However, plans don't always go as you want. This morning a Huffington post article made the rounds in my twitter feed and since H1B was an issue that was floated around last week as well ("there's a draft that the president will soon sign"), I thought I'd tackle it instead.
Mainly because while the article seems to make some sense - especially to people who want to think "immigrants are taking the jobs from Americans" and the people who think "immigrants on H1Bs are getting vastly underpaid and this will help them" - while in essence it is talking about a very specific subset of jobs and people and dragging it to an "over all conclusion" that is non correct (or to the very least should acknowledge that this is not the whole story).
Also note that the article doesn't mention the idea of H1Bs being the visa for a lot of other workers in other sectors; non-profits (NGOs), post-docs in academia, pharma or other places. These places doesn't have the same salaries as Silicon Valley Tech and are not of the authors main priority as coming from the computer science field. It is worth noting that the far reaching suggestions in the article doesn't take these various places into account though.
First of all, anyone who reads this blog knows I'm an immigrant and I grew up in a place where there were unions, collective bargaining and student representatives present with voting rights when hiring professors at universities. This also means that I read any type of suggestions for "this is for the best of workers" with extra interest, simply because I grew up hearing that the USA didn't really care that much about workers but about the companies/employers.
I wouldn't mind having salaries public, so everyone in a company knows what everyone makes. Nor would I dislike having "similar salaries for similar jobs" and a suggestion from the legislature/union on what the job should pay. Neither of which is a reality in my state of the USA and everyone negotiates on their own. It's one of those "nice American opportunities where you as a skilled worker can argue your case and get lots of money if you are good". (Used a lot in the private sector, especially in finance/law/tech.) And one of the reasons companies who want to attract the best of the best have a lot of freedom to do so.
This article is a prime example of such a thing as posing as "this is thinking about the American worker and their salaries and the future of the country" while muddling the waters with all these odd ball comments that don't line up apart from "blame the immigrants"*. While in reality one should look at what the companies are doing when they are hiring "the cheapest labor" rather than "the skills needed for the job" and look further than to blame the lowest person on the scale.
Let's start with facts. H1B visas are for skilled workers. This means that there has to be a degree specification in the job advert and that the level needs to claim required - required to perform said job, not preferred or "if you have it, that's nice" but "you NEED this to do the job". (Anecdotal story; I applied and got hired for an industry job where the job ad stated "PhD preferred" [since they wanted to hire the best fit for the job and keeping it open to many applicants]. Thus not making it possible for me or anyone else to apply for an H1Bvisa since that wasn't eligible for that category. This "required" is an important point and piece of the puzzle, as you will see if you read the article since the author wants to use this to argue how immigrants take away from American workers.
Second, there is no obligation to pay _only_ the salary that is the limit for the H1B. If you want to hire someone who wants more money than the H1B floor because they negotiate well and you find them worth it - and that person turns out to be American - that's your choice (you might have to argue with HR and make sure that you didn't mislabel the level of work, but that's not the H1B issue). There is no "we have to hire the person with the lowest bidder for salary" for companies, especially not for "for profit Silicon Valley Tech companies". You think they ask their higher level candidates who wants the least? This is mixing two different things together as seen in passage below, which is directly arguing these two points. Maybe you can see what I mean that there are some difficulties getting both the arguments working with each other? Adding in the middle is the idea that "Americans are out competed by immigrants from their own universities to do doctorate degrees [that might not even be needed - in the second part - my emphasis] and these doctorate degrees are also on a visa status that should be curbed.
"The industry especially asserts a need to hire H-1Bs with a PhD, citing the fact that 50 percent of computer science doctorates in the U.S. are granted to foreign students. What they are hiding in that claim is that it simply doesn’t pay for an American student (i.e. U.S. citizen or permanent resident) to pursue doctoral study, as the salary premium for a doctorate is too small. That small wage premium is due to the flooding of the market by foreign applicants,[my emphasis] something correctly forecase with approbation by the National Science Foundation years ago. The industry claim is doubly deceptive, as they are not very keen to hire PhDs because this level of study just isn’t needed. We actually have a surplus of computer science PhDs; 11.3 percent of them are involuntarily working in a non-computer science field."
and further down in the article:
Employers claim that they hire H-1Bs for rare skill sets or outstanding talent ― traits that they would need to pay a premium for on the open market. Yet current law requires only that they pay the average wage.
But research performed at the University of Michigan and Rutgers University, as well as my own work for the Economic Policy Institute, shows that the former foreign students now in the U.S. workforce tend to be weaker than their American peers. On a per capita basis, the former foreign students in computer science file fewer patents, are less likely to work in research and development and have degrees from less selective U.S. universities.
All of this writing and not once approaching the idea that employers - these massive tech companies and venture capital driven start ups in Silicon Valley - have any responsibilities of looking over their requirements or that maybe they are overstating what they need in order to do the work. I mean, IF the jobs are over stated just to attract and hire H1B people (which sounds plausible), when the jobs then are downgraded to not be eligible for H1B since the salary would be too high - the specific people the author is worried about wouldn't
a)get more money (downgraded the job requirements, remember -> less salary)
b)might not even apply since they are overqualified (thus would make them underpaid and overqualified if they get the job)
Maybe what is needed for this to be "fixed" would be more oversight on "how do you level/grade your job adverts to be eligable for the H1B visas" from the government and not leave it to the companies to make this up on their own? (Not that I think this would solve too much but it would solve a little. It sure as mud would place the responsibility where it should be, at the company and the government level. I'm sure you can't get an H1B level application on a janitor job advert for example so there has to be some oversight already.)
But nothing really showed the true idea of the article until the last paragraphs, if anyone ever reads that far anymore?
This approach would give the visas to those who can truly make exceptional contributions to our economy and society. If there is real interest in draining the swamp, [my emphasis] this is a great place to start.
Talk about missing the mark so completely, while stating where your political affiliations lie ever so clearly, author Dr Professor from UC Davis.
*I don't get why it's not even a whisper on how the companies, IF they want the best person and currently not getting that, could change how the look for talent. But I do understand it's easier to blame the immigrants for all of this. It's always easier to blame the little guy, especially is they're not even American.
**applicants - let's not get confused that they are even hired at this stage. They shouldn't even be allowed to apply to the position.
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