Let Spouses of H-1B Visa Holders Work In US, Says White House 566
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Carolyn Lochhead reports in the SF Chronicle that the White House has announced a plan allowing spouses of H-1B visa holders to work in the United States, a coup for Silicon Valley companies that have been calling for more lenient rules for immigrants who come to the United States to work in technology. 'The proposals announced today will encourage highly skilled, specially trained individuals to remain in the United States and continue to support U.S. businesses and the growth of the U.S. economy,' says Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. 'A concurrent goal is for the United States to maintain competitiveness with other countries that attract skilled foreign workers and offer employment authorization for spouses of skilled workers. American businesses continue to need skilled nonimmigrant and immigrant workers.'
Currently, spouses of H-1B visa holders are not allowed to work unless they obtain their own visa but tech companies have been calling for more H-1B visas, and supporters of the rule change argue that it will bring in more talented workers. Critics say they believe expanding the H-1B visa program will allow lower-paid foreign workers to take American jobs. The plan immediately drew fire from Republicans. Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, accused the administration of acting unilaterally to change immigration law and bring in tens of thousands of potential competitors with Americans for jobs. 'Fifty million working-age Americans aren't working,' Sessions said in a statement, adding that as many as 'half of new technology jobs may be going to guest workers. This will help corporations by further flooding a slack labor market, pulling down wages.'"
Currently, spouses of H-1B visa holders are not allowed to work unless they obtain their own visa but tech companies have been calling for more H-1B visas, and supporters of the rule change argue that it will bring in more talented workers. Critics say they believe expanding the H-1B visa program will allow lower-paid foreign workers to take American jobs. The plan immediately drew fire from Republicans. Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, accused the administration of acting unilaterally to change immigration law and bring in tens of thousands of potential competitors with Americans for jobs. 'Fifty million working-age Americans aren't working,' Sessions said in a statement, adding that as many as 'half of new technology jobs may be going to guest workers. This will help corporations by further flooding a slack labor market, pulling down wages.'"
seems like a back door (Score:5, Interesting)
To getting two H1Bs for the price of one!
These are already being abused by tech companies to force lower wages on those already legally in the USA, be they citizens or resident aliens, this will make it worse.
Re:seems like a back door (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if they'll start "encouraging" their H1Bs to marry other people they want to hire now?
Re:seems like a back door (Score:5, Funny)
I wouldn't mind marrying a Chinese/Japanese/Korean girl fresh out of college.
who said it would be a girl? (Score:4, Funny)
We have gay marriage now and the software scene is still mostly male, unfortunately.
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I wonder if they'll start "encouraging" their H1Bs to marry other people they want to hire now?
I'm wondering if the SF in SF Chronicle stands for "Science Fiction".
H1b Is a marriage killer in its current form! (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody talks about one really important issue. The H1b is such a strain on a married couple that more than half of the marriages end in divorce during the term of the visa. It is absolute killer. Many of the spouses are university educated and have to abandon their career to sit idly by, get bored. They leave all their friends and family behind back in their country of origin. Sometimes having children solves the problem, but often this takes extreme toll. Same on the visa holder, who gets new job in a new country, doesn't know the conditions, has to support family from a single income in place with no extended family support. And every time you come home, there is your bored spouse ready to jump you and do stuff, while you are tired and want to rest from work. It is a huge strain on couples. Giving EAD to H4 holders while the GC is pending is EXACTLY the change H1b program needs to stop being the marriage killer it is now.
Re:H1b Is a marriage killer in its current form! (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody is forcing them to pack up their family and move here. What you're describing is the same for anyone who needs to relocate for a job, though I admit it's more difficult when relocating to another country. All of the potential consequences need to be factored in if they're going to move, the same as for anyone else who relocates for a job or any other reason. If they're living a good life, one of the two is well employed, and they don't want to pack up and leave, they're not being forced to. As it is, unemployment and underemployment are still serious issues in the US for everyone, and that's killing marriages for citizens as well! While I can see people making the argument it isn't fair to tell the H1B workers' spouses they can't work, the H1B worker has already been granted a special privilege to be able to work here and it's also unfair to grant that same privilege to the spouse just for being married to them.
There are a lot of problems with our immigration system, and I would never suggest we stop allowing people to come to this country and work toward improving their lives, but the fact is there already isn't enough work to go around and it isn't fair to those of us already here to keep willingly increasing the rate at which we add workers to the pool, not until jobs are added at the same rate. It sounds like you'd have to be a dick to say, "You can't work in the country you live in," but that only looks at half the story. It's still pretty damn generous to say, "If you want, you can take your family and move to this country so you can be employed here, but your spouse won't be able to work while they're here." If that doesn't sound like a sweet deal, simple solution, don't take it. It's up to them to decide what's best for them, it's not up to us to sweeten the deal until it is what's best for them.
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I guess unemployment in the U.S. is kind of trivial.
This is the Lump of Labor Fallacy [wikipedia.org]. Both theory and real world evidence show that immigrants, and especially skilled immigrants, expand the economy rather than "stealing jobs".
Re:seems like a back door (Score:5, Insightful)
immigrants, and especially skilled immigrants, expand the economy
Your grasp of the situation has led you to answer the wrong question. Why should I care what the US GDP is? What matters to me is the US GDP per capita, and the distribution of income from that.
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I think you're asking the wrong question too. Why should I care what the US GDP per capita is? What matters to me is the global GDP per capita, and how that is distributed.
Re:seems like a back door (Score:4, Interesting)
Please cite this theory and the empirical validation of it.
The citation was provided in the post that started this thread. Here it is [wikipedia.org] again. It explains both the theory, and gives several historical examples. Young, educated immigrants are a boon to the overall economy.
Re:seems like a back door (Score:4, Informative)
Glad someone reads. Beyond the confirmation bias, the idea that real unemployment doesn't matter displays the sheer lack of any responsibility on the part of the government. This is exactly why we should be curtailing H1-B programs.
After Five Years Of Obamanomics, A Record 100 Million Americans Not Working [forbes.com]
Lump of Labor Fallacy is itself a Fallacy... (Score:5, Interesting)
... due to the law of diminishing returns... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... [wikipedia.org]
H1Bs directly reduce wages of technical employees, plus they also displace local contractors who otherwise get much higher hourly rates than employees generally due to the short term nature of the projects and higher skill levels and so on. Even if there is not a lump of labor, there is such a thing as a fixed budget at any point in time.
The US created just about zero net new jobs in the last decade while the population and the GDP grew. So, output is increasing in a 21st century economy while labor stays fixed or declines as a percent of the population.
On top of that, it doesn't matter how much labor is needed if it can be done more cheaply by robots and AIs. And before such replace human workers entirely, they will let a few workers do the work of many, thus increasing unemployment,
There are many possible "solutions" to this situation being tried, which I catalog here:
http://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a... [pdfernhout.net]
The real future of work is to make it play and pleasant. See Bob Black and EF Schumacher:
Black: http://www.whywork.org/rethink... [whywork.org]
"What I really want to see is work turned into play. A first step is to discard the notions of a "job" and an "occupation." Even activities that already have some ludic content lose most of it by being reduced to jobs which certain people, and only those people, are forced to do to the exclusion of all else. Is it not odd that farm workers toil painfully in the fields while their air-conditioned masters go home every weekend and putter about in their gardens? Under a system of permanent revelry, we will witness the Golden Age of the dilettante which will put the Renaissance to shame. There won't be any more jobs, just things to do and people to do them."
Schumacher: http://www.centerforneweconomi... [centerforn...nomics.org]
"The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure."
The 1950s short story "The Skills of Xanadu" by Theodore Sturgeon depicts a society powered by mobile computing that has realized both these objectives (especially the first).
http://books.google.com/books?... [google.com]
https://archive.org/details/pr... [archive.org]
For some comic relief see also the 1950s story "The Midas Plague" where only the very wealthy were allowed to have full-time jobs and work overtime and live in small homes, while everyone else was limited to part-time jobs as best or unemployment and forced consumption of mansions and massive amounts of food and consumer goods at worst..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... [wikipedia.org]
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we should import the entire subcontinent then. Pipe them right into your neighborhood. The more the merrier, right?
Fine with me. I live in San Jose, California. We are already a majority Asian city. On my cul-de-sac, there is a family of Filipinos, two Vietnamese families, and an Indian family. My wife is Chinese, and my kids, although half white, speak fluent Mandarin and self-identify as "Asian" on any form where "mixed" isn't an option. We have the best schools, and the lowest crime of any big city in America. The economy is booming, and tech salaries are higher than anywhere else in the world. So, yes, the mo
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I guess unemployment in the U.S. is kind of trivial.
. . .in related legislation, the White House has proposed deporting unemployed U.S. citizens, so it will all work out in the end . . .
Re:seems like a back door (Score:5, Insightful)
Since these are such high demand positions that can't be filled by citizens, the salary they are paid must surely reflect that and is enough to sustain a single income household right? This move just confirms that the government knows and supports the use of H1B as a tool to suppress salaries of domestic tech workers.
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Only a small fraction of H1Bs ever get greencards though.
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How long does it take to go from "can apply for a green card" to "has a green card"? If you've just moved to a new country, a second income makes a huge difference.
For my wife (Korean passport & nationality, but born and always lived in Japan), it took about 18 months for the green card to finally arrive. However, this was based on a fiance visa, and I am a US citizen. There are many different waiting lists and they all have different priorities. In general processing times and fees keep going up however.
The biggest joke is that about 4-5 years ago they tripled a lot of the application fees and claimed they would use the new revenue to reduce waiting times.
Re: seems like a back door (Score:2, Insightful)
So h1-b is an immigration program?
That is not what the laws says.
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Actually, "the law" does allow a certain H1B to green card path, so yes, it's "what the law says".
We know what the law says. The reality, which often has little to do with legal details, is that the H-1B is primarily a guest worker program. That's how employer's use it, and if it wasn't primarily for guest workers, why have the H-1B visa at all? Get a green card and move on in. That's how other immigrants do it. Why should this case be any different? Oh, that's right, there is a critical shortage of technical workers. Also, I'm the Queen of England.
Re: seems like a back door (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: seems like a back door (Score:4, Insightful)
I also earn a good six-figure salary, so I'm definitely not here to help my employer cut any costs.
Just because you are making $250k or whatever doesn't mean they wouldn't be paying $350k if there was no H-1B visas, so yes, even at that, you are cutting costs.
Re: seems like a back door (Score:5, Interesting)
My father is the son of a WW2 veteran from Colorado. Though he'd been trying to locate his father since the 1960's, none of the US institutions ever deigned to reply to him, so it was only recently that we were able to trace the family.
A DNA test proved conclusively and beyond a doubt that my grandfather was this US citizen, and thus my father is considered to have been a US citizen since his birth in 1945.
I'm over 21 and I'm married, so I'm third-preference Family Class. The waiting list for that one is in excess of 20 years right now, which means I could get my green card round about the age of 57. Oh, but my father can't sponsor me until he's lived in the US for five full years, so if he (age 69) moves to the US right now, then I *might* get a green card by the time I'm 62 years old and about to retire.
That's *just* what you all want, right? For me to move here in time to retire & live off a pension? [/sarcasm]
Re: seems like a back door (Score:4, Informative)
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The O is not a dual-purpose visa. I'm only allowed to work so long as I do so with NO immigration intent.
File an I-140 and an I-485. You can stay here, work, and apply for a green card.
Look me up. My real name's Jim Dovey ...
Nice creds. You shouldn't have any problem finding a good job in the UK, or Canada where you were working. So what's the problem from your POV? If you prefer the US, you already have your O-1 and a way to apply for a green card (issued on a priority basis).
I highly doubt that your anecdotal experience has any more weight than my own.
No it doesn't, which is why I was citing statistical data: http://www.cis.org/articles/20... [cis.org]
I find it very hard to believe that the purpose of the H1-B program is to suppress Americans' wages.
Is that tongue in cheek, or are you that naive?
It *looks* like its purpose is to allow foreign workers to enter the US, contribute to the economy
How do they contribute to the econo
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I understand the reasons behind H1-B, but imho if the USA really has a lack of the job skills we are supplementing via H1-B then we should be doing more to build those talents. Failing that, we should simply stop giving out H1-B and create a fast track to a green card or citizenship for people with skills our country lacks.
This gives those workers the ability to leverage their employers and work in the market. This keeps wages competitive and strengthens our country.
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Cute. He considers what the law says relevant for corporations.
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have you seen how long that takes? many years in many cases
There are no cheaper goods and services
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for the wages you were willing to pay...
Re:seems like a back door (Score:4, Insightful)
Speaking as an H1B visa holder. I earn approaching $200,000 a year. I get a large amount of restricted stock on top of that. It cost the company I work for at very least $150,000 to move me, my wife and all of my stuff over here. All in all, assuming that I can't get a green card, it's likely that it will have cost the company I work for about $300,000-400,0000 a year before taxes to have me here for each of the 6 years I'm here.
The company I work for is still trying to hire people with the relevant qualifications into similar roles on the same team, and are unable to find anyone either in, or out of the US.
Believe me, if they could find an American to do this job, they would have, and believe me, there's no one passing up $3-400,000 a year engineering positions at top flight companies. There really are jobs that need immigrant workers to fill, because there really are no Americans to do them.
Re:seems like a back door (Score:5, Insightful)
Your job may have no workers available, sure
But OS and middleware administrators, coders, there are plenty of in the USA. The salaries are depressed for local workers because of the plethora of H1B imports
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This is anecdote, not data. The median wage for all approved H1B visas during FY2011 was $70,000, the median wage for in the category that includes engineers was $78,000, $72,000 for computer related (source data, www.uscis.gov). Companies like H1B holders, because, in terms of total cost, they are less expensive to employ than US citizens/green card holders/otherwise legal residents. Without H1B, more jobs would be offshored, we do get the benefit of the money the H1B holder being spent in the US.
Believe me, if they could find an American to do this job, they would have, and believe me, there's no one passing up $3-400,000 a year engineering positions at top flight companies. There really are jobs that need immigrant workers to fill, because there really are no Americans to do them.
You left
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Then they wouldn't fucking do it.
The whole point of H1-B is to gut one of the few times supply-and-demand favors the worker instead of the employer. And that's in a tight economy, not one that's been depressed for 6 straight years.
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Re:seems like a back door (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:seems like a back door (Score:5, Insightful)
Nonsense. I know plenty of "qualified Americans" who have a hell of a time finding work in the current economy. And if you think H1-B's are being paid the same as local, you're crazy.
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The question is whether those qualified citizens are willing to accept wages as low as the companies want to offer.
Ad the answer is no, so the companies would much rather bring in immigrants over whom they have far more leverage and who will accept lower wages... consequently lowering the average wage for those positions that local citizens are applying for.
The companies offer positions requiring high qualifications and low pay; those who are qualified won't accept the pay, so they cry there's "no qualified
Re:seems like a back door (Score:4, Insightful)
Easy solution: eliminate the H-1B program.
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that would make America's production collapse
Care to justify that assertion? The US worked fine for many many years without work visas. If you wanted to immigrate, you got a green card and came here as a person, not a worker.
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Yes, you are, since part of DHS's tactic is to stop those Evil Bad Nasty Tur'rists from getting their hands on American technology. That means making sure the brilliant foreign minds come to American companies, rather than going back and starting or supporting foreign think tanks.
While here they may have access to American technology, but it's more difficult for the foreign governments (and others) to get access to it.
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This is not true. H1Bs are dual intent visas - i.e. you can be here temporarily, or you can express intent to migrate. I'd suspect that there would be a higher conversion of H1Bs to green card if it were not for the bureaucratic hurdles for getting one (need to stay with the same employer, for one).
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have a high H1B minwage / let them work anywhere (Score:5, Insightful)
have a high H1B min-wage / let them work anywhere with them being tied to the job.
make the min wage say 100-150K + COL with payed OT. and or an H1B tax.
So if you want h1b you can use them to get cheap workers tied to the job. that can be payed low with forced OT.
Re:have a high H1B minwage / let them work anywher (Score:5, Insightful)
This. If you set the minimum H1B wage at 120% of the average wage in that area for that type of work and experience, then we can have confidence that the purpose of H1B is to fill skill shortages. By allowing them to be employed for less than the going rate of a local, employers are just encouraged to find loopholes to enable them to employ lower wage workers. And by not tying them to a specific job, you remove the ability of employers to find other ways to abuse the system (such as paying them 120% of the average wage to work 150% of the average hours) since the employee can always go elsewhere.
As for spouses working - if someone is good enough to import for their labour skills, at least have the decency to treat them and their family like you would anyone else. If you think this will have an adverse impact on the local labor market, then you probably shouldn't be letting them in in the first place.
Re:have a high H1B minwage / let them work anywher (Score:5, Insightful)
"And by not tying them to a specific job"
This. By tying H1B's to an employer, they effectively become chattel for the employer for the duration of their H1B work - beholden to the company, they have no real negotiating power and this is what really drives wages down (or more accurately, prevents them rising).
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set the minimum H1B wage at 120% of the average wage in that area for that type of work and experience
Set it at 200% if you want. Laws are meaningless unless they're enforced. There are already anti-abuse provisions. When is the last time they were enforced?
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I've seen plenty of people on /. decrying the fact that H-1B workers are horribly underpaid. Having met quite a lot of them, I've yet to discover one that's actually paid any less than their American (or green-card-holding) counterparts.
I myself am in the US on an O-1A visa, and my salary is a little under double that of 70% of the people with the same job ('Software Engineer') within the same company.
On the other hand, I have been told a number of times in my past that though I was good enough for the posi
Wow seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm surprised you guys haven't revolted over this entire thing yet. Up here in Canadaland we've had something similar happen with regards to the TFW program, similar to H-1B. Shit hit the fan about 3 months ago and ever since then it's been all over the news and at the rate it's going the entire program will be dead by years end.
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On April 24, 2014, Jason Kenney , Minister of Employment, announced that the FTWP had been suspended for the Food services industry.
Wow. When are you folks going to storm the Bastille, or is that only for Quebecers?
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I'm surprised by how many Canadians misunderstand the temporary foreign worker program, despite the fact that it's been in the news so much for the past few months.
The TFW program is used for jobs that fail to entice existing Canadians, like agricultural work or fast-food service.
By comparison, it's quite common for tech companies to sponsor immigrants to Canada based on a lack of local skilled candidates (see http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/h... [cic.gc.ca]). In that case, my understanding is that the criteria are like a
Double down? How about "No." (Score:4, Insightful)
How about no? Wages are already suppressed far enough as it is without doubling the number of foreigners these companies can bring in.
We don't have a workforce problem. We have a wage problem. Companies will do anything they can to pay people less. Just look how they've already latched on to this H1B BS.
I say end it. Revoke them and send folks home. We have plenty of workers available, just not at rates employers want to pay.
Pardon my single tear for them.
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1) Large sized American companies open offices overseas and hire foreigners there, which are cheaper than H1-B workers. They also hide their headcount info very well by many different methods. Travel a bit around the world and see the size of IBM, Oracle, Ford, etc offices there.
2) Medi
work is survival (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm extremely liberal and want the best for everyone in the world. But here in the US, we have horrible social welfare. Work is survival for us. If you don't have a job, you fall fast and hard, and it's hard to get back up. Hell, it's hard to get a place to live without guarantors and evidence of an income, and having a place to sleep and eat safely is fundamental to being a biological being. So I call shenanigans on the government allowing more people in to take jobs. Until we've got a robust safety net in place so everyone has a safe place to sleep and can be confident of their next meal regardless of whether they have a job, our focus should be on getting jobs for all citizens that pay what is needed to have those things.
Re:work is survival (Score:4, Interesting)
you are hitting home with me.
I'm living in the bay area, been here over 20 yrs and I'm a software (and sometimes hardware) engineer. I rent and my lease is up in a few months from now. I lost my job several months back (large layoff at work) and I've not found a job, yet. I have savings to last me a while, but the big fear for me right now: how the hell am I going to find a new place to live (I have to leave where I'm at right now, when the lease is over) if I don't have a job at the time? and enough income shown via 'paystubs' to make a landlord want to pick me for a renter?
in the bay area, things really can suck if you end up unemployed at the time that you choose (or are forced) to move. even with good savings and a great past history, landlords will simply pass you by! its absurd, but they all demand to see 3mos of income (at least) or they won't consider you.
you can be good - and just a bit unlucky for a short while - and end up nearly homeless or actually homeless. its frightening. as of right now, I don't have a job and while I'm trying my best, I don't know what's going to happen when the lease time is up.
I've lived in the US all my life and I've contributed (well, I think) to the companies I've worked for. but the past 10 years or so, I've found that its extremely hard to find jobs and everyone I'm being interviewed by is from another country. there are not a lot of americans being hired and working in the bay area and its not something that I'm imagining, either. its real. and its affecting me and my ability to keep a roof over my head; quite literally, in this case.
we owe more to our own people - ones that were born and raised here - than we do for others. I'm sorry, but that's just how I feel. every other country has a 'take care of our own, first' ethic. I don't know why we don't also prefer to take care of our own, first.
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landlords will simply pass you by! its absurd, but they all demand to see 3mos of income (at least) or they won't consider you.
I moved to SF in October (yes, H1B), and got an apartment without showing any statements. I had to put down 6k in deposit, and finding an apartment in SF is hard. But far from impossible, even without proof of income.
we owe more to our own people - ones that were born and raised here - than we do for others. I'm sorry, but that's just how I feel.
Fair enough. I'm not sure I fully agree... I have mixed feeling about this kind of thing... I'm from a country with LOTS of social benefits, that surely wouldn't be feasible if we just let anybody in. So I understand the pragmatic side of this. However, H1Bs aren't taking up social services.
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why should I leave?? this is my home, dammit!
part of my point was that I AM INVESTED HERE. its my culture, my people, my land, my origin. I'm from the US and the bay area has been my home for a few decades now.
you suggest I leave? really? that's your answer?
I find that insulting, to be honest.
Simple corruption (Score:5, Insightful)
Americans like to talk smugly about how corrupt China and Mexico are. Well guess what, great U S of A is pretty goddamn corrupt.
Facebook and Microsoft want cheaper workers, they lobby the gov't (i.e. grease palms with money) for more H1B. Disney wants to milk more money out of Mickey Mouse, it lobbies the gov't until copyright laws extend for centuries. And please explain how this benefits the public (as opposed to benefitting Microsoft/Disney).
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Time for the States to stand up and take back powers from the Federal Government
Time for you to get a new line. Regulating immigration is solely a federal power, like foreign negotiations and trade, and has been since the founding of the Republic. I've never heard even the strictest of strict constructionists question that.
In the future (Score:2)
H-1B visa holders will be gay married for immigration purposes, so their employers will only have to use one H-1B slot.
Sincerity? Green Cards (Score:2)
Does the administration sincerely believe that bringing these people to America will make us stronger? I tend to agree. Give them green cards, so they can stay. H1B visas with little hope for a green card are indentured servitude.
Re:Sincerity? Green Cards (Score:4, Insightful)
You are operating under a false assumption. You believe the goal of government is to "make America stronger." It is not. The purpose of the government is to serve the interests of wealthy corporations and individuals. Corporations and stockholders, the owning class, want indentured servants (they'd prefer slaves, but there's that pesky 14th amendment). The H1B visa program is just one method by which they acquire these servants.
How to fix H1B in four words... (Score:2)
Let. Them. Change. Companies.
If a foreign worker is important enough to the country that we'll give him or her a shortcut through our (admittedly ridiculous) immigration system, then it shouldn't matter WHICH company they're working for, as long as they're working for one of ours.
Locking them into one company only encourages the formation of sweatshops, and we're supposed to be better than that.
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But ... but ... how should we compete with China?
It really does make sense, though fewer H1Bs might (Score:4, Informative)
We might be granting too many H1Bs, I don't know. I haven't seen reliable, relevant numbers. That's a separate discussion.
However, IF you're going to allow a couple to come into the country and IF you're going to allow one of them to work, it makes sense to allow the other to work legally. If you don't , they'll probably work illegally, but having them here and not working isn't helpful. As long as they are here, the best thing for America is that they are being productive. It's best that they be doing something useful and then paying taxes like other workers. The other options are that they aren't doing anything productive, in which case they are just an extra incremental load on the infrastructure, or they are working unlawfully and probably not paying their fair share of taxes.
Wait a second.... (Score:2)
Critics say they believe expanding the H-1B visa program will allow lower-paid foreign workers to take American jobs. The plan immediately drew fire from Republicans. Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, accused the administration of acting unilaterally to change immigration law and bring in tens of thousands of potential competitors with Americans for jobs.
I thought Republicans were supposed to support free markets. What could be less free market than limiting the number of immigrants to artificially keep the price of American labor high? Furthermore, I would have assumed some big companies that need H1B visas would have bribed all the politicians by now... What gives?
The new rule is compassionate (Score:2)
I mean, please, let them do what reasonable people should be expected to do to make a life for themselves!
If you see the conditions some of the families of H1-B visa holders live in, through no fault of their own, you would agree to let spouses work if they can and are willing.
This is a question of decency, and dignity.
Well what is the alternative? (Score:5, Informative)
Sadly I think it's offshoring. If you don't let companies bring workers to the United States they are going to set up shop where the workers live. This has much more negative effects - lower tax base, lower economic activity in the US etc. than letting these workers come here.
Yes it depresses US wages and makes the job market tighter for US citizens. But at least the company still has operations and employees in the US that are paying taxes.
Ideally there would be US citizens working in the US taking these jobs. But non-US citizens working in the US on these jobs is better than non-US citizens working in Bangalore some other non-US location doing these jobs.
If you want to cut down on this, it is absolutely necessary to improve the US education system. What we have now truly sucks, as this OECD report describes:
http://www.oecd.org/site/piaac... [oecd.org]
Same old slashdot, same old circle jerk (Score:4, Insightful)
Look up the lump of labor fallacy. In fact, allow me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... [wikipedia.org] Labor isn't a zero sum game. More immigrants creates more jobs in the system.
Does the H1-B system need reform? Yes
Does the immigration system need reform? Yes
Does the L1 system need to be scrapped? Quite probably
Does slashdot circle jerk without getting the idea? Yep
Am I missing nothing? Yep.
Screw That! (Score:3)
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I don't think that same sex marriage requires that one or both spouses be homosexual. Two heterosexual people of the same gender can choose to get married.
The government does not force married couples to have sex with each other, nor does it require that they have offspring.
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Actually, at least for heterosexual marriages, in a lot of places it kind of does, at least once anyway. I've actually looked into this(long story short a Chinese woman was attempting to pay me $10k to marry her, I ultimately turned her down because you know, fraud) and at least in the state of Washington a marriage technically isn't legal until it has been consummated. Whether or not this statute is enforced or not is beyond me,
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Actually, funny as it may be, a lot of high quality IT people I know are gay. I have no idea where that correlation between homosexuality and mad math skills is, though.
Re:Aaaaaaannd..... (Score:4, Insightful)
a lot of high quality IT people I know are gay
A lot of them don't know what their sexual orientation is, because they're unfamiliar with sex.
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AC above is actually fairly close. People in STEM tend to have been outcasts, and therefore are often (from what I've seen) more accepting of others' oddities. This in turn draws more "odd" folks into STEM, reinforcing the cycle. Theatre sees a similar effect.
It's not perfect, of course. For example, discrimination by gender is still prevalent. There's also a risk that with the current widespread promotion of STEM, that accepting aspect of our culture will be lost.
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Your solution is just a false appeal to pragmatism: "oh well, they're coming, so now what?" like we don't have any choices here. We do. Mexico's mafia/drug drama is destabilizing that country fast, and we'd do well to wall ourselves off from it as best we can.
Citation? The whole south west is one giant 'citation' because we don't have the balls to defend our own borders anymore. You want a solution? How about this: Build that wall talked about a decade ago, except that each state along the border has a s
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I used the mexican border issue as an example but the model applies elsewhere.
Yeah except that those indian immigrants are willing to work for much much lower wages and they haven't incurred the school debts the average american citizen has.. So now we have a glut of american citizens who can do the work, it's just that no one wants to pay them, and we get a bunch of tripe about how "there are jobs but no americans to fill them." It's bullshit. If we're willing to put the taxpayer on the bill for the cos
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They're citizens. The US federal government is supposed to put the defense of the borders and safety of the legal population first. That's its job. You cannot ask the USA taxpayer to bail out every poor person on the planet. What are you going to do if/when the USA economy collapses and there is no one else to turn to? This isn't the USA of just post WWII. We're broke. Enough.
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Look, when there are citizens, many of which lead productive lives up to this point, who now have to live on the streets because a bunch of leftists (who call themselves 'liberals') want to play marx on global scales, and/or a bunch of fortune 500s want to bottom out their labor markets, I draw the line. In case you haven't realized, the federal government hasn't had to answer to its citizens in almost 5 decades now at least. I am not responsible for whatever they supposedly did in your country or anywher
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The main difference is that if the programmer is here and getting 100k, not only does the wage level stay up there but he may at least find a job somewhere else where that 100k programmer wants to buy something. A programmer abroad wastes your wage level AND creates no new domestic job.
Yes, in both cases he's not the one getting the job. But in one case he has a chance of not only getting another job, he has a chance to get it at a wage that allows him to survive here instead of being more suitable to susta
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Zuck, is that you?
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And how do you get into a foreign country and live there? One of the most common ways is being invited to work there.
And for many years the US prohibited work visas precisely because they can be used by employers to drive down wages in a particular area or field.
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There have always been visa categories for certain highly-skilled people
True. No Nobel Prize winner has ever been denied a visa.
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What you want, by restricting immigration, is to maintain your unfair privilege.
Ok, and your point is?
Re:throw them the fuck out (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, maybe let's have a civil discussion about it. First of all, return H1Bs to what they were supposed to be: A way to get key personnel with unique skills. And sorry, but when I see how certain corporations carpet bomb the relevant fed offices with applications, I can't really believe that to be the reason for them. You really need dozen and dozen of key personnel with skills you can't find here, every single year? Who do you want to bullshit here?
H1Bs are something that should be the exception. It became the rule, though. And that's what's wrong about it. They should be a way to remove a roadblock, to avoid a shortage of people with unique and hard to find skill sets, or to import very specific people who are for some reason very, very important in a certain field. But for the latter to apply to you, if the field was Linux, you better be Linus Torvalds or else you're just not important enough (just to illustrate what I mean with "important in a specific field").
That's what H1Bs are about and that's what they should be used for.
And I could hardly think of anyone having a problem with this, except for some xenophobic hillbillies who fear the dilution of the true American blood.
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This is a good decision. The current rules are rather inhumane.
Simple solution: eliminate the H-1B visa. A lot of whining and moaning about unfair or inhumane immigration policies (much of which I sympathize with) are the result of weird horse's ass visas like the H-1B. It's also not reasonable to say unemployed H-1B's have to leave the country. The fix is to return to the traditional approach to American immigration: get a green card. After that, and before becoming a naturalized citizen, about the only thing they can kick you out for is being convicted of a felony.
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in an efficient jobs market
You mean in fantasy land? "Efficient" markets rank right up there with frictionless surfaces.
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