The US has a big problem with visas. They are too hard to come by, don’t promote immigration, don’t facilitate entrepreneurship, and don’t encourage highly qualified people to stay in this country.
Specifically, I am talking about the H-1B Visa. These are the visas that are provided for individuals that are going to work at one company. Employment is also strictly limited to the sponsoring company. If that sponsorship falls through, then the individual has to secure a new sponsorship or return to their home country.
The issues with this are may:
- America loses product workers when these workers have to return home as H-1B visa holders are more productive than the average American. These workers are also quite tech savvy and are usually experts in their field (why else would they be sought after by sponsoring companies)
- The system does not encourage entrepreneurship as visa holders are precluded from becoming an owner in a startup while working at a sponsor company.
- Once an individual has completed their job they are not encouraged to stay in the US where they can use their new skills and contacts to start new companies. Instead, they return home and do so.
- While not an issue now, these workers are creating entrepreneurial centers in China, India, South America, and Eastern Europe that could rival the US and Silicon Valley specifically. In order to maintain our technological lead we must do everything in our power to encourage the best and brightest to come to the US and to build family, companies and long-term roots.
There are of course other issues that discourage bringing the best and brightest here:
- A protectionist populism that has infected Washington DC and other parts of the country that discourages H-1B visas and all forms of immigration.
- A tax structure that makes it difficult to run a profitable business.
- Regulations that make it hard to hire and fire employees in response to the market.
I suggest we start simple and fix the H-1B visa issue by:
- If someone is awarded an H-1B visa they should be allowed to stay indefinitely
- Once their employment is up for any reason (save gross negligence) with the sponsoring company they should be allowed to work at any company and the new company won’t be required to sponsor them
- Encourage them to bring their families to the US to live and work as well
- H-1B visas should not limit individuals to working at the sponsoring company but should be allowed and encouraged to start additional businesses
Once these are out of the way, then we can tackle the other political boondoggles!
About nathan kaiser
The glut of cheap H-1B labor is a bigger problem.
The H-1B program needs to be scrapped completely.
“A protectionist populism that has infected Washington DC and other parts of the country that discourages H-1B visas and all forms of immigration. ”
Translation – people are finally seeing through the lies of this despicable program
How about performance based caps on emploment based immigration… say 10% of the prior year’s growth in the occupation.
Seems fair to me, no domestic employment growth, no visas.
Nathan, great post. I couldn’t agree more.
@Brando, it’s interesting you feel that there is a glut of H-1B labor… as someone who has been on the hiring side of high tech labor for over 15 years now, I haven’t seen a glut in the type of talent I’m looking for. In fact finding a talented software engineers is one of the hardest jobs I’ve had in my career. I’ve never had a case where I’ve said “wow there are just too many good people to choose from”.
@Will, can you elaborate on what the lies of the despicable program are? I’m assuming you are against the program, but you haven’t articulated a reasoned response as to why you are against it.
@Weaver, the concern I have as a business is I want to be able to hire the best and brightest in the world to help make my business a success. I’ve never sought out “non-domestic” talent, I’ve simply looked for the best talent. When I find that right person, its incredibly frustrating to be told “sorry, you can’t hire that person because they’re not from our country… you’ll have to settle for this less talented person who is from our country”. I suspect my experiences are pretty common… we hire for talent, and try to deal with visa issues after we’ve found the right person.
My sense is there’s a myth out there that somehow these H1B laborers are willing to work for less, and therefore are squeezing out more qualified local talent. In my experience I’ve never seen that. Firstly because this talent is not cheaper, in fact it’s often more expensive; and secondly because I would never be in the situation where I’m passing over a more qualified engineer for a less qualified one. I always want to hire the best, smartest, sharpest, most talented engineer.
The BIG problem the US has with Corporate Visas are fraud and abuse. Corporate visa programs like the H-1b and L-1 benefit Corporations, not citizens.
Guest workers – it is a fact that you are taking away jobs from US citizens – people who are just as talented as you – people who because of corporate greed are losing their homes and struggling to keep families fed.
Senators Durbin and Grassley are taking action to fix widespread fraud and abuse in H-1b and L-1 visa programs – and importantly allow US citizens a fair chance to compete for jobs in our own country.
I urge guest workers to NOT come to the US until our economy improves. You will be more welcome in the future when every day Americans are able to reclaim their American dream.
thank you
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It seems you struck a nerve. In full disclosure, I came to the US in a H1-B visa and I’m a citizen now.
I think your points are great. Most protectionist (in any country) are focused on short term benefits, which end up looking very stupid 20 years later. Case in point: In the 50s and 60s Brazil wanted to develop its own auto industry, so they made it absolutely illegal to import cars or even to own an imported car. It did develop the auto industry on the 70s and 80s. But what happens if there is no “outside” competition: the industry becomes lazy. By the early 90s Brazilian cars were a piece of junk.
In that sense, any Visa program (from any country) is a form of protectionist. I don’t think you need a Visa if you were born in Idaho an want to move to California, so why do countries have Visa programs? Or why there is the concept of being a citizen of a country. Shouldn’t everyone living on that city, state or country be a citizen of that place?
This is very utopian and it will not happen (at least on the next 500 years), but ideally everyone would be citizen of Earth and live and work wherever they want.
Back to the H1B Visa. There has been a study published over the last few weeks proving that H1B Visa holders make less money. The easy way to interpret that data is to think like populists that call it “cheaper labor”, but the reality is that H1B Visa holders don’t have the same negotiation power with their companies as a citizen has. All engineers at Microsoft start at the same salary level, but an american can go to his boss after 12 months he’s there and say “I got an offer from another company” and if he’s good he’ll be offered a raise to stay. An H1B holder cannot do that.
Finally, to the @laidoff comment above, H1B/L1 do benefit citizens because it create strong American corporations, thus pumping trillions of dollars into the economy and into the federal/state/local government.
Great post Nathan!
It doesn’t look like they are as hard to come by as they once were. Normally the government limited 65k H-1B visas are gone in days; however, this year there are still 15k (23%) left.
http://bit.ly/51gw6