H-1B Visas: U.S. Lawmaker Re-Introduces Bill to Tighten Rules

I think there&#x27;s a big misconception here on this thread, thanks to the poorly written WSJ blog post. Rep. Issa&#x27;s bill only applies to companies which have more than 15% of their workforce of 50 or more on visas. That number is calibrated to affect outsourcing companies like Infosys, TCS, HCL, etc. So, while it&#x27;s fun to jump on the &quot;foreigners shouldn&#x27;t work in America&quot; bandwagon on this thread, this bill is not what you are looking for.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.americanbazaaronline.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;01&#x2F;06&#x2F;new-h-1b-visa-bill-darrell-issa-will-hurt-indian-companies-zoe-lofgren-introduce-new-bill&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.americanbazaaronline.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;01&#x2F;06&#x2F;new-h-1b-vis...</a><p>However, Rep. Zoe Lofgren&#x27;s bill is a little different and does two things, replace lottery by a bidding type system and eliminate country caps, which, by introducing an artificial 8-12 year wait time for Indians, makes even non-outsourcing company employees de facto indentured labor. (So, if you are one of five experts in the world on say, mining safety, you still have to wait 10 years for a permanent residency just by virtue of where you were born.)

On one talks about the actual issue with the H1B. I&#x27;m a H1B holder from India, living and working in USA for past 10 years. The actual incentive for companies is that, an H1B holder from India has less rights, they cannot change job or even travel freely outside USA (for decades). That gives the employers full control of the employee. Any guess why companies only recruit from India and China? Because, the country based wait time -- to become a US citizen -- is decades for these countries. So, consultancies will have no problem paying higher salary for someone from India or China.<p>Immigration Attorneys are making a fortune of this broken system; for e.g., every year my company has to pay attorney fee to renew my visa. Any time I change my job, green card process has to be restarted from square one..more cash to attorneys.<p>P.S. I remember when I first came here 10 years back I was told by the attorney to wait for 5 years to be a resident. Last year, in 2016, when I went to another attorney he too tells me to wait for another 5 years. So, they never tells the actual wait time is 50 to 70 years. Even the USCIS don&#x27;t disclose the actual wait time. So, hundreds of thousands highs killed immigrants place all their bets based on the words of Immigration Attorney and get into a mess from where they find hard to get out.<p>[Edit]: In my opinion, a possible fix shall be to give H1B holder job mobility. I.e., if TCS&#x2F;Infosys brings in H1B holders to replace American workers; and those H1B holders leave TCS&#x2F;Infosys the next day; then that business model will not work to begin with.

I support many H1B reforms - it is essentially a broken program. Canadian and Australian immigration systems provide a good model to build off of a successful high skilled guest worker program. Of course, like everything in the US, an army of lobbyists will prevent such common sense programs to be implemented.<p>Raising the minimum wage to 100K is the wrong approach. Computer science degree programs are a major source of development talent for many organizations, and I doubt most companies will be willing to pay 100K for jr developers graduating out of Master&#x27;s program. This will start a weird loop were US higher education will no longer be attractive and talent pools will dwindle with universities suffering from major revenue shortfalls. And if students start going back to their native countries after a US higher education, it just enriches the talent pool abroad making outsourcing even more compelling.<p>Further, there are a number of professions outside of software that employ H1B candidates to perform important roles - mechanical engineers, industrial engineers, earthquake analysts etc Those fields have even more shortage of talent and a minimum 100K wage will further shrink the talent pool.

Why not take a courageous approach and let people in who want to work? Don&#x27;t tie them to one job. Don&#x27;t pick arbitrary numbers of the &#x27;right&#x27; number of immigrants. Don&#x27;t try ever more complex schemes based on where people live and what job they do. Keep the government involved to vet them in terms of avoiding criminals, and let the market handle how many people to bring in, not government bureaucrats and politicians.<p>I mean, IT work is pretty easy to outsource, so make it hard enough for talented people to come to the US and the work will just get shipped abroad.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;johnhcochrane.blogspot.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;06&#x2F;the-optimal-number-of-immigrants.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;johnhcochrane.blogspot.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;06&#x2F;the-optimal-number...</a>

&gt; The proposed legislation would increase required salaries for positions granted under the H-1B scheme that replace American workers from $60,000 to $100,000 per year.<p>Big whoop.<p>There are (three?) big players that are heavily outsourcing folks at &quot;client sites&quot;. Ideally, H1Bs should be relatively easy to get for the first ones – after all, many companies have a legitimate need to bring in specialized labor from abroad. Then tack an exponential difficulty curve per company.<p>This way, a startup would be able to recruit a very talented individual from abroad. But big corps wouldn&#x27;t be able to layoff and replace their workforce.

Why $100K makes sense. Data from 2014 showing how many H1b and the average salary for the top H1b seekers. The legit companies are paying on average &gt;$100K<p>Infosys 32,379 $76,494 Tcs 8,785 $66,113 Wipro 6,733 $69,953 Igate 2,056 $67,168 Cognizan 1,704 $67,506 L &amp; T 4,380 $59,933 Hcl 3,012 $81,376 Tech Mah 2,249 $73,374 Ust Glob 1,549 $73,374<p>Deloitte 8,028 $85,295 Ibm 5,839 $87,789 Accenture5,099 $70,878 E&amp; Y 2,188 $88,353 NttData 1,156 $100,889<p>Microsft 3,911 $113,408 Qualcom 3,086 $105,169 Google 2,163 $126,565 Intel 1,945 $102,883 Oracle 1,773 $113,065 Amazon 1,256 $109,409 Jpmorgan 1,256 $105,837 Apple 1,038 $130,690

Honestly, I am all for raising the wage requirement. This will definitely help to reduce the use of H1B for hiring underpaid foreign labor.

100K in Bay area is not equal to 100K in some other part of US. Also H1B is not only used by the IT industry but other industries as well, where paying 100K may be tough.

This post might be hard to read, but believe me I wish to be as respectful as possible and contribute my perspective.<p>Economy follows the path of least resistance. If hiring a local costs $120,000 but a guy you can message via LinkedIn and interview over the phone can do the same work for $80,000 with less negotiating power and less job mobility, then you do it. If you don&#x27;t do it, your competitor or someone else will and then use the advantage to beat you in the market. The path of least resistance is also the reason companies move their headquarters to tax havens.<p>Then, there is a culture issue. Americans are very competitive, even in situations where the best strategy is to collaborate. It can be hard to work with someone who you know will compete at any opportunity even when it makes no sense at all, like getting angry when receiving a suggestion no matter the intention.<p>Then, everyone is defensive of what is said and how it is said because basically anything can get you sued. The most valuable American management skill is basically how to avoid getting the company sued. Like saying everything on a 1 on 1 meeting with no witnesses or record of it happening.<p>Then, Americans can hop jobs easily. Make someone angry (e.g: giving feedback, assigning a boring task or project) and that person will quit. Not so easily with H-1Bs.<p>This creates a culture where it is cheaper to set people for failure and fire them rather than giving them proper feedback, or letting them spend millions in reinventing the wheel with a pet project rather than seeing them go en-masse.

Raising the minimum wage is a welcome move to counter abuse of this visa. However, the minimum level needs to be set based on the city of employment and it&#x27;s living cost. It cannot be a flat rate.

One of the problems with the highest bidder approach its going to favor senior devs. This is good thing but you also have to look at graduates who have come to the US to study and may not be able to earn that much immediately but are just as likely to earn a lot more in a few years. If the ruling forces them to move them, then it will result in draining the talent.

IIRC this report[1] says the schools in Dodge City, KS are having funding problems because 86% of the students come to school not speaking English and have to be taught English. This is because the meat-packing industry imports most of its labor. Please explain to me why foreigner workers are needed to trim meat off of beef carcasses.<p>Maybe everything isn&#x27;t about coding.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.vice.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;kansas-school-funding-crisis" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.vice.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;kansas-school-funding-crisis</a>

It&#x27;s an interesting paradox ... the top users of H1s are foreign companies, like Infosys and Tata - they bring in people on these visas.<p>So in a way, it&#x27;s kind of &#x27;insourcing&#x27; not &#x27;outsourcing&#x27;.<p>I truly wonder if those companies would opt to just leave their staff in India, and to hire mostly just customer-facing support types here otherwise.<p>In that case, the US would lose a lot of tax revenue (and spending) from those foreigners who are in the US on H1&#x27;s - who are clearly generating a lot of value, not exactly slouches on welfare or what-not.<p>Granted - it could be that Infosys may have to hire real talent locally.<p>All of this outside the issue of FB, Google etc. hiring on H1&#x27;s.<p>I wish someone would chime in with some hard research on this ... it&#x27;d be nice to know the exact skills of those on H1&#x27;s and how those align with US labour market ...<p>I often think these laws are passed without grasp of the nuance ...

It&#x27;s hard to think of another political issue on which the public has been so completely fooled. Your average man-on-the-street really thinks these go to, like, PhDs who are desperately needed in a lab somewhere. But no, they&#x27;re for pumping the bottom line of Infosys, Tata, Cognizant, et. al.

I would like to see a requirement for contracting companies to keep at least 51% of their domestic staff as US citizens. It&#x27;s obscene that businesses are allowed to game the H1B program by staffing through these middlemen. That is not the original intent for these visas.<p>After the Disney fiasco it&#x27;s clear that the rules for which jobs qualify need to be tightened up. There is no way rank and file IT skills are so special that guest workers need to be brought in.

Raising the minimum is about the only way (short of auctions) to prevent companies from playing games with the prevailing wage requirements.

Isn&#x27;t it a HUGE problem that it&#x27;s not discriminated by cities according to its living costs?<p>I&#x27;m not an expert in macroeconomic policy but I guess it wouldn&#x27;t be so hard ad doing the discrimination for say the minimum salary, as business owners&#x2F;shareholders tend to have a better understanding of the concept of the price index than minimum salary earners.<p>And I&#x27;m saying this because tech companies in the Bay Area won&#x27;t have such a hard time following this rule than startups in cheaper cities.<p>Which would be a recoil in terms of making all America have knowledge-based industries. Wouldn&#x27;t it?<p>As for people taking the H-1B, would this be something better? Or worse?

I wonder if the $100k would apply to academic H1B&#x27;s too. If so, that&#x27;s pretty much the end of those.

As an employee on an H1B auth in the US, I cannot express my support for this bill enough. I&#x27;d support making the minimum required H1B wage $150K base, adjusted for living expenses.<p>God, I hate the stigma attached to mentioning what work auth I&#x27;m here on. Sadly I have to let my work show that all H1s are not created equal.<p>The image of the H1B program has been tarnished because it has been used to import people either for not-so-difficult jobs or lower costs, and, in some cases, misrepresentation of abilities.<p>This bill, if passed, will go a long way in rehabilitating the image of and correcting course for the H1B program. And THAT would be a weight lifted off the minds of truly deserving H1 beneficiaries who are ready to stand up to scrutiny and prove themselves worthy of a program meant for premium talent.<p>I agree with Congressman Issa on very little. This is something I wholeheartedly support and this Congress better be ready to have some serious justification if they don&#x27;t pass this bill.

Long time reader, first time poster. Both lawmakers being Califoria democrats, I don&#x27;t trust this one bit. Hear me out on this one. I have actually experienced the H1B system on my own hide.<p>As others have mentioned in the comments, today H1B is basically indentured servitude visa. While theoretically you can move to another job, few people dare, especially if they have families, because in case of any screwup whatsoever, you have to leave the country within 2 weeks. That&#x27;s _insane_. When I was H1-B I chose to wait until I got the green card before making any moves. That took 8 years, during which I did not quite made the kind of career progress I was hoping for. Now that I&#x27;m not an H1B, _magically_ I have no problems whatsoever with advancing my career. What a bizarre coincidence.<p>And I&#x27;m not Asian, for Asians it takes longer than that. Another type of abuse you often see (and that was the case with me) is companies hire a very experienced worker in a much lower level position than he ought to be in, considering the experience, and then keep them there until they either work up the courage to move, or get the green card.<p>The _real_ fix for this should be two fold:<p>1. Allow H1Bs to move more freely between jobs. If you&#x27;re a programmer, you should be able to move into e.g. DevOps or Data Science, or DB administration without risking that some bureaucrat decides that&#x27;s not an eligible transition.<p>2. Allow more time for them to do so, so they don&#x27;t have to find another job before leaving their current one. Six months to a year ought to be enough. Implement a cliff of e.g. 1 year to make this more fair to employers if need be, but don&#x27;t kick families out of the country in 2 weeks just because the breadwinner can&#x27;t tolerate the abuse anymore.<p>This will make the market for H1B workers price-competitive with native workers (since they will be able to command market rates given their levels of experience), and DRAMATICALLY reduce abuse. That&#x27;s literally all that needs to be done. This will also make it easier for people just out of school to get well paid jobs that would today be taken by overqualified and underpaid H1Bs, because the employer will not be able to exploit their ignorance of the job market for long.<p>Instead they are proposing some tactical bullshit that will only get in the way of a more comprehensive reform that the Trump administration might (or might not, the election is over) come up with.

Always entertaining watching the HN zeitgeist on H-1Bs or offshoring of tech jobs and contrasting it with the attitude to, say, the elimination of millions of trucking or retail jobs.

There are probably some Indians who are celebrating this ... a minimum 100k wage + a cost of living adjustment every 3 years.<p>If this is like the 2015 bill, that also includes the requirement to sign them up for stock options, similar to a US employee.<p>However, the rule does have a corner case which allows bonuses to be part of the 100k, so the employers might continue to pay low salaries all year round, with a dangled 40-50k bonus at the end of the year.<p>Because the tech industry is something with a fairly long lag between demand &amp; supply, the best case scenario is that the wages go up all around &amp; hopefully that is spent in the US, instead of hoarded for a princely return to India.<p>The worst case scenario for a cost increase is that more work moves overseas, taking the spending side-effects &amp; tax revenue away from the US IRS, while the corporate profits are unaffected, just total revenue cuts down.

This will just increase outsourcing - I wonder if there&#x27;s a law that&#x27;s going to address that too - a tariff for software and services brought from outside the country.<p>Seriously, attacking H1B problem purely with salary raises is the wrong approach for many reasons - not all jobs cost a 100k that you can always find American workers to do, it doesn&#x27;t consider cost of living and further entices companies to look into having offshore workforce. Instead, a slight upward salary adjustment including cost of living adjustments and untying the VISA itself from employer so H1Bs can change jobs freely and making the extension process match the residency delays will go far ways in addressing abuse.

I&#x27;m looking for serious recommendation on what to do right now in my life.<p>I&#x27;m currently 25 year old with roughly two year of industrial experience and looking for a career change. One thing I absolutely want to work out is by applying for Master&#x27;s program from a US university and finding work after graduation which will require H1B visa.<p>Is this a wise option? I will be moving from a third world country and be mostly on self finance Masters. I know it will be expensive but I&#x27;m seeing it as an investment which will pay off.<p>The intended field is in the tech side although I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering. Did this new bill make it far more difficult to get work visa or will the lottery system work?<p>I have a lot to lose if I don&#x27;t get a work VISA really which would force me to return to home country. Note: I&#x27;m not from India

I don&#x27;t think this bill would solve or fix anything. If anything it makes really hard for companies far from cities to find workforce. 100K base salary is very less in bay area and in most cities, so it&#x27;s not hard for these companies to hire H1B workers.<p>Think about companies that are far from any cities, they may not find lot of developers and they can&#x27;t even hire H1B workers unless they pay 100K, why may be a lot more than average labor wages. So, it would be more expensive for businesses.<p>The same would be the case for proposed bill to introduce bidding system. It just gets expensive for the businesses far from cities.<p>Removing the country quotas for the green cards is the fix needed. People are tied to the employer now waiting years working low wages. Remove the country quotas or at least give EAD - that encourages people to move if an employer pays low salary.

The real problem with H1B, that outsourcing firms exploit, is the lottery system. Issa&#x27;s proposal doesn&#x27;t address that problem. Zoe Lofgren&#x27;s bill, which replaces the lottery with a salary ranking system, would be much more effective, in my opinion.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;money.cnn.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;01&#x2F;06&#x2F;technology&#x2F;h1b-reform-bill&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;money.cnn.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;01&#x2F;06&#x2F;technology&#x2F;h1b-reform-bill&#x2F;</a>

Two biggest improvements that can be made in H1B program:<p>- Fill slots by sorting candidates with highest salaries instead of lottery<p>- Allow H1B holders to change employers as long as they are paid same or higher salaries<p>This will create amazing market competition and pay rise for everyone while making sure H1B holders don&#x27;t get exploited by so called &quot;body shoppers&quot; taking away majority of their pay.

Classic case of no-skin-in-the-game politicians making rules about other people with dubious objectives to be achieved using naive policies.

H1B is to hire from other countries because there is shortage of skilled people in the US. If that is the case, why not make the minimum salary 2 times (or some moderately unreasonable) amount the normal prevailing wage. The companies already abuse the previaling wage. So making the minimum 2-3 times is still OK.

I can see Indian companies who where cheating with getting cheap workforce here getting in trouble.

This complements the post: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.latimes.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;hiltzik&#x2F;la-fi-hiltzik-uc-visas-20170108-story.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.latimes.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;hiltzik&#x2F;la-fi-hiltzik-uc-vis...</a>

Does this affect remote working in any manner? I am from India and have considered working remotely in later stages of my career. I have no intentions of leaving India and moving to the US, but I might be applying to organizations within the US.

No labor shortages <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;H-1B_visa#Criticisms_of_the_program" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;H-1B_visa#Criticisms_of_the_pr...</a>

Is this bill is passed, what does it mean for a person in India who wants to apply(from India) and get hired by a US company who has a very good skill set but doesn&#x27;t have a master&#x27;s degree?

I&#x27;m a liberal AND an immigrant and I strongly favor a reduction in the availability of H1B visas, they are a tool for wage control and nothing else.

We need to open our borders and let anyone who wants to come live and work in the US come here. Fear of foreigners is a poison in the heart of this country. Previous generations of immigrants have made the US what it is. The H1B program benefits the companies at the expense of the people for b.s. reasons.<p>I say let anyone come here who wants to and if they can hold a job for 5 years and they pay taxes make them a citizen. People are generally good and xenophobia is stupid.

The H1B program is literally a giveaway to the 1%, owners of capital. I am glad Trump wants to reduce immigration!

If you&#x27;re really worried about someone from abroad coming and stealing your job, you should probably work harder and smarter yourself.<p>Can&#x27;t help but feel that most Americans don&#x27;t have a legitimate fear of someone stealing their job and this is just a politicians&#x27; dumb game to try to make themselves feel important by pretending they are increasing employment and &quot;doing something for their people&quot;. Total crap.

I was a full time H1B employee at AMEX for 3 years. Its not only the Indian outsourcing firms who abuse the H1B visa system. All American companies including AMEX also do that. The company never even had plans to give me a promotion, not even increase my salary a bit even though I worked hard than the Americans for 3 years !. They pretty well knew I was an indentured servant and paid me 79K&#x2F;annum. All salary raises and promotions were going to a handful of lazy Americans who rolls into the office whenever they wish. They will never bother to fix bugs or do production releases( because for them, its not cool, we do only cool stuff like React,Angular 2, nodejs &amp; docker. Customer escalated bugs are not cool, let an H1B slave do it).<p>Anyways, now I am an ex-H1B, I left US and currently residing in Canada with my permanent residence process well on track. I will get PR within 1+ years. No one is going to abuse my status in Canada. I am totally free to work anywhere for anyone. The feeling of freedom when I left US is so gratifying.<p>My PR process is not tied to my employer, its in my control and Canada&#x27;s express entry system gives importance to my skills than my luck as in H1B. Its a good thing that the minimum wages are being raised, it will control the abuse to some levels,like they did to me, but then there is a problem of jobs being fully outsourced.<p>Why should I bother now. Its all behind me. US and its broken H1B immigration system ! Downvote all you want. I am happy, I broke out this modern slavery system.

This is an attempt by the corrupt Darrel Issa to help H1B fraudsters continue their wage theft.<p>This bill is an attempt to get out in front of any real reform by making it seem unnecessary. A child&#x27;s trick. The fact is that everyone knows that Silicon Valley corporations like Google, Facebook, and Apple use H1B fraud to suppress (steal) wages.<p>You don&#x27;t have to be even one ounce xenophobic or racist to think it&#x27;s wrong that American corporations hire foreign workers into indenture servitude instead of paying free American workers more money... Look at the job descriptions on the H1B disclosure sites...those are all just regular jobs in Silicon Valley anyone would do for the right money... Fraud.

Can you remove the restraint of trade so you can H1-B a president?