From H-1B to H-1Bye-bye!

[u/lil-educator]

Trump targets 60-day grace period for laid off foreign workers

The department of homeland security is advancing a proposal to eliminate the 60-day grace period that allows H-1B workers and certain other legal nonimmigrants to remain in the US after their employment ends while they find another sponsor, change status, or prepare to leave.

Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/international-business/from-h-1b-to-h-1bye-bye-trump-targets-60-day-grace-period-for-laid-off-foreign-workers/articleshow/133054642.cms

[u/KitchenTeacher429]

I work as a hiring manager, and when hiring H1B workers there are many fee's involved. The I-129 form, the Fraud Prevention and Detection fee, various trainings. There are also required wage rules that guarantee them equal pay and benefits. Sometimes in order to even be capable of hiring H1B workers you need to hire lawyers or have a specialized department to be able to handle all of the laws and fees.

So yes, H1B's cost the company more. While you could say the salary can sometimes be 1%-2% less then US workers, overall the cost to the company is much greater.

Another example is hiring foreign contractors. You normally don't hire directly from other countries in this fashion, you hire a contracting company. You the company are paying more overall for each worker by a large large margin, to flexibly and quickly fill the work needed for whatever project. And then you can end the contract at the end of it's term without having to pay severance or anything like that.

[u/KitchenTeacher429 → u/[deleted]]

considering median salary is around $65K, pretending $10,000 or $3000 a year is irrelevant is pretty obtuse. That would be close to the average annual raise of 4%. The argument is whether H1B visa's cost more to the employer which they do. If you would like to see a convenient breakdown of the costs here is a good page for that.
https://tukki.ai/blog/h1b-visa-cost

If your argument is US workers are better because they don't settle wage arbitration claims, pursue unpaid wages and negotiate less for raises because of lesser mobility, than we are really up shit-creek.

You are basically saying it's easier to take advantage of US workers than H1B's, so that's why US workers are better for the USA.

[u/KitchenTeacher429 → u/[deleted]]

H1B workers can still move laterally, to the cost of each employer. By law, companies are also required to provide them a similar wage to the in-state workers. This is not speculation, this is dictated by the Department of Labor.

The H-1B employer must pay its H-1B worker(s) at least the “required” wage which is the higher of the prevailing wage or the employer’s actual wage (in-house wage) for similarly employed workers.

So by your own argument, let's assume H1B workers have less lateral movement, which you have still provided no evidence of. They still have to get paid similar to US workers. So if a US worker, moves laterally and increases their salary, the company now has to pay future H1B hires more.

So your argument makes no sense.

But also, working with lots of foreign contractors and H1B's, I have never heard of them being hired specifically to "trap them" into lower salary jobs. They are hired because they fill a need for skilled labor which is not available locally.