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To: HamiltonJay
I don't deny that there have been unscrupulous companies that have abused H1B visas. However in the late 90s the company I worked for had a great difficulty finding people. There were definitely more jobs than qualified engineers.

We did hire a number of engineers who were in the country on H1B visas, but reasonable efforts were made to hire US citizens first.

When the business opportunities didn't work out as planned, and we had to lay off engineers, they laid off all of those on H1B visas first, just like they were supposed to do. We actually lost a very talented engineer that had skills that no one else had, but my boss asked if someone else could learn to do her job. When we gave him an answer of probably, he said that meant he had no choice.

None of the people we laid off were out of work for more than a few weeks, including those on H1B visas.

There was a genuine need for H1B visas, and it wasn't just a scam.

The need is obviously considerably less now, though considering that I have several head hunters that keep contacting me, it appears that the job market is still pretty tight around here, at least for the kind of work that I do.

I'm sure there are other less technical jobs which are getting flooded with H1B visa applicants to an excessive degree, and salaries are being deflated to the point where they cannot find a US citizen willing to work at that job.

However, with the unemployment rates as low as they are, it would seem that except in relatively rare circumstances the main problem is wage deflation rather than not enough jobs being left for US citizens.

Government should mandate a $100,000 fee per H1B approved. If these companies TRULY cannot find an american that can do the job (which is how its supposed to work) then they’ll have no issues paying to get a person who can do this highly specialized work they need done by a foreigner.

That would result in there being a huge tax that would destroy startup companies. It would put us back in the situation where we simply don't have close to enough technical people to fill the opportunities available. It would seriously hurt our economy.

I'm not opposed to a fee for H1B visas, but $100,000 is far to much. Make it more along the lines of 15% - 20% of the salary for the job, and it would make it far less appealing to hire someone on a H1B visa, but not be completely prohibitive.

However, the problem with having such a fee is that H1B visas then become a source of revenue for the government, and the government has even less incentive to investigate abuses.

The best solution is to actually investigate abuses of the system.

You do that, you’ll see H1B’s dry up tommorrow and all the lies that there aren’t american’s able to do the job myth go away in a heartbeat.

Look at the unemployment rates versus the number of current H1B visas. The numbers contradict what you are saying.

Outsourcing is likely a far larger cause for lower wages in technical jobs than H1B visas, at least for jobs that can be outsourced reasonably easily.

I would be opposed to increasing the number of H1B visas, and I support enforcing the laws regarding them, however doing away with them completely would be extremely harmful for our economy.

If you create to much of a shortage of technical workers you also end up making outsourcing much more cost effective, and you make it so that it is much cheaper to do a lot of development efforts elsewhere. You literally risk harming the United State's technical edge by driving technical work away.

We need to make better efforts at preventing abuses, but if we just go heavy handed on the protectionism, we will inevitably hurt ourselves.

10 posted on 05/15/2007 11:05:14 AM PDT by untrained skeptic
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To: untrained skeptic

Look, if you can’t find an american to do the job you will have no issue paying a premium fee to bring in a foreigner.

Sorry, but H1B is an abject scam, at best 5% of those in this country are here out of true need, the rest are just companies effectively getting slave labor and depressing wages.

You can’t look me in the eye and tell me Bayer Corp, or Sony can’t find a Java Developer that’s a citizen... yet they have H1Bs doing those jobs, along with tons of other companies.

H1B is a SCAM, and ABSOLUTE SCAM.. sure I am sure you can find an individual case or two that actually meet the original critieria of the program, but they are the VAST exception.

Sorry 10-20% is not remotely enough of a fee, because the minimum wage portions of H1B are generally 20-25% or even more under the going market rate for the work they are doing. So, no, 100k fee for an H1B worker per year would NOT kill a start up company. What is a start up company doing that requires such skill that no native born american can be found to do the work???????? Be serious. I worked in start ups for more than a decade, even had a few go public, and yes the ones I was with that went public are still around, unlike all the scam ones. If a company needs someone to do that work so badly and absolutely no american can be found to do it, then 100k fee for the H1B worker you must import, period.

Fact is simple, if their need is that specific that no one in america can do the job, they’ll gladly pay the fee.. reality is, this is RARELY the case. H1B mimium wage settings are at least 20% below market rate, in many cases and many markets (because it isn’t adjusted for higher dollar markets) it can be 50% below the market rate, so a 10-20% fee would do NOTHING to stop abuse.

H1B is a scam, and it conintues to be a scam, its nothing more than a wage depressor funded and sanctioned by our own government on the middle class, and upper middle classes. It is to skilled work what illegals are for unskilled, pure and simple.


11 posted on 05/15/2007 11:18:45 AM PDT by HamiltonJay
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