Dem
47
GOP
53
A couple of weeks ago, we had an item about Donald Trump's announcement that the price for H-1B visas would jump to $100,000. This particular program is intended to allow employers to recruit skilled workers from other countries when they cannot fill those needs domestically. Some employers have used the program as it was intended; others have abused it in various ways.
There have been a couple of pretty prominent angles to this story that have gotten attention since Trump made his announcement. The first of those is that the tech sector will be OK, one way or the other, but the healthcare sector could be badly wounded. There aren't enough doctors in the U.S., nor enough nurses, nor enough orderlies, nor enough of any of the folks who make healthcare work. So, many hospitals and health systems have looked beyond America's borders to fill the gap. The impact is likely to be felt most keenly... in red states and rural areas (aka Trump Country). Be careful what you vote for, you just might get it.
The other news is that, of course, the various affected parties are not going to take this lying down. It is possible that getting up in the morning does not cause Trump and his administration to be sued, but pretty much everything else he does produces that result. And so, a rather unusual coalition (labor unions, health care providers, universities, religious organizations and tech companies) has taken the matter to court. We do not have any idea how strong their case is, but we do know that there are some entities on that list who have a lot of money—virtually unlimited funds—for lawyers. So, they will certainly give the White House all it can handle.
Meanwhile, when we ran that item originally, we got a lot of interesting feedback. However, there was no mailbag that weekend, so we never got to run it. We want to rectify that right now; the clear theme here, as noted in the headline, is, "it's complicated":
K.S. in Lafayette, IN: As someone who grew up in the U.S. as the dependent child of an H-1B holder, I have a unique perspective I hope will provide a greater understanding of the U.S. immigration system for everyone.
While what (V) and (Z) wrote about the H1-B program being abused by bad actors is certainly true, this abuse is specifically perpetrated by a handful of Indian consulting companies who provide low wages and fraudulent applications. A lot of H-1B visa holders, my parents included, were and are paid more than their American counterparts in the same roles due to their experience/skill set (not to mention the added corporate expenses for immigration lawyers and visa fees). There are much better ways to fix the program (like wage rules) than a blanket $100k fee that would harm even those who haven't abused the system.
However, I would like to draw attention to a more important problem. As I mentioned, I did grow up in the U.S. (arriving here at the age of 7) and just recently graduated with my bachelor's degree. However, despite the fact that I've grown up in this great nation, no different from my American peers, I will be unable to have any pathway to permanent residency and/or citizenship.
This is due to the country cap, which limits employment-based green cards to 7% of the overall issuance for each country. This has created a large backlog for countries like India, China, Mexico and others, which send a lot of immigrants to the U.S. The net result of this, in India's case, is that someone who applies for a green card today will not receive it for multiple decades. Despite the fact that my parents applied not long after getting here, and were approved to receive one, they will have to wait in the backlog until a green card is available for them.
During that wait time, I have "aged out" (21+), which means I will not be considered a dependent of my parents any longer and would be treated as an entirely new immigrant. I had to switch to a student visa during my final year of studies, and will now have to either find a job (which would throw me straight back into the H-1B cycle my parents went through), or leave the country I grew up in, with the friends I made and the people I love. This is the situation facing so-called "Documented Dreamers" today, with sizable numbers having self-deported already, or getting thrown back into the backlog despite having grown up as Americans.
Despite having arrived in the country legally and having grown up as American children, they will be forced to leave the only country they've ever known and leave behind everyone they've come to know, as there are no programs like DACA available to protect them. I've shared my story with you not because I expect anything to be done for me or for the tens of thousands of others in the same situation today, but because I hope for future generations of children in the same situation to not be forced to leave the nation they know and love through no fault of their own.
F.L. in Allen, TX: It's very likely that I, a native born American, lost my job to an H1-B visa holder. The premise is that H1-Bs have some special skill set that no American has.
This is utter horse hockey. During the last 10 years of my career, I was an engineer training other engineers in telecoms. I can safely say that well over half of my students were H1-Bs. If they had "special skills" that no one else had, then why did I have to teach them?
All that said, I felt no animosity towards them. If I were in their shoes, I'd do the same—in fact, for decades, I tried to get residency in England (even though it would mean a lower income). Sadly, to no avail. It all ended when I was sacked the day after cancer surgery, after nearly 16 years of service.
As much as I despise The Convicted Felon (TCF), this is a good solution. There are innumerable American engineers desperate for a professional job and are more qualified than the Brazilians, Asians, and Indians that are being brought in. The corporations (in my case, it was the "We believe in work-life balance" Swedes) just want cheap engineering workers who will work 80 hours a week because the employees are legally "exempt" (e.g. not paid for overtime and, thus, exploitable).
L.W. in St. Paul, MN: I have been retired for several years after a career in IT, much of it working with people from India and other countries who were here under an H1-B visa program. But in recent years the tendency was to utilize teams of people who were based in India, working for the company who had built a facility there and hired Indian employees. It seems to me that the $100,000 H1-B fee for a visa will simply accelerate this trend. Like it or not, the Internet makes it relatively easy to have a few business analysts here in the U.S. working with a team of developers working in a remote place.
N.W. in Middletown, CT: The $100,000 fee for H-1B visas is even worse than it sounds. There are about 10,500 physicians on H-1B visas in the U.S. In other words, this policy change will effectively get rid of 1.4% of our active physicians, at a time when our shortage is worsening already.
I read that physicians at a conference in Canada were urged to return to the U.S. immediately, as this was announced. Then there was a tweet that suggested the fee is one time and not annual. I'm saddened that my hardworking colleagues have to scour eX-Twitter, of all places, to try to figure out if they will have a job or have to leave the country.
R.C. in Newport News, VA: Here's my experience with H1-B visas. For a while after I quit my Computer Science professorship, I worked for a software contracting company AMA (not the medical group) at NASA Langley. The company was run by an Indian and a Dane and almost all of the workers were on H-1B visas. They put me in charge of a project that seemed to me to be one of those wild projects that sounded good but made no sense—things NASA scientists had to propose to justify their jobs. However the company did not want me to interact with NASA, for example, to find out what the project was for. I was prohibited from talking to the NASA project manager. They did not want NASA to be the least interested in what they were doing. I soon found out why.
They had scheduled a weekly meeting at noon to report on each of the nine groups' activities and to receive advice and orders. People brought lunch, but it was a working meeting that could last up to 2 hours. After I went to my first meeting, I asked the two bosses what I should charge the meeting to. Every minute of my working day had to be attributed to some charge. The company got paid through charge accounting. The bosses told me that there was no charge. The meeting was purely voluntary. That was contrary to government rules. No one was allowed to work for free. We had to keep our time sheets on our desks, visible to any NASA personnel. I asked that, since the meetings were voluntary, could I not attend. After a long pause and looks between the two bosses, I was told yes. They did not want NASA to know about this "voluntary" unpaid work.
No H-1B visa person would ever miss a meeting. Based on conversations with AMA workers, I was told there were other things workers were required to do outside the 8 daily work hours. H-1B visa workers did not "own" their visas. The sponsoring companies did, and if a worker were separated from the company, fired or resigned, that worker no longer had a visa.
I was fired a month later. (Which made me happy because I hate to quit anything. I got another software engineering job in two weeks.) Meanwhile, students I had taught, students at least as qualified as the AMA workers, were unable to find jobs locally in a software rich area like the Virginia Peninsula.
S.K. in Bloomfield, MI: I am glad you did an item on the attempt to impose the $100K fee and highlighted the reality of how the visa has been abused. Prior to retirement, the company where I worked employed many of these "highly skilled" Indian IT workers, some of whom did not know how to use a toilet. Yes, you read that right; they would stand on the toilet and squat. We had to ask management to add that to their specialized training.
M.D. in San Jose, CA: Please don't buy into the administration's talking points that the H1-B visa holders are undercutting American workers' wages. Studies consistently show that about 75% of H1-B holders earn more than the prevailing wage for their industry. From my anecdotal view in Silicon Valley, this is certainly true and the numbers from independent sources back this up.
These workers are essential to keep America's biggest economic engines (finance and technology) running. This initiative will hurt these industries and there is no economic good that will come of it. Take aerospace, for example. The U.S. only graduates about 7,000 to 9,000 aerospace engineers a year. Demand is several thousand engineers higher than that. If we don't get them from Canada, Brazil, France or India, we will probably have to cede our leadership position in the world, costing countless thousands of top notch manufacturing and service jobs.
Thanks to all who wrote in. As we said, it's complicated.
It may be that Congress is collectively going to find its spine, and try to assert itself here, fixing some of the problems, and undermining Trump's plans and his presumptions. Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) have re-introduced a bill that would endeavor to rein in some of the abuses of this program while trying to preserve the benefits. Congress doesn't do much these days, and it certainly does not stand up to Donald Trump very often. However, the bill does have a sponsor from each party. Further, the original sponsors—get this—were Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL). If this is something that even those two gentlemen can agree on, then the bill certainly has, at very least, a puncher's chance. (Z)