the handling of that scenario at all.
Because industries pay differently. Unless you argue H1Bs all go to big techs.
The problem with H1B program is, no matter how it is structured, it WILL be gamed.
(and to be super explicit, yes if the US were to choose to allocate 25k annual h1b by ranked wage & thus all 25k were to go to various flavours of computer programmer or financial modeller, that seems totally fine)
I'm surprised even in HN we are taking PR at face value.
To me, an ideal skilled worker system would define quota categories by skill/job at a much finer granularity, i.e. hundreds or thousands of different H1-B sub-categories somehow weighted by policies rooted in national strategic interest.
Maybe some kind of blinded auction process that could minimize abuse. Both potential employer and employee go through some vetting process and post their needs/skills using a standard ontology. Then, a matchmaker assigns job offers that are binding. You might allow either party to reject the offer and go back into the matchmaking pool for a limited period or number of offers before they are evicted with a cooling-off period before they are allowed to reapply.
You would also need some kind of anti-abuse audit. Otherwise, malignant players could establish esoteric job requirements via covert channel and then mislabel both the worker and the position to try to force the matchmaker's hand. How do you distinguish a truly rare skill from covert ear-marking?
I think that academic positions are already exempt from H1-B restrictions. To be more specific, these will be exempted [1]
- a higher educational institution
- a nonprofit entity related to or affiliated with a higher educational institution, or a nonprofit research
- organisation or a government research organisation
Secondly, h1b is not just a working visa - it’s officially a “dual intent” visa meaning it’s also a path to immigration. If we do what you are suggesting then 99.99% of applicants will be senior-principal sw engs from china/india. Which, i assume, is not the intention of this program.
Besides, companies already have to pay over prevailing wage for the role in the area. I don’t think you can just conjure up expert professionals out of thin air by raising wages despite what folks on hn/reddit seem to believe. We tried that in 2021 - didn’t work too well
Basing on salary alone would mean ~100% of visas go to tech talent in major cities, and every other profession is cast aside.
That’s not to say that ranking based on salary within an industry wouldn’t be a potential improvement. Or modifying caps to be industry based. There are definitely options here that could be a bit more surgical.
We need to abolish the program completely.
Republican donors enjoy the labor of illegal immigration which is much cheaper than domestic labor. Any crack down on unauthorized workers in agriculture or hospitality, for example, would disrupt lots of big donors.
Democratic donors have openly stated that demographic changes would help them win more elections. These are the "demographics are destiny" folks that noted that increasing hispanic populations are good for them in elections. (If you're not winning enough votes, change the voters.) There was a lot of truth here -- just look at California, New Mexico, and Arizona elections from the 80s and 90s vs today. Recent polling suggests this may be changing.
So you end up in a strange situation where policies supported by the vast majority of Americans from all political stripes is (mostly) ignored by the parties.
The solution to the "apparent" scourge of undocumented workers is to make it so that the people running companies the use that undocumented labor are the ones who go to jail, and in the event ICE finds undocumented labor the minimum fine for the company should be a significantly greater than one multiple of the amount the company would have had to pay a documented worker, in addition to ensuring the undocumented workers are fully compensated at the amount a documented worker would have been paid. Threatening to report them to immigration, underpaying, and wage theft are all clear evidence that the company knows they were employing people who were not allowed to work.
That's all that would be needed. Instead of ever more draconian penalties for the undocumented workers - many of whom have lived in the US for essentially their entire lives at this point, and simply don't have a choice - the penalties that should be being increased are the ones that apply to the employers. It's great because it will stop all that evil undocumented labor people claim to hate, because now these employers have to pay the undocumented labor if anything more than documented labor, because undocumented labor can report unsafe or illegal working conditions, come out fully compensated and in addition to those costs the employer has to pay even more in fines, while the managers and executives who knowingly employed said laborers go to jail.
That said as we've seen in Florida, plenty of businesses in America have set themselves up to be unable to operate without violating the law, so when Florida started passing its various "lets punish the workers, but not those that employ them" laws a whole bunch of businesses couldn't handle the idea of capitalism and complained about how they couldn't get any workers.
Now, it'll probably be a shock to you, but these family sponsorship visas actually make America's immigrant pool way less white. It may not feel like it if you're trying to get an immigrant visa on an employment basis, but America is actually one of the easiest countries to immigrate to if you have relatives here. Other developed countries are far more selective and bureaucratic.
The trick is to recognize that nobody agrees on what part of the system is actually broken. The DNC said the quiet part out loud[0], but the GOP has been thinking for decades that immigration was just a way to dilute Republican voters. A good chunk of the GOP thinks the problem is that it's too easy to immigrate and we need to become like Japan[1]. Another chunk doesn't care about immigrants, but they want to end illegal immigration by any means necessary. The DNC wants, at a minimum, immigration amnesty with a path to citizenship[3]. And then you have business interests that maximally exploit immigrants, legal or otherwise. None of those positions are reconcilable in a way that will produce an immigration bill that will pass the House, Senate, and President Biden.
[0] "Demographics is destiny", which was DNC-speak for "Hillary Clinton can't possibly lose because we have enough Mexicans in California".
[1] As a massive weeaboo[2] I do not understand why anyone would want to adopt Japanese immigration standards.
[2] "Japanophile", but a different, derogatory term I won't use; wordfiltered by 4chan to a word they stole from https://pbfcomics.com/comics/weeaboo/
[3] Keep in mind that there are two classes of illegal immigration:
- People who just moved in without the proper visa, have been here for decades, have no intention of going back, and are already integrated with their local communities. Deporting them would be needlessly cruel.
- Agricultural companies who are importing massive amounts of day laborers from Mexico to avoid having to pay minimum wage
You can argue that the former should have amnesty while still wanting to have a functional minimum wage law by stopping the latter.
Because then the acceptance rate would be x% for people from India, y% from China, and 0.001% for everywhere else, which would be politically untenable.
I have a relative that 15-ish years ago simply overstayed their tourist visa and never left. Some 5 years later he found a chick and put a ring on it (and because he married a US citizen, all his overstay was instantly forgiven). Then he had a immediate US citizen relative who sponsored him for a green card, which he got a couple of years ago. In a couple of years he can apply for naturalization. Yes, he couldn't leave the US until he had the GC in his hands, but I'd say it was a small price to pay for a massive shortcut.
For a married European that would love to live in the US, like myself, legal immigration paths are simply not viable. I would not accept a non-immigrant visa (like H1B), because it doesn't come with any guarantees that I'll be able to stay in the US, and legal immigration paths are basically limited to winning the DV lottery or coughing up $900k for the EB5, as no company in the right mind would sponsor me for an EB2/3.
And for many people from oversubscribed countries (like India and China), marrying a US citizen is the ONLY viable path to a green card.
US immigration system is fundamentally broken.
> One thing I find really, really weird about the US immigration system is that immigrating illegally is trivial (apparently even more so nowadays than it was 15 years ago)
For the immigrants most at risk (not the ones overstaying visas), this has never been true. Many immigrants have to cross the Darien Gap: https://www.cfr.org/article/crossing-darien-gap-migrants-ris...
The system had serious negative consequences on my health, but my personal suffering isn't even a hundredth as bad as what hundreds of thousands have gone through.
As a European, you have several options. H1, O1, L1, etc. are all fine. None of them have any guarantees, but realistically, you'll be able to apply for a green card through an employer and get one within a couple of years under EB2/3. You can also apply for EB2-NIW or EB1A by yourself even from outside the US if you qualify, and you don't need to get a visa at all. You'd get a green card directly.
How did he make money during those 5 years?
Worked in jobs that didn’t ask for proof of employment authorization.
Being white also probably helped a lot. I’m actually willing to bet that most americans aren’t even aware that white people can also immigrate illegally.
That's obviously not true, by both analysis and observation.
H1B is neither a green card nor a path to one.
There is one category that has no cap at all however. The “Immediate relative of a US citizen” one.
The majority of "Top H1-B Recruiters" are in the "Professional and Technical Services" industry. I think people imagine that most immigrants on H1-B visas are being paid princely sums directly by FAANG companies. Instead the reality looks like they're being exploited by the same Indian bodyshops like Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL, Tech Mahindra, etc. Of the companies in that list that aren't bodyshops, the majority aren't in IT.
Aside from all of the obvious problems with the system, and the political implications, I think many people really have the wrong impression about who the real beneficiaries of the H1-B visa system are.
I know fraud prevention is whack-a-mole, and I know the system has been broken a long time, but this still works only for a certain segment of hires.
I was on the board of a "foreign" school. All instruction (except English) is in the home country's language, and we of course want native speaking teachers familiar with the subject material. For years we used H-1s -- all the teachers qualify, as they all have master's degrees or more and the specialized skills -- but when the big consulting companies started scamming all the H-1s in early October that became impossible for us. Teachers don't tend to think about leaving until late in the school year, certainly not in March, and they need to know relatively quickly so they can move to the US and get settled before the school year starts. What a pain.
In Europe its simple. Job offer above minimum salary? Apply and get a blue card yourself. Has been in the country for over 5 years and speak the language? You get citizenship.
In the US its nearly impossible to get a Green Card. Forget how difficult it is to get an H1B visa in the first place because of the lottery system.
The US is not responsible for that problem and never will be. And even if the US fixed its immigration inconveniences, the problem in India would remain.
India has other problems as well. For software engineers, the number one threat of hiring from India are the corporate cultures at Infosys, TCS and similar companies. I do not want to work with the alumni of those work cultures. It's radioactive-level toxicity.
> Also under the new rule, USCIS may deny or revoke the approval of an H-1B petition if it determines that the fee associated with the registration is declined, not reconciled, disputed, or otherwise invalid after submission.
The fact that they mention this suggests that they couldn't do so previously... which is pretty mind-boggling.
I still think a lot of the more wanton abuses in the H1-B system could be resolved by requiring the employee be a direct employee of the company they're actually working for (e.g. you can't get a contracting company to provide you with engineers), and to require compensation be - say - a minimum of say 20% above the average wage for the job they're doing, relative to other employees at the company, other workers doing manifestly similar jobs in the same geographical area, etc.
If nothing else this will apply upwards pressure on wages even in shitty "we're abusing the h1-b process" contracting companies, because every new h1-b employee they have necessarily increases the average wage at that company, which increases the minimum wage for the next h1-b, etc. The reality is that the set up of the h1-b program allows employers to abuse h1-b employees with relative impunity (including notably lowering wages), so a mechanism by which simply increasing the number of h1-b employees you have forces the wages up counters their ability to use h1-b supported abusive practices to undercut local workers.
Yeah, every single outsourcing provider is going to enter all their employees and market whoever is selected for on-site assignments to their customers. The cost of entry is way too low and this attracts frivolous registrations.
Previously, it used to cost thousands of dollars before to prepare a full petition and only those employers with serious job offers applied for H1B.
It was quite effective at weeding out non-serious job offers.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/11/08/2019-24...
[0] https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...
The $10 fee to enter your name and later fill the entire petition is a fairly recent change
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/11/08/2019-24...
It's ridiculous for a country like the US to expect people to move their whole household for ... 6 years?
H-1B is actually slightly better than an L1*. At least with the H-1B you are allowed to change jobs if the new employer wants to do the paperwork. For the L1 you can't do that. The visa is tied to the current employer. You leave? You're out.
H1B is more complex for spouse to work.
Why do they think that's a good thing? If you have more than one offer then you are more in demand on the job market, presumably being a better specialist, more deserving of getting a visa :D
0. There should be no cap for people who have received higher education degrees in the US. What's the point of educating people and equipping them with everything they need to be successful in the US, advance the US (including creating lots of jobs) and then deporting them right after?
1. There should be no cap for people who are going into STEM, AI, or other jobs that are going to vastly develop the economy.
There is a cap-exempt H1B, but it's for nonprofits. It makes no sense.
Canada recently has cracked down on (I believe undergraduate) student visas recently, with effectively a per-province cap. I'm not sure if Canada has a problem with diploma mills at the Master's level though.
Agree 100%. Student visas should convert to work visas automatically on graduation from an accredited institution and be good for at least five years.
Then you're effectively creating a loophole. There would be a proliferation of private schools that accept anyone willing to pay enough $$$ and churn out barely-competent graduates just so that people have a better shot at citizenship. "Attended a school in the US" is not a good proxy for being an asset to the country.
> There should be no cap for people who are going into STEM, AI, or other jobs that are going to vastly develop the economy.
That's essentially the whole point of H-1B, and right now, they're overwhelmingly allocated to what one could generously describe as STEM professions.
The solution is same: tighten what qualifies for student loans and what is an asset to the country
Aren't almost all students paying in full for their education? Aren't they just consumers of the product American universities are selling?
I'm ok with that, if it comes along with the death penalty for diploma mill operators including major universities. Otherwise its not a loophole - its an open barn door.
This has the effect of delegating decisions about who enters the country to an unelected and unaccountable group of admissions officers working at private institutions.
I get your objection about unelected/unaccountable, but this happens all the time, and is normal, expected, and unavoidable. The government very often reaches outside itself for expert opinions on things that it cannot or should not develop its own expertise in.
The current system is stupid. Educating foreigners in the US and then kicking them out (absent something with the intentions of a Fullbright, for example) is just bad policy.
Say you're a STEM graduate; you first got an F-1 visa to study, then you spend four years at school in the U.S. You find a job with a great firm for your OPT, and that firm immediately starts to enter the H-1B lottery on your behalf.
Based on the amount of oversubscription, there's a significant number of people who are just not going to get selected before they time out on their OPT and have no option but to leave the U.S. after seven years living here, amounting to perhaps their entire adult lives.
The fact that such people have no preference in a random lottery with others that have no investment in the U.S. at all is utterly perplexing.
Making money for the schools where they go? Foreign student, studying in the US, come here on an F visa, and to obtain such a visa one has to prove that he or she has such strong ties to the home country that they cannot possibly stay in the US after graduation and need to quickly come back and use the education at home.
What isn't allowed is the same company applying for you through multiple subsidiaries or contracting agencies.
This is now no longer possible.
Why it took so long to implement this rule is a mystery though. Seems like such an obvious loophole.
