Microsoft: 'To fill 6,000 jobs, we'll pay $10K per visa'

It's utterly fucked how restrictive and exploitative the US immigration system really is.<p>It cost me about $5000 of my own money and a year and a half of my own time to become a permanent resident of Australia, with no advanced degree and no cash reserve needed. That route is literally <i>impossible</i> for potential U.S. immigrants. You either have to marry your way in, play the greencard lottery, have a PhD, or buy your way in via an investor-class visa.<p>The alternative, if you can get one, is an H1-B visa that ties you to a single employer who's free to take full advantage of your situation for half a decade. And this is what Microsoft wants more of.

this is total bs. MS has a massive work force of contract workers who are paid poorly and get treated worse and i am pretty certain that other companies do the same. If they took that 10k ($60m usd total)bounty and applied it to legit training in the US they would have a better, cheaper, and more loyal workforce and the money would stay local.<p>This notion that we have to hire over-seas is not correct at all and while I am all in favor or the immigration of foreign skill/knowledge/work ethic into the US, to call it a 'crisis' is nothing more than a publicity stunt to pull attention away from the fact that they are outsourcing jobs when they could be paying that money into the local economies.

A one-off $10K fee per hire is chump change, compared to the alternative: if your H1-B costs 50K per year + 10K one-off, he's still <i>much</i> cheaper than a US-based developer who wants 60K per-year -- and that's not exactly the top going rate.<p>Corporations understand Marx much better than workers ever did.

Why do work visas even have to cost this much? I understand US is going through a job crisis, but I fear it's getting too protectionist. Protectionism never has good results in the long term.

All the political chestbeating -protecting America against foreign labor - seems pretty silly when discussing skilled jobs like software. Its like, you're in a lifeboat and trying to get to shore and 3 rowers short. People are clamoring to get into your boat - first thing, you ask them what country they're from? WTF?<p>Lets draw a new political circle containing everybody/anybody who can program. Lets call it New Abrainica. Let them all have free visas wherever they wish on the planet. How does this hurt anyone? Oh sure, temporarily some lame spot will have trouble getting someone to move there to work. But now they can also move the job to where the programmers are! Or get remote workers.<p>Hey, this already sort of happens. So what's the real issue? I'm not sure, but this conversation keeps coming up.

On the upside there are more visas, the side effect is it makes it harder for early startups to hire H1Bs due to the increased cost. 10K for the H1 plus 15K for the green card. Usually both are done together or really close since you need a green card application in place to extend an H1 past 6 years. That's 25K per employee only for processing vs ~ 2K today.

What do people think about making companies pay a significant premium salary (25%) to H1-B visa holders over US citizens? Seems like this would allay concerns over companies using H1-B visas to keep salaries down. Basically companies would use H1-B visas when an equivalent people cannot be hired domestically. If this approach works then maybe eliminating caps is possible, since it should be a somewhat self-correcting system.

How many years could pass, until they will figure out and develop a the same development process that brings Linux kernel and other wonders to us - a collaboration of engineers around the globe?<p>But wait, that means all you need is gcc, emacs, git sometimes ssh and internet connection and Paypall (sic.) account? How could they sell all that disconnected from reality, bloated crap they produce, spending billions per year?<p>The answer is quite easy - in order to get 200+k salaries and bonuses managers must maintain this bloated hierarchy and fabric-style sweatshops. Otherwise, who needs them?<p>But the real question is - why we still care about MS? Who cares about old Nokia phones or Delphi or Java or things like Novell Netware?))