H1B Visa

[David Schwartz]

There’s a misnomer that says H-1B visas somehow hurt said visa holders.

That is, for the most part, totally untrue.

And just for the record, the people who get H-1B visas all are pretty much required to have Master’s and PhD degrees. These are distinctly different jobs and workers than what we hear about regarding most “illegals” and folks who come here to wash dishes and clean rooms at hotels.

Companies like Intel, Facebook, Amazon, Intuit, etc., all budget about $50k to prosecute an H-1B visa for their new-hires who need one.

They give them full-time permanent jobs with a 6-10 year GUARANTEED JOB — until their green card issues.

They pay them competitive salaries in their field with full benefits and retirement plans, as well as generous “golden handcuffs". And since about 98% of them have Master’s and PhD’s, they tend to be paid MORE than their American counterparts who only have BS or Associate degrees.

There’s another group of foreign H-1B workers who are probably more familiar to us who do contract gigs.

These are folks working for job shops set up by foreigners to help funnel their buddies into America.

Here are some FACTS for you:

If you’re a foreigner, say from India, you can get a multi-year business visa + work permit, with multiple-rentry privleges almost INSTANTLY — all you have to do is deposit $250k in a domestic US “business” bank account, show them a simple business plan, and promise to hire a dozen people locally. That’s it. There’s no line. There’s no long wait. There’s nothing in your way. 

BTW, this is just a part of virtually every immigration program in every country in the world. For instance, if you want to move to Prague, in the Czech Republic, it costs $25k for the same kind of thing, and you have to promise to hire four local people. (Well, that’s what it cost when I checked a few years ago. It may have gone up.)

Indians are a very industrius people, and this is a no-brainer for them. They’ll get a dozen or so families together to pony up the $250k for someone in their clan to start such a business in America. Before long, these guys are beating the bushes securing contracts for big companies and governments at competitive rates, and putting out job reqs. When someone contacts you and says the client doesn’t want to pay more than $21 to $23 per hour for a job they say requires 10+ years of experience and a MS or PhD, this is how they justify that they’re unable to hire “qualified American workers”. So they fill the jobs with their buddies. Imagine that.

I don’t know what they’re actually paying their workers, but what these people are getting is an opportunity to move to America and get a green card at no expense to themselves. Many of them aren’t even very qualified for the work!

I’ve heard stories (anecdotal, to be sure) that some of these contractors will supply a half-dozen bodies to a company, and those people will sit there all day long "looking busy", then come home to a house where there are a couple of highly-skilled wokers who work all night, somtimes with help from a team back in India, and do the work that these people were supposedly doing. It’s all ready to go the next morning.

Please tell me how these people are “getting screwed” or even “harmed” in the game their playing?

This is a game that a lot of Asians have become very proficient at doing, thanks to 1706 and our broken immigration system.

Do you think they want to see the laws changed? HELL NO! They’re quite happy that all anybody ever discusses about our immigration laws focuses on Mexico and people working for below minimum-wage.

I don’t know what these folks pay their people, but they set up housing for them and pile them into places under conditions that most Americans would not tolerate. What people don’t realize is that for most of these folks, they’re living conditions HERE IN AMERICA are FAR BETTER than what they experienced back home! YOU might not like it, but THEY ARE LOVING IT!!!!

It’s a form of modern-day slavery. The companies are billing these people out at $200-$300 per hour, and using that cashflow to not just support these people for the several years needed for them to get their green cards, but a lot is sent back to their families as well.

We Americans cannot possibly relate to what they’re doing, why, or how it is for them. But for most, their lives are MUCH BETTER OFF.

So, hey, please continue distracting people from reality and making noise about people coming across our border with Mexico to take jobs for a few bucks an hour, and arguing that “we don’t need to fix our immigration laws, but enforce the laws we already have.”

In the high-tech industry from which people on this list earn a living, none of us are impacted by people from south of our border. We do not work in that world. They do not compete with us for jobs. 

Rather, we are impacted by Asians gaming our immigration system and using 1706 and H-1B visas to funnel people over here who DO take jobs from us. And large high-tech employers who find it more expedient to pay the ridiculous costs needed to bring H-1B candidates here rather than to pay to retrain us for the jobs they claim they cannot fill with “qualified American workers”.

They do not WANT us working for them! They do not NEED us working for them!

I saw a graphic from a study done earlier thsi year that said people in the software industry over 50 yo are one-half as likely to become employed ever again in their field of expertise as people under 50. The most common jobs we greybeards get are at or slightly above the minimum-wage, like greeters at Walmart, bus drivers, cabbies, crossing guards, and so forth.

This is a “societal pressure” that affects everybody equally. Sure, you can spend time studying this and that, and if you’ve got some connections, you might be able to score yourself a nice gig. I’m in Delaware at the moment on a ~3-mo contract. It’s with the same folks who hired me last year for a 5-week contract. They knew me, they liked me, and that’s that. It hasn’t been without its challenges, but at this point in my life (at 60), there just aren’t a lot of options that come along. It might even lead to a full-time position with the State. Who knows.

Interestingly, well over half of the employees I see walking around the campus are all … Asians.

And the average age of people I see here is clearly in the 40+ range. It’s actually kinda nice. :-)

Why is this? Because Americans don’t like taking lower-paying government jobs. All of the newbies thay have here are recent college grads from India who already have a green card or citizenship.

(Govt agencies do not sponsor H-1B candidates. They don’t even pay relocation.)

-David "The Tool Wiz" Schwartz




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