H-1B is for when you cannot find an American to fill a role so somebody comes into the US on a visa to fill that slot.
O-1 [1] is a for when somebody non-American has a lot of skill and is allowed to immigrate into the US to perform it.
I still think H-1B visas should require some kind of additional fee proportional to training an American to fill that role. Afaik, most of the H-1B visas are just abuse where you hire somebody at a low wage than you'd need to for an otherwise legal resident so there needs to be some kind of higher opportunity cost to the company.
That's right. To be explicit: I am absolutely, 100% for smart people coming to the US and participating as full, equal peers in our job market. Come on in, friend! I welcome you!
However, I am wholly opposed to the H-1B program as I've seen it used in reality, where those smart peers are used as below-market-rate slave labor who can't really complain about it without facing immediate deportation. I've personally worked with iOS app devs who were making less than I was while working many more hours per week, all because our asshole boss let them know that if they didn't like it, they had 60 days to find another visa sponsor or GTFO of the country and leave their homes and friends and partners behind.
They weren't coming here to invent quantum computers. They were writing phone apps. The sole reason said asshole boss hired them was because he knew he'd own them.
I firmly, adamantly believe there should be an extra 50% employer-borne tax on H-1B roles, making it so that it's possible but expensive to bring in new employees. It wouldn't stop people like those quantum computer scientists. The companies making those things would still hire them in a heartbeat if they couldn't find "local" talent. But it would stop the asshole boss from exploiting my friends to work them like rented mules while artificially suppressing salaries for everyone else.
In my experience the FAANG companies don't really abuse their H-1Bs. At Google or Meta the H-1Bs really are just smart people who participate as full and equal peers. And the FAANGs employ plenty of American citizens, they hire all the good employees they can get. The trouble either comes from small companies or from consulting shops.
The simplest solution is just to take salary into account. If someone is making $180k a year then they aren't "owned".
I don't think you can capture the complexity of the world with a single variable. I'm at Amazon. We all make about the same. Some more than me. Some less. However, while I don't have to worry about changing jobs, or _not_ having a job (for awhile), they do. They're working with an entirely different set of pressures and constraints.
For me, I can hop ship, decide I don't like it, boomerang back or take some time off no worse for the wear. That level of autonomy doesn't exist when you've got 60 days to land a job or uproot the life you've been building. Salary is a minor part of the picture. If changing jobs is a gamble that might end in "leave the country," the employer gets a certain kind of "loyalty" that salary cannot buy.
It’s pretty easy to change jobs on an H-1B if you are high skill. I love hearing folks, who aren’t on an H-1B, tell me things like this. Or that I’m paid less when I’m paid more.
I know these abuses happen, no system is perfect. But I feel the bias in the US against H-1Bs from random citizens not from employers. And the government today has quite strong bias against immigrants.
you are the edge case. for you, it is easy to change employers. For a lot of folks, it is not, despite being equally skilled. it is pretty crass to hand-wave away the real risk of being forced to uproot your life because of the risk that your visa may not be renewed.
About 20% of H1B visas go to indian outsourcing firms. You know the culprits here. Are you really going to argue that these firms are not abusing the system and underpaying employees?
> If changing jobs is a gamble that might end in "leave the country," the employer gets a certain kind of "loyalty" that salary cannot buy.
I agree, but on the flip side: the point of applying for an H1-B visa is to come and work for a company in a specialised field. If you're trying to use it to get yourself permanently into a country, then that's the wrong visa type to apply for. I've worked overseas on a visa, and it was stressful for this reason, but I was under no illusions about that when I applied for it.
What other mechanisms are there to move to a country that has a quality of life you seek, and work for a company that you feel excited about? Because that's most of the motivation from the people (like me) that lived in an under-developed country, are qualified, and wanted to work on the top of the industry.
You work a bit out of college, some day you get an invite to an interview from a FAANG, you take the interview, and next thing you know you're moving to another country, working for a great salary, and in a huge company. You do life. You meet people, maybe a partner, maybe get married, maybe have a kid (after all, life doesn't stop). All this while on a temporary status with no easy way to progress out of it other than via time.
I have felt this pressure of not wanting to switch jobs and/or having to be extra careful in order to not put myself at risk of losing it. Specially with the current state of the industry. It has put me (and still does) at a disadvantage with my local peers. I am not saying this is necessarily good or bad, but it is a reality. The 'visa choice' is fictional, and not the most relevant part of the process.
A country doesn’t owe you the right to relocate there, just because they offer the top opportunities in your field or your desired standard of living. At its most extreme, if they decide to make you a b**h to their own citizens à la Qatar, and you take the deal anyways, that’s your own fault
In the case of immigrant workers in Qatar, the deal they're offered very often ends up looking very different from their lived experience once it's accepted and they move into the country to perform the work. If the deal was clearly stipulated ahead of time I'd agree with you.
I think there is probably title deflation going on. Yes, every engineer working at a FAANG is well-paid, and the H1Bs are no exception. But my feeling is they're probably at least a level lower than they would be if they didn't have the captive visa. And this only reinforces that they're all great workers.
They do hire plenty of American citizens, but the lengths they go to hire people on H-1Bs make me think they get something extra out of it. At FB you'd often see big boards of "public job postings" in internal lobbies that I can only assume were to comply with some arbitrary requirement.
Hiring at FAANGs is hard. A lot of the H-1Bs I worked with got internships somehow, which is a lot less hoops, and they were good in the internship, so you want to give them an offer when they graduate. If they need an employment visa, then you have the experts research their experience and craft a job ad that only they can fill, and place it where it will be least seen but complies with the law.
That's abusing the system, but I dunno, better than abusing the employees that I hear about... Or the straight up fraud where immigrants were paying to get hired on h-1b for fake jobs, or the abuse where job shops would submit 3x the applications for the number of positions they actually had, etc.
That’s for people who already have H1Bs, this is the company trying to keep them long term by getting them a green card. The whole EB green card system is a bit of a mess.
H1B is not so bad. Many IT people I know came to the US by L1 visa. That is a true modern slavery! Don't like the work? Laid off? Go home, no other options.
If you put a tax on it they, employers, will simply pay even less. There will be enough people to work even for just food and roof. With the hope to get green card in a few years and bring the family. I was working for years with no promotions so that shitty boss could take the credits. I quit right after getting GC.
I understand but this post would of been a lot better if you simply admitted you don’t want H1B slaves who set the work ethics bar so high. I get it. When someone works until 10pm it makes those who work until 2pm looks bad especially if they have similar capabilities. Keep in mind, a lot of the AI talent started off are young people starting from entry regular level engineer roles. If you want the the quantum computer folks, they don’t even need H1B they can do the phd track.
Everyone has their own perspective. Your friend who referred to as “rented mules” probably will question you as a friend because you actually want them to be out of this country lol. Just be real, we don’t want H1B slaves who set the bar so high for work ethics. Just stop fake being nice as if you care about their well being. They chose to stay in the US after college knowing the expectation. You are shutting down the door for those who really could of developed into great tech talents.
There is no requirement to demonstrate that you cannot find an American to do the job to get an H1b visa approved. If that person applies for a PERM position (needed to convert to a green card) there is. Hence the H1b is easy to game by employers to get cheap indentured servants.
With PERM (converting to a green card) they try to hide the job postings so that people will not apply so that they can get the green card approved. Some of the tricks include putting ads in the newspaper, using esoteric websites and other media such as radio instead of job boards where tech people actually look for jobs. Some Americans who have trouble finding jobs in the current market took on a side project of scraping newspaper ads and these job boards and created https://www.jobs.now/ which lists these jobs. If enough Americans that meet the minimum qualifications apply for a listed job it stops the green card process for that position, usually for 6 months before the sponsor may try again.
Also, there are a lot of stories about people getting O-1 visas via fake credential mills and research papers. Both can and are being gamed to get O-1's.
I still think that you mix up the "green card" and the "H1B visa".
The green card is a status of a permanent resident. A person legally living in the US for enough time (5 years or so) on a variety of visas can apply to get it. It costs significant money so an employer usually helps with that.
The H1B visa is a visa for a worker on a position for which a company fails to hire a worker in the US. That worker may become or not become a permanent US resident afterwards.
If there are qualified American workers who are looking for work and applying for these positions then no, they should not. Legally they cannot either. Now on the flip side, if there is an actual shortage of qualified workers then sure. But right now, there is no shortage of qualified workers in most of these slots, especially if companies are willing to pay a competitive wage.
I think you need some context here, most of the time, these folks have already gone through the PERM process (at least the legitimate ones, ignoring the fraud for a second), and gotten to the next step, but USCIS will reset them back if they switch jobs. If the candidate is from India, they'll probably do this multiple times in their career because the green card wait time is very long for them. I have a colleague who's not from India, and they got through the process and even got their citizenship in 6 years, for Indians, that it'd take 12 years on average to go from finishing the PERM and getting a greencard (let alone applying for citizenship, which would need 3 more years)
I think you need some context here, most of the time, these folks have already gone through the PERM process (at least the legitimate ones, ignoring the fraud for a second), and gotten to the next step, but USCIS will reset them back if they switch jobs. If the candidate is from India, they'll probably do this multiple times in their career because the green card wait time is very long for them. I have a colleague who's not from India, and they got through the process and even got their citizenship in 6 years, for Indians, it'll take 12 years on average to go from finishing the PERM and getting a green card (let alone applying for citizenship, which would need 3 more years)
That worker may become or not become a permanent US resident afterwards.
Practically true - but that it’s not permitted to count experience gained while working on an H-1B when applying for a green card.
If an application for a green card is made for a person who’s currently in the USA on a H-1B visa, the person needs to qualify for it based on their qualifications and experience prior to whatever they’ve done in their current H-1B job.
No, he is right. Despite common sense, the labor test (seeing if an American can do the job the visa holder is currently doing) is applied at green card application time, not at H1B visa time.
> A person legally living in the US for enough time (5 years or so) on a variety of visas can apply to get it.
There is no "5 year" requirement to get a green card. A company can even sponsor an employee from abroad (e.g. a satellite office) to get a green card and if approved they will be a permanent resident the moment they arrive in the USA.
Perhaps you are thinking of the five years of a green card needed to apply for citizenship?
they try to hide the job postings so that people will not apply so that they can get the green card approved.
And this explains why I recently heard an ad on KNX radio for a tech job at a winery or brewery or something similar, which specified that applications would only be taken by mail.
It also had a massive list of responsibilities and a pay rate about half of what it should be.
You can report that to the Department of Labor. They are supposed to take applications in the same way they usually do. If they accept online applications for other positions they should be taking them for PERM recruiting too.
I scraped through PERM before the recruiting phase started getting attention from websites like jobs.now. I'm not against this and would expand the test to non-immigrant visas.
Meta being sued by the DoL was supposed to stop ridiculous gaming of the process [0].
Still I think a points system would be better for America and the RAISE Act is looking better everyday [1].
They are making these specific jobs tough to find because they are for a PERM test and don't want to get applicants. This video is old, but the same thing is happening today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU
> H-1B is for when you cannot find an American to fill a role
No, this is a myth. Employers can sponsor H-1B visas for any "speciality occupation" regardless of whether a citizen is available to do the job or not. Legally there are no restrictions in place re: criteria. The only thing they are required to do is pay the prevailing wage. Tests for whether a citizen can do the job only come into play later when they are sponsoring a green card.
Some of these posts make it seem like software engineering is a low skilled job, I beg to differ, it's still a very high skilled job, < .5% of the world knows how to code.
Is it that skilled when it gets taught in 4 years in college while an Electrician has to apprenticeship for 7?
That said, whether software is high-skill or not is tangential to the point I'm making. Which is, H1-B is being used to depress wages and that reworking it shouldn't affect jobs that actually have few people that can do it because O-1 allows them to work that job.
I don't think this is a fair comparison, software development is very complex, but an electricians job isn't, it's very simple but it's high consequence.
Software development may seem simple for a lot of people here on HN, but trust me, I can do the electricians job easily, but an electrician won't be able to do my job. The regulatory environment which requires the "apprenticeship" is a totally different topic and doesn't inform anything on the skill required to do the job. Also, the electrician apprentice gets paid while learning on the job, the software developer in training doesn't.
To the poster (nunez?) who was lamenting about me apparently claiming blue collar jobs are easier (and then deleted it when I was writing this reply):
1. I didn't claim that.
2. Yes, I did say it's "high consequence", but technically, comparing skill to skill, it's MUCH easier. I've done a ton of electrical work (along with plumbing) on our old home, there are a great set of safety rules to follow (and gear to use) before "touching the wrong wire".
> Soon AI can do your job easily, but it can't do an electrician's job.
[he said gleefully]
do you really want an Amercian to lose a job to AI?? Also, why do you think I can't become an electrician after AI apparently "does my job" (or a plumber, I'm a better plumber than an electrician)
anyway, it's fine, you don't seem to have any idea about software development or how AI is actually going to help me more.
I think you might be biased by where you live. In Germany an electrician's apprenticeship is ~3.5 years (and can sometimes be shortened). So while I am not an electrician and have no deeper insight than what friends who are told me, I am reasonably sure our electric installations are not 40%-50% as complex as the ones in your country.
I know electricians that were working within days of being hired with no experience. Apprenticeships are entry level jobs, not minimum certifications. They're also used to gatekeep positions by the unions. It has absolutely no bearing on whether or not the position is "skilled" or not.
And the answer really is that they're both skilled. Neither is more or less unless you're getting much more specific about the roles.
Apprenticeships are just unions gate keeping. Unions only reward seniority so you have to “pay your dues” in terms of time before you’re allowed to make any money.
> H-1B is for when you cannot find an American to fill a role so somebody comes into the US on a visa to fill that slot.
The job market would disagree with you right now. I know so many US citizens who have 10+ years of work experience and work in modern stacks that have been out of a job for 6+ months yet companies are still hiring H-1B workers because its cheaper.
> I know so many US citizens who have 10+ years of work experience and work in modern stacks that have been out of a job for 6+ months
The tech industry like tech stack is broad.
For example, it's nigh impossible to hire an American citizen with professional CUDA or eBPF experience because almost anyone with those skills already has a job. If you have those skills YOU WILL land a job (not remote first though - that era's over).
And it's not like you can retrain a fullstack engineer to understand systems programming overnight - it takes years of experience and knowledge of computer and OS architecture.
And it's not like companies aren't paying top dollar for these skills - they are, but people with those skills simply don't exist in significant numbers in the US.
There's a reason a large portion of the cybersecurity industry shifted to Israel and India - the kinds of table stakes skills in systems development aren't heavily taught in the US anymore compared to 15 years ago, and the only universities where you might have a shot hiring someone with those skills are T10 programs where students can field multiple job offers.
That said, the proposed changes in the H1B program are good - it's easier for a startup or a professional company to sponsor an H1B now instead of dealing with unethical consultancies gumming up the works.
The H1B market is bimodal - you have a huge chunk at consultancies who are paid low even by Indian standards and then an equally large chunk of people who are actually pretty elite and successful in India and are working at FAANG or top startups. You want to optimize for the right hand but don't want to make it so hard that you don't end up incentivizing talented people from leaving and returning to India or China or Europe.
That said, I don't envision this having much impact on easing hiring - AI/ML in the hands of experienced devs is fairly powerful AND the economic conditions currently are incentivizing us to limit hiring to only those who are truly critical.
it is not cheaper, you can make an argument that H1B talent pool puts downward pressure on wages in general, but to claim that H1Bs are cheaper is just insulting to everyone's intelligence and is factually not true (unless it is plain abuse of h1b visa through shady schemes by unknown companies, which i dont support)
Yeah, there's plenty of abuse with H1B with those consulting companies operating out of India and shipping people overseas, I don't believe many of them would qualify for the H1B. That said, many folks who come here to study and get hired by companies (usually, for their specialization in a masters degree for most foreign students) also apply for a H1B.
I don't understand your "low wage" argument though, aren't there laws against it currently? they need to be paid at least the prevailing wage in their location/job level.
The statute creating the H-1B visa—which allows U.S. employers to hire college-educated workers as well as fashion models from abroad—contains language establishing a “prevailing wage.”4 This prevailing wage requirement is intended to protect the wages of U.S. workers in occupations requiring a college degree from adverse impacts and to prevent college-educated migrant workers from being underpaid and exploited. Corporate lobbyists and other H-1B proponents often cite this prevailing wage requirement in the H-1B law as evidence that H-1B workers cannot be paid less than U.S. workers. However, the reality is that the H-1B statute, regulations, and administrative guidance allow employers wide latitude in setting wage levels....
Although salary information that corresponds to requested positions on LCAs has been made available by DOL for a number of years through the Office of Foreign Labor Certification’s LCA disclosure data, until recently the prevailing wage levels selected by employers were not readily available. In 2011, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) for the first time reported what some had suspected and speculated about but to that point were not able to officially confirm: The vast majority of H-1B jobs were being certified by DOL at the two lowest wage levels.
Fraud should be curbed and punished, but I don't understand why the visa itself is bad because of this, that's like saying people speed and break traffic laws, therefore we must ban vehicles entirely.
Or the ultimate work-around, pay then the same and work them twice as hard. Boom, half the wage and nobody can tell!
How many of these consulting companies just have the most awful, toxic company culture imaginable? I don't think that's a coincidence - that's a purposefully engineered cost saving strategy.
Isn't it directly influencing prevailing wage? When H1-B dominates a sector then I'm competing with H1-B and am forced into that existing wage not the other way around. If I don't want to work in that environment because it fucking sucks well guess who's getting a green card? Whole thing is rotten and software industry is going to become the new "going postal".
I think a tax of at least $100,000 per year per H-1B visa going forward would help eliminate abuse of the system. All current visa holders should get an expedited path to citizenship to keep them from being exploited as well
That's a great way of putting it... if you're going to poke holes in the immigration system to help industry... they should pay for the privilege a high enough value to make sure it's not just about cheap labor.
Is that really true? My impression is that companies tries as much as possible to not use the O-1 route, not sure because the requirements are by design too high or process and cost are not worth it compared to other routes.
O(1) data point: got offer from FAANG to join on the H-1B lottery, later moved to L-1 because the timing was not going to work well for the H-1B process and L-1 at least would give my partner the chance to also work, I later decided to not migrate and keep working from a different country.
H1B is also for fashion models, which AFAIK, do not need their employer to prove they can not hire an American person for the role before being granted permission to hire a temporary foreign employee.
Every controversial and disruptive problem occurring in this administration is solely because an activity was allowed to continue in a controversial and disruptive way for many administrations
On the topic of H1B’s specifically, I wish the minimum salary kept pace with inflation, and that overall our immigration system didn’t kick out mentally capable and educated people after finishing school or between employers. Intellectual fitness and those with the support system to flourish improve our society.
Not to mention the EU countries already do effectively the same thing. If your wage is below a certain treshold (based on profession), you can't compete fairly with europeans (i.e. the company has to prove they couldn't find anyone), but if you're above it then you're eligible for the Blue Card program and get to compete fairly. Very similar to Trump's changes in intent
I agree with your broader point about companies abusing H1-Bs. But I'm not sure if the abuse happens through hiring at lower wage. For example, if you look at FANG, they pay as much for an H1-B as they would pay any other employee. Where is this perspective that you can hire someone at lower wage because they come with H1-B? Would love understand the loophole.
You can work an H1-B nearly to death, Elon has all but explicitly said so for instance. If they're fired it's very unlikely that they'll be able to get a new job before being forced to leave the country at which point they're unlikely to ever get the chance to come back and they know this.
But this doesn't really happen in FAANG, as most on this board can tell you. Maybe in Elon companies, but they were well known for overworking everyone almost a decade ago
not every company is FANG. there are tens of thousands of companies operating at sub trillion dollar valuations which absolutely positively do this. FANG (or even "big tech") is far too narrow to draw any meaningful conclusions in the broader market.
Wages are not straightforward, as much as businesses would like to pretend they are. What do you mean by "would pay"? They don't just make up a number. The willingness of applicants to accept a lower wage lowers the wage they "would" pay ("our wages are competitive").
Most recruiters will do this due to avoid extra paperwork/work required. So now you know that anti-immigration rethoric is fueled by Americans to take advantage of the vulnerable.
H-1B is for when you cannot find an American to fill a role so somebody comes into the US on a visa to fill that slot.
O-1 [1] is a for when somebody non-American has a lot of skill and is allowed to immigrate into the US to perform it.
I still think H-1B visas should require some kind of additional fee proportional to training an American to fill that role. Afaik, most of the H-1B visas are just abuse where you hire somebody at a low wage than you'd need to for an otherwise legal resident so there needs to be some kind of higher opportunity cost to the company.
[1]: https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...