The real fix to this is to make sure that people brought over with an H1-B can <i>easily</i> change jobs. That way they're not beholden to some low-wage job, and companies that bring people in merely for low wages will face high rates of churn.
While I'm glad to see the NYTimes covering this issue, I am disappointed with the headline. The US takes over 1.2 million immigrants legally into the country every year. These new free and full citizens pursue educations and careers in response to their personal life interests and market signals. You know, that whole pesky freedom thing that corporations often despise in their workforce. Some enter high tech, some don't, and this article has absolutely nothing to do with this kind of immigration, at all.<p>This is about high tech companies lobbying congress for a special temporary guest worker visa (that allows for a dual intent to remain in the US), held and controlled by a corporation, where the guest worker resides in the US at the pleasure of the corporate "sponsor", on the grounds that there is such a shortage of critical tech employees that we need to empower corporations to bestow the right to live and work in the US on non-citizen who possess these skills. Some of these corporations have then turned around and fired US Citizens, some of whom are in fact immigrants, in order to replace them with workers brought in on this program.<p>While there is plenty of debate here on HN on the extent to which the new workers are "captive" in their jobs, I think we can all agree that the H1B workers absolutely are not free and full citizens, free to choose their own path in life, decide where they will live, what they will work on, what career they will pursue, and so forth. Even if they can change jobs, they need to find a new corporate sponsor who bestows the right to live in the US on them.<p>This kind of corporate power over individuals, on a massive scale, really bothers me. You can object deeply this while celebrating immigration that preserves the freedom and autonomy of the individual, and supporting general immigration (or even a more general version of skilled immigration).
I'm not against immigration, but the most egregious offense here was having the replacement workers trained by current employees as a stipulation of their severance.<p>Here's the article that was posted here a little over half a year ago. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff-at-disney-train-foreign-replacements.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff-...</a><p>It's nice to see some closure.
Wait A second something doesn't make sense here.<p>I thought the main reason for H1-B visas was because there aren't enough American workers?<p>So why would they get rid of American workers they already had ,that have been doing the job?<p>Surely it couldn't be because they lower pay of the H1-B workers?
I've watched this story unfold more and more as a friend was laid off by Disney and not rehired. Money talks in these situations, without a public backlash against Disney it'll be cheaper for them to keep doing this.
People, remember how many successful companies have been founded by immigrants (Sergey Brin comes to mind). This is not a zero-sum game, if innovation doesn't happen here in this country it will happen eventually elsewhere. The US is actually very lucky of having hard-working qualified people wanting to immigrate and contribute to the local economy.<p>Recall that crime rates in the US among immigrants are lower than in the general population: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_crime#United_States" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_crime#United_S...</a><p>That being said, the H1-B system is broken and needs urgent reform, I suggest looking at the point-system used in Canada.
There used to be an implied contract between employee and company back in the day -- the company would provide growth opportunities and training for an employee, and the employee would stay with the company for years.<p>That hasn't been the case for many many years, but the memory lingers and some employees feel beholden to companies. Many large public corporations these days look for maximizing "share holder value", which translates into "what can we do right now to maximize revenue". That being said, those short term actions will have long term effects. Cringely has done well to document the case of IBM. My graduate advisor was old school IBM and was still getting money from a time when (i don't know the exact specifics) where if an employee made a significant impact that saved the company money, they company would provide some renumeration in kind. His patents, etc. still brought him money from his time at IBM.<p>This is going to be a gross over simplification, but it is based on personal experience at two companies -- both startups. There are certain nationalities, maybe it is due to national ties, sometimes it seems due to prior business relationships and potential kickbacks, where an individual in power puts significant pressure on the company to hire a particular out sourcing firm or sponsor an H1-B for a particular individual.<p>Just like the numerous debates around "women in tech", there are factors at play and decisions made where hiring isn't always about "what's right for the company", but more about a "cultural" or "ethnic" fit.<p>Skill and merit should be at the forefront (a pipe dream, but we like to think it is there). Any work place where there is a significant dominance of one culture over another (unless, say a whole team was brought in as a whole) speaks to a diversity and cultural problem. Unfortunately, a lot of these can also be coupled to Visas like the H1-B.
they should not be raising the fee on transferring between employers: "and another $4,000 to move an H-1B immigrant who is already in the country to a new employer."<p>This is a give away to the outsourcing firms. Helping them having a bit more control over their employee.
Can anyone elucidate why having artificial barriers to employing certain types of people is beneficial?<p>If so, why not create the same restrictions on, say, a company in California from hiring someone from New York?<p>Or is this a guise for xenophobia?
If that replacement can serve the same purpose, and give approximately the same value to the company, why should the native and/or higher-waged person expect to have priority?
The obvious next step after preventing corporations from replacing current employees with low wage immigrant workers is to replace the employees with low wage American workers. Visa laws seem orthagonal to the main problem here.
Just as an FYI:<p>People all over the world also get the short end of the stick when expats are favoured over locals. The third world is full of high-paying positions held by white westerners doing jobs that locals can do.
This is the future of the technology industry. There is no fighting it, you cannot fight with the forces of the free market. The salary differential between US based tech workers and foreign workers is too high. If the products you are working on require no innovation or real skill, as is likely with these disney positions, they will be outsourced.