Trump Administration Plans Changes to H1B Visa Program

[Crissi]

Businesses trying to avoid the costs of training new employees isn't new, or rare.

sure, but long term its absolutely a bad thing. Having a large group of people that took out student loans to get an education, but then cant get a job cause employers want to avoid training expenses? hello burst bubble.

Which means they have to take lesser paying jobs in fields that arent so good, and means for the future that Americans may not be willing to take a risk going into said fields if they cant afford it outright without loans.

[THE Bigzoman]

I'm confused are you in favor of eliminating minimum wage?

You fool. If I'm reading this policy right, it is a minimum wage.

[Deleted]

The thing is even when America can deliver they're still abusing the H1b visas. See my first comment in the thread.

I already told you that you use one bad apple as an example against 1000 good apples.

[mikeakanice]

That is a gigantic leap in the cost of minimum wage. Personally, I think this is going to cause the IT field to suffer. Like it, or not, companies outsourced for a reason. Foreigners filled specialized roles that many Americans didn't want to do, even in the IT field. I have met two American-born Database administrators in the last 10 years. That is two out of literally hundreds that I have met.

I wonder how this is going to impact government agencies, since they tend to hire quite a few foreigners for work in their offices, especially in the DC area. There's no way in hell their budgets can afford double employee wages for some of its staff, so they will either have to fire people in order to hire Americans... or just fire people.

I'm so tired of hearing the argument of "Americans didn't want to do it" That's utter bs. It all comes down to one thing. Money. Companies expect to make record profits each year, ridiculously higher than the year before. And the first thing they do to make sure that happens is they find the cheapest labor possible. Well that's fine. They can leave the country and face massive tarrifs for importing. They want to make money from Americans but they don't want to do anything to help Americans. See what happens to their profits when they lose the biggest buying power in the world (by a large margin).

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I already told you that you use one bad apple as an example against 1000 good apples.

It wasn't at all a bad one. how is 78 jobs being outsourced from willing and able qualified workers a bad one. And is Disney also a bad one? You keep saying it's bad because it doesn't fit your narrative. If I had time to prepare instead of a quick 3 second google search taking only the top two links from the search I am sure I could find even more damaging statistics. But since this page will probably be dead in an hour I see no reason to.I honestly think both of your links are terrible. See what I did.

Also there are 3 links. Explain Disney and Cengage and USCF is not just one bad apple. It's a trend.
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To me it's quite stunning (even though it shouldn't be). When I was a regular a year ago there were topics where everyone was condemning big businesses for doing this. Now, that Trump is president those same people are shitting all over the idea of punishing companies for these abuses. Oh well, I guess I learned my lesson that I should have a year ago. Back to reddit.

[NED funded]

I'm confused are you in favor of eliminating minimum wage?

What he is saying is elegant english for: Trump policy places minimum wage for H1-B people. As a consequence companies will be less likely to hire them.

[Machismo]

I'm so tired of hearing the argument of "Americans didn't want to do it" That's utter bs. It all comes down to one thing. Money. Companies expect to make record profits each year, ridiculously higher than the year before. And the first thing they do to make sure that happens is they find the cheapest labor possible. Well that's fine. They can leave the country and face massive tarrifs for importing. They want to make money from Americans but they don't want to do anything to help Americans. See what happens to their profits when they lose the biggest buying power in the world (by a large margin).

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It wasn't at all a bad one. how is 78 jobs being outsourced from willing and able qualified workers a bad one. And is Disney also a bad one? You keep saying it's bad because it doesn't fit your narrative. If I had time to prepare instead of a quick 3 second google search taking only the top two links from the search I am sure I could find even more damaging statistics. But since this page will probably be dead in an hour I see no reason to.I honestly think both of your links are terrible. See what I did.

So let them earn profits, good for the companies. That's their job.

You seem to have a strong aversion to free markets and basic capitalism. You want to punish companies for not doing exactly what you want them to do. Now, if you really cared, you wouldn't spend your money there, but that's not what you want. You want the government to punish them for you. It's fucking lazy on your part.Let me know when you are willing to put your money where your mouth is, and only buy American products, and shop at stores that only hire Americans. If you aren't doing it, then you aren't "helping Americans," which makes you a fucking hypocrite.

[Dadwen]

If they are forced to pay a better wage to US workers and there no chance all the jobs are going to get taken up but 50-60,000 out of country workers I'm willing to bet more people will go into those fields.

As far as abuse, I think it's 1000 bad apples to 1000 good apples would be closer to the truth (personally I've seen it abused a number of times).

[Kronik85]

I've obviously got something backwards here so perhaps someone can set me straight. The current H1B Visa guarantees a minimum wage of 60k USD a year, the new one will be a minimum wage of 130k USD. Why would Disney want to pay it's theme park attendants 60k a year? That's not exactly cheap labour.

[Dadwen]

I've obviously got something backwards here so perhaps someone can set me straight. The current H1B Visa guarantees a minimum wage of 60k USD a year, the new one will be a minimum wage of 130k USD. Why would Disney want to pay it's theme park attendants 60k a year? That's not exactly cheap labour.

the story I remember on Disney was they were replacing their IT workers not the park Attendants.

[Machismo]

And i thought conservatives opposed increases to the minimum wage...

[BrerBear]

A problem people in this thread are having is that "IT worker" =/= "computer scientist".

When tech companies claim that they can't fill their positions without H1B, they really mean the latter.

IT workers -- and no offense meant to those employed in that -- is the lowest skill tech job available, and is much easier to outsource or automate. Yes, companies do pull in temporary H1Bs to train outsourcing replacements, but they'll simply switch to straight up outsourcing with no local H1B training if the salary cap gets raised.

Having hired software engineers at both small biz and enterprise level, I can confirm that the US is not producing enough software engineers with strong skills, thus leading to the true need for H1Bs.

I don't really see any win from these proposed changes. If you are a US citizen doing IT work, your prospects aren't really much better than garment workers a decade ago. This will not help you.

[NED funded]

and that ends up harming the grad students who do go into the STEM fields. How are we ever supposed to get the stupid experience if people prefer HIB people that already have the exp?

That share is mainly made by software programming and other computer-related jobs. The second part lower your expectations dont expect to compete with people who have phds. Other natives achieved success in STEM, so it's not like its impossible.

[BrerBear]

Also there are 3 links. Explain Disney and Cengage and USCF is not just one bad apple. It's a trend.

The trend is that IT is on the decline and being outsourced. Most IT is becoming cloud-based and -- surprise! -- there is very little need to have IT workers co-located.

[callipygoustp]

I've obviously got something backwards here so perhaps someone can set me straight. The current H1B Visa guarantees a minimum wage of 60k USD a year, the new one will be a minimum wage of 130k USD. Why would Disney want to pay it's theme park attendants 60k a year? That's not exactly cheap labour.

I only watched this story in my periphery, but, I don't recall park attendants being the issue. Weren't the replaced Disney workers all IT?

[Kaleredar]

It's taught in basic business 101 that companies have a responsibility to the people in the country they are based in. This is not okay.

That's an assumption, not a practice.

Companies send labor overseas to save a buck, not because "they just plain have to." If it costs them less than 130,000$ per employee, they're simply going to export those jobs in their entirety overseas.

A business' goal is to make money. They aren't "morally beholden" to anything but following the rule of law, meaning that the rule of law needs to step in where their morals falter.

This proposed law doesn't do anything but simply incentivize companies to move more labor overseas entirely.

Immigrant workers on Visas at least pay income tax while living in the united states and make use of other goods and services.

An outsourced job to India, or wherever, does none of that.

[Crissi]

That share is mainly made by software programming and other computer-related jobs. The second part lower your expectations dont expect to compete with people who have phds. Other natives achieved success in STEM, so it's not like its impossible.

I'm not sure how much lower than entry level an expectation can go

[callipygoustp]

The trend is that IT is on the decline and being outsourced. Most IT is becoming cloud-based and -- surprise! -- there is very little need to have IT workers co-located.

And this isn't new. IT has been on the decline for ~15 years. IT consolidation and outsourcing started occurring back in the late 1990s. IT? That's old news.

In my experience, this new policy will affect developers/qa and product/project management. You can't out source those positions as easily as you can outsource IT, well, at least not from what I have experienced and/or read. So, using H1B visa holders for those positions is still profitable at 60k a year. Bump the new salary floor to 130k... that is most definitely going to make local talent much more desirable.

[Kronik85]

the story I remember on Disney was they were replacing their IT workers not the park Attendants.

I only watched this story in my periphery, but, I don't recall park attendants being the issue. Weren't the replaced Disney workers all IT?

Got it, RIP my 60k a year dream for serving hotdogs out of a kiosk.

[infinitemeridian]

And this isn't new. IT has been on the decline for ~15 years. IT consolidation and outsourcing started occurring back in the late 1990s. IT? That's old news.

In my experience, this new policy will affect developers/qa and product/project management. You can't out source those positions as easily as you can outsource IT, well, at least not from what I have experienced and/or read. So, using H1B visa holders for those positions is still profitable at 60k a year. Bump the new salary floor to 130k... that's is most definitely going to make local talent much more desirable.

The problem is that this "local talent" does not exist in high enough numbers to fill the void.

[callipygoustp]

Got it, RIP my 60k a year dream for serving hotdogs out of a kiosk.

No no no NO, I was not intending to kill your dreams. Stranger things have happened. Don't give up!

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The problem is that this "local talent" does not exist in high enough numbers to fill the void.

I hire anywhere from 5(in a good year) to, hmmm, maybe as many as 15(in a bad year) developers annually. There is never a shortage of US workers for that field.

Edit:
Correction, during the dot.com boom there were more than a couple times when hiring someone with the necessary skills was difficult. In the past 5-10 years, that hasn't been the case.