Comment by surgical_fire
6 hours ago
> the wage suppression
Do immigrants earn less than locals?
My impression is that the salary is similar. I am not in the US, but I rejected job offers from across the pond in the past and the salary seemed to be on the level with what I know is paid in the US for that position.
My guess is that what they like in H1B workers is that they are sort of stuck with that employer, as changing jobs under such a Visa can be tricky no?
This is the wrong logic. Immigrants can make exactly the same as natives and still suppress wages.
Fundamentally how prices are set is someone sets a price, and if there are no takers they change the price. If a company offers a salary, and they bring in an H1-B to fill the role, they don't have to raise the salary. Over time it suppresses the wage.
Something else worth mentioning is that the companies are conferring a valuable benefit that they generally don't have to pay for: The promise of US citizenship for the employee and (eventually) their family.
If that was the case, why would they have to hide the job offer? If no American citizen is going to take the job at the lower pay, there is no need to hide the offer from them. If they are going to take the lower pay, there is no advantage to hire an H1-B.
Presuming we're talking about the job offers from the article, it's for PERM, part of the process for green cards, not for H1B. As far as I know, you don't need to post a job offer to consider local candidates for someone to apply for an H1B, only for them to get permanent residence.
Employee works for a company under an H1B, company likes their work, wants them to stay longer (H1B has a max of 6 years unless you sponsor the employee for permanent residence). Employee doesn't want to be in this weird temporary worker status forever (and again, after 6 years they'll need to), so the company has two choices: either hire a new employee, hope they've as good as the one you already have under the H1B, train them up to be as familiar with the job and its work as the H1B, and then forget about getting the existing employee permanent residence, OR, just sponsor them for the PERM process, put out a job ad with a really low likelihood of anyone applying, and move on with their lives.
The way the PERM process is set up, there's really no reason not to do the hidden job ad, it's not really regulated against, there's not much financial harm in doing it, and they already have an employee they like and who wants to stay, so for those two parties (and presumably anyone who likes working with this person, and any friends they have in America and so on), there's no reason not to just put out the hidden job ad.
As far as I understand it, it's not just that they need for no American citizen to take the job. They need for no American citizen to apply for it.
Well that's precisely what they say on the visa sponsorship "we can't find the talent", no you can't find the talent at that price.
This assumes that the number of jobs in the US is magically fixed.
The thing is that all these mega-corporations have offices across the world, but currently want to hire in the US. You and I want our personal jobs to be expensive, but we don't want the prospect of hiring us where we live to be too expensive. And even aside from cost, you also don't want them to say "there's not enough employees there, it's not worth hiring."[0]
[0] I'm technically no longer living in the US, but I was until recently.
Yes, but because the H1-B holders have to find a new employer within 2 weeks or lose their visa, the threat of firing is the same thing as deportation, making for a form of indentured servitude. That forced loyalty, more than the salary, is the real draw.
It's 60 days, not 2 weeks, and you can transfer an H1B over to a new job within that 60 days, or if you know you're going to be terminated (e.g. you're on a PIP) then you can transfer the H1B to a new employer anyway.
Wouldn't say it's necessarily easy to do so, but it's not an automatic deported from the country kind of deal.
Even 60 days is a short timescale to find, be interviewed for, and accept a job in a technical field. My last job application took nearly that much time just from the first interview to an accepted offer, and that's without the added complication of transferring visa status.
I don't think wages are suppressed because immigrant tech workers make less money. Instead, It seems like the effect of the dramatically increased supply of workers would dominate, effectively lowering wages; i.e., you can pay less money for a job the more workers there are to take the job.
If you look at the total cost of an employee and not just an annual salary, then the fact that they have far less mobility makes them cheaper. Why hire the person who will bail when you mistreat them so you have to spend all that time and money finding someone new when you can have someone who risks deportation if they decide they are done with your bullshit.
I could afford to spend the next six months out of work looking for a replacement job. No one on an H1B can because they would be in violation of their visa. They will tolerate far more nonsense than I will.
That does make a lot of sense, yes. It's partially the reason why I never wanted to move to the US - I value the labor protection I enjoy in Europe, the ability to switch jobs when I so desire, and a clear path to citizenship.
H1B always sounded to me like a shitty deal for the immigrant, and it also does seem to be detrimental to native workers.