Some years ago, I was trying to hire a software engineer. We advertised everywhere. The only qualified applicant was a South African. We went through the H1B process. This involved advertising in both the Bay Area and Los Angeles. We received a few unqualified applicants and literally no qualified applicants. After an absurd amount of paperwork, we hired Steve. Eventually he managed to get permanent resident status.
The theoretical requirement is that there is no citizen of permanent resident available qualified to do this job. It must involve specialized experience, not just a freshly minted BS in EE or CS.
A number of employers (because of a layoff nondisclosure agreement, I am not naming names) have made extensive misuse of the program. I recall one ad where they were laying us off while advertising for H1B engineers with 5 years experience and no other qualifications. Their pay was supposed to be the same as a citizen or permanent resident.
Even worse, if you are here on an H1B visa, you are not free to change jobs, so whoever brought you over can abuse all they want. It is theoretically possible to change employers on an H1B, but apparently a lot of effort. H1B employees are easy to abuse. The Bay Area had lots of examples: people being paid barely above minimum wage for $80,000 per year jobs. Of course, these are employers big enough to hire lawyers to make this happen.
Right now I’m calling my misreptile and saying zero out H1b for about 4 or 6 years and prosecute folks who use h-1b to fire Americans the ‘indentured servitude’ aspect looks like slavery enough to prosecute under the anti slavery statues (wondering about why those are not used to prosecute human trafficing, which is actual slavery) this h1b stuff started to go sour when it was used to by hospitals to bring in cheap nurses so scrap the whole thing and if it’s recreated make the penalties for slavery aspect 20 years hard labor for the whole board lawyers and HR as well
ReplyDeleteThis h1b stuff really burns me an engineering co set up
HQ in Dallas whole engineering staff was h1b from the get to grrrr