Posted on 02/22/2016 4:59:48 AM PST by Read Write Repeat
Tom Giovanetti is president of the Institute for Policy Innovation.
In this corner: A number of employers, particularly tech companies, who claim they have a large number of unfilled positions and can’t find enough skilled American workers to fill all their needs, and thus need to attract skilled foreign workers through an expanded H-1B visa program.
In the opposite corner: Immigration skeptics, including probably every unemployed programmer in the country, who think tech companies simply prefer to hire cheaper imported labor rather than more expensive American workers. From this perspective, even one unemployed American tech worker is proof that the H-1B program undermines citizen employment.
How shall we break this impasse and make progress on what should be one of the easiest incremental reforms in the immigration reform debate? A bipartisan commission likely to end in gridlock? Raw political "we won, you lost" power? Further inaction, which just exacerbates the problem?
Here’s a better idea — a market mechanism that would determine once and for all not only who is right, but what the market-clearing price for skilled immigrant labor actually is, thus informing future immigration policy formation.
Of all the controversial elements of proposed immigration reform plans, the H-1B visa impasse should be the easiest to solve.
Right now, H-1B visas are issued on a first come, first served basis, for a flat fee, and the number is arbitrarily capped. Such a system tells us nothing about how much an H-1B visa (and thus a skilled immigrant worker) is actually worth to an employer. And because the number is capped and the fee low, the system actually encourages a lottery or jackpot approach — in other words, employers would apply for as many visas as possible, hoping to get enough. This is an irrational system.
It would make much more sense to allocate H-1B visas via an auction process. If H-1B visas were auctioned to employers each year in a sealed-bid process, with the bids allocated from highest to lowest until the available permits were exhausted, supply and demand would establish the market-clearing price for the right to hire a skilled immigrant worker.
Because of the likely higher fees resulting from the auction mechanism, employers would have no incentive to hire an immigrant worker if an equivalent American worker were available, which would lead to more accurately determining areas where shortages of American workers actually exist.
Additionally, it has been estimated that such a process could raise significant revenue, perhaps as much as $1 billion annually, which could be directed toward funding improvements in border control, a biometric entry and exit system and other features of a modernized immigration system.
Further, these new, market-determined H-1B visas should be transferable between employers, which would allow for further gathering of value information and market efficiency through a dynamic allocation of skilled immigrant workers.
Such a system would effectively price the value of skilled immigrant workers to the U.S. economy, informing immigration policy decisions, providing tech employers with more certainty and particularly serving to help determine how many H-1B visas are made available based on market forces rather than the arbitrary fiat dictates of bureaucrats.
Of all the controversial elements of proposed immigration reform plans, the H-1B visa impasse should be the easiest to solve. Moving the allocation decision from an arbitrary process to a market-clearing auction should settle the debate over our economy’s demand for skilled immigrant labor, and an incremental success in our highly controversial immigration debate might help break the immigration reform impasse in other areas, as well.
This abused program needs to die. Killing it is the only fix.
Now, explain to me how there is a shortage of qualified, American workers for all these positions out there......
These companies are using H1B's for cost reduction -- period. Don't believe the lie.
H1B is very easy to fix. That it hasn’t been done indicates that certain big political contributors like the system the way it is.
“These companies are using H1B’s for cost reduction — period. Don’t believe the lie. “
Right on!
Not only that, they are exporting these skills back to their home countries, which is just making this a positive feedback for demand of H1Bs
There is one really simple solution that would fix the problem. Simply require that a position being filled with an H-1B visa worker be paid the median salary for that job, plus 10%.
I still maintain that it is an outright lie that H-1Bs are getting lower pay. I’m in IT and I just don’t see it. They are living on the same wages Americans get, buying property, vacationing, etc.
What I see in these people is degrees that don’t equate to US tech degrees and a lack of ingenuity with a mindset of “We do whatever the boss says” attitude. They won’t confront management on techniques or ideas and therefore these companies become stale and unproductive while Americans get their walking papers.
These visa programs are unAmerican and so are the big IT companies.
The H1B program is a scam. Abolishing it is the only solution. There is absolutely no shortage of American born workers to fill these positions. Companies just use the program to depress wages and have virtual slaves as employees. The entire premise that you need a foreigner to write code or administer hardware because there isn’t enough domestic talent is complete garbage.
Still you don’t learn.
A free people cannot be made slaves.
THEREFORE THEY IMPORT THEM FROM CULTURES WHERE SLAVERY IS ACCEPTED!
No.
Just end it.
Allowing any type of immigration — legal or illegal — with the “percent not in the workforce” and “not working” rates is not only national suicide, it is cultural suicide as well.
We are letting in hordes who are only here to parasite off the US dollar and our standard of living.
The next H1b that you meet if they are planning on becoming a citizen, ask them if we got into a war would they send their children to fight to defend America.
You will be amazed at how casually they say, “Of course not. We’ll go back home.”
You see, it is the responsibility of long-standing Americans to send our sons to fight and die for the “land of opportunity”...so that THEY can take advantage of that opportunity without having to risk anything.
You don’t understand the economics of why business seek out H-1B visas. They do so because it is cheaper to hire them than to pay for Americans. REMOVE that incentive by mandating the median wage plus 10% and businesses loose the will to bring those workers in.
That would just result in employers low-balling the position, and labeling the job as an entry level "junior developer", but demanding the candidate have a PhD in Computer Science.
Vote Trump.
Problem, Solution.
That is why the H-1B needs to go. Wages will rise and it will attract STEM majors.
Ummm... How about just getting rid of this America-last program once and for all? It’s time to take care of our own first and foremost.
Sorry, but the law already has a “prevailing wage” requirement, but its a joke... I can hire an H1B legally for easily 40% less than I can an American, or even more in high dollar markets, and still remain in the letter of the law... Top it off that once I “sponsor” that person he’s a virtual slave to me and virtually can go nowhere else.
The H1B is a scam, the only solution to it is to abolish it.
Sorry, but the law already has a “prevailing wage” requirement, but its a joke... I can hire an H1B legally for easily 40% less than I can an American, or even more in high dollar markets, and still remain in the letter of the law... Top it off that once I “sponsor” that person he’s a virtual slave to me and virtually can go nowhere else.
The H1B is a scam, the only solution to it is to abolish it.
We graduate more STEM folks then there are jobs for them every year already... the STEM shortage does not exist. H1B is a flat out SCAM.. nothing more. The only solution is to abolish it.
What keeps these folks from going indy? I currently work in an office with a lot of H1B contractors from India, and more than once we have seen them depart for a different contract house.
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