H1B slavery visa & abuse
This issue is so common in engineering circles. I have had many many coworkers who have desperately wanted to leave their position at the company theyâre at but canât because they canât find another company who will take on their visa. Iâm sure a lot of us are familiar with the struggle of feeling stuck at a company because youâve got to pay your bills, but imagine your ability to stay in the country hinging on your job as well.
Itâs an imperfect system, and I am not condoning vendor servitude via the H1B rules as they currently exist, but it affords many in emerging (or politically constrained) countries to literally âlive their dreamâ by working, buying homes and cars, worshipping freely, having children free of poverty and pollution, and raising a family (often while also supporting extended family members back home) in host countries where theyâve deemed it beneficial, relative to the source countries theyâre native to.
The big issue Iâm seeing the past two years is the current administration severely restricting H1B renewals. The renewal reductions are huge with this administration. Want proof? Hereâs a recent article from one of the hotbeds of H1B workersâŚSilicon Valley.
The issue with H1B affects Indians and Chinese mostly. The backlog for green card is in the decades now, so they have to keep on getting their visa renewed forever.
This is aggravated by consulting firms that bring people in and pay them far below market value because they will never leave the indentured statues the H1B visa grants.
Look up HR1044 and S386. The issue is that there is no per country quota for the Visa, but there is one for employment based green card, resulting in said backlog.
Since they cannot leave their job without restarting the process, they are unable to ask for a raise or co.petitive benefits without risking losing their job, which leads to all the abuse.
I know, Itâs probably no longer a default assumption that H1Bâs will lead to a permanent visa.
Most Indians stills stive towards it because India sucks and they make a lot of money here, resulting in the massive wage deflation in the tech field
I know all too well. I have had up to 120 employees (approx. 75% H1B), and Iâve been all over India for the past decade.
India is amazing, but has more than its share of issues. I wish I could see the India of 100 years from now.
When I worked as a consultant I met some nice Indian folks that worked for Keane and were on site with me at The Associates (now part of Citi.)
They lived 12 to a rented house and were paid less than half of what I was getting at that time (66k vs 28k) so they all shared living expenses to be able to send cash back home. This was late 97/early 98 and they were abused like shit even back then.
My roommate definitely didnât care for his H1B visa he referred to it as âindentured servitude.â He has a green card now and has more stability and seems happier or less stressed at least.
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Comparing H1B visas to slavery is downplaying the aptly described unimaginable brutality of slavery.
Working a job in an office that you can quit anytime you want isnât slavery. It might be shitty and depressing but itâs not slavery.
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Without getting into the merits and issues with H1B visas, Iâll say that my company recently posted a notice that they were filling a developer position with an H1B visa applicant and the salary range for the position was 127-164k. I have a hard time believing they couldnât fill that position with a local applicant.
Illegal (or at least a violation of the H1B rules) if they were doing comparable work.
Like someoneâs going to find out⌠Until someone dies nobody cares.
If an inspector comes, which never happens, they will all have scrammed out the second there is a knock. And only 1 or 2 would be on the lease anyways.
It abetter to hire an Indian and keep him for 20 years then hire a local guy who will jump ship in 2-5 years.
@Raymond and @abitamimbharmal, Iâm pretty sure @mdredmond is referring to paying the workers less. Not the living arrangements.
The law establishes certain standards in order to protect similarly employed U.S. workers from being adversely affected by the employment of the nonimmigrant workers, as well as to protect the H-1B nonimmigrant workers. Employers must attest to the Department of Labor that they will pay wages to the H-1B nonimmigrant workers that are at least equal to the actual wage paid by the employer to other workers with similar experience and qualifications for the job in question, or the prevailing wage for the occupation in the area of intended employment â whichever is greater.
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Either way itâs true. They put an advertisement in a newspaper that no one reads and say they looked for someone local and couldnât find anyone.
For comparable wage, when noone can negotiate a raise, and there is an extra 65k people available each year extra, there ceases to be any growth in wages
Yeah, I was talking about the wages. This directly impacts not just those looking for work but anyone who works. If employers are allowed to pay imported workers less then that will necessarily depress everyoneâs wages. This is the crux of the argument that âthey want us all to live in mud hutsâ that comes up in other kind-of related debates.
Iâm not super sympathetic to anyoneâs living conditions if their goal in getting a job is âto be able to send cash back homeâ. Depressing wages, removing money from the local economy - whatâs not to love, right?
Yeah. Call Cruz and Cornyn in support of S386 which would solve this problem by giving all people on H1B an employment based green card on a first come first serve basis instead of the 7% quota that currently exists. Instead of people from Europe and Iran and most other places getting their greencard in 6 months and Indians/Chinese waiting for 2-15 decades depending on which category they are in, everyone would get a greencard within about 5 years. Itâs not perfect, but itâs the easiest solution. It already passed the House(HR 1044) through suspension(2/3 majority) but needs 100% to pass through the Senate without debate.
The bill itself is only like 3 pages long, so itâs not that difficult a read either.
Agree completely with @lukeiamyourfather. Not even close. Itâs deceptively easy to use such hyperbole when trying to make a point.
I donât know if there is slavery equivalent to Godwinâs law, but there should be.
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