Talk:H-1B visa/Archive 4

Training and Fees - Programs do NOT support displaced IT workers
I found a good report on training and fees so it has been added to the article. The majority of the training paid for by the fees are nursing programs or intro IT programs not programs for displaced skilled tech workers.

Patriotmouse (talk) 17:55, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Proposal to remove last sentence from Fraud paragraph
It is conjecture and untrue as far as I know, with no citation " Subsequently, USCIS has made procedural changes to reduce the number of fraud and technical violations on H-1B applications.[citation needed]"

If I am wrong someone let me know. thanks. Patriotmouse (talk) 17:58, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Second Paragraph Update Proposal
"H-1B work-authorization is strictly limited to employment by the sponsoring employer." As far as I know this is NOT correct otherwise how could Tata, Cognizant, Infosys, and others contract out their H-1Bs to american companies. Anyone want to dispute it? If not, let's remove this sentence as "propaganda" it's just not true. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Patriotmouse (talk • contribs) 02:08, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

The official rule is complex. A H-1B CAN work offsite for another employer (be bodyshopped) if they are managed by someone from their sponsoring company with regards to tasks assigned, and not managed by the company they are offsite at. Here is the info from the official letter from USCIS: The USCIS will consider the following to make such a determination (with no one factor being decisive): 1. Does the H1B petitioner supervise the H1B employee / worker and is such supervision off-site or on-site? 2. If the supervision is off-site, how does the H1B petitioner maintain such supervision, i.e. weekly calls, reporting back to main office routinely, or site visits by the petitioner? 3. Does the petitioner have the right to control the work of the H1B worker on a day-to-day basis if such control is required? 4. Does the petitioner provide the tools or instrumentalities needed for the H1B worker to perform the duties of employment? 5. Does the petitioner hire, pay, and have the ability to fire the H1B employee? 6. Does the petitioner evaluate the work-product of the H1B worker, i.e. progress/performance reviews? 7. Does the petitioner claim the H1B employee for tax purposes? 8. Does the petitioner provide the H1B worker any type of employee benefits? 9. Does the H1B employee use proprietary information of the petitioner in order to perform the duties of employment? 10. Does the beneficiary produce an end-product that is directly linked to the petitioner's line of business? 11. Does the petitioner have the ability to control the manner and means in which the work product of the H1B worker is accomplished? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Patriotmouse (talk • contribs) 04:21, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, that is basically how it works.
 * An H-1B beneficiary can only be employed by the sponsoring employer. The employer can, in the course of his business, send his employees to work at some client site. The H-1B beneficiary, even if he or she performs work at a client site, continues to be an employee of the H-1B-sponsoring employer. This is the business model of consulting companies like Tata, Infosys, etc. Again, it does not change the fact that the H-1B beneficiary is an employee of the consulting company.
 * Of course, this has to be for real, that's where the employer-employee relationship (right to control, etc.) comes into play. jfeise (talk) 04:28, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks jfeise. It's a bit of a fudge because it lets the politicians go "Oh we dont allow bodyshopping of H-1Bs" but then... they do. But they make it complicated so that its not easy to argue politically. For the article, its a tone issue. The tone of the article on H-1B is wrong because the intro paragraph makes it sound like bodyshopping has finally been outlawed, when it hasnt. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Patriotmouse (talk • contribs) 04:39, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Using terms like "bobyshopping" is already pushing a POV. Fact is that every business decides what their employees work on. Companies that accept contract work exist outside of the H-1B program as well. For example, every construction company sends their employees to work on the premises of some other company, e.g., to erect a building for that other company. A company sending people on H-1B to the premises of another company to perform work there is the same process: A client has a need for work to be performed, and contracts that out to another company.
 * The rules USCIS came up with help to prevent abuse, which the term "bodyshopping" has been used to describe. jfeise (talk) 04:53, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that "bodyshopping" is already a pov its a technique. The new rules do not stop it, they simply require a h-1B provider company "manager" to be involved in assignments of work. Granted not as egregious as was practiced from 1995-2005. While the new direction is TRYING to limit this bad practice. Here is the issue. To make a profit, they establish that the LCA for the job is KENTUCKY, then they "bodyshop" legally the workers out to NYC or Sunnyvale where the LCA prevailing wage is double. And since they argue their workers are on the low end of the scale, they are earning three times what they are paying their H-1B workers with this dodge. Since it is as you say complying with the new rules as a subcontract, its perfectly legal. BUT it is OUTSIDE THE INTENT and NEED that the H-1B program was designed to fulfill. It was not created as a way for shady companies to make money with outside labor by undercutting american workers with lower wages. But this practice is still the bread and butter of cognizant, infosys, tata, and even IBM has gotten in on the game (people are waking up to the fact that IBM no longer means quality work and their stock has suffered). Patriotmouse (talk) 17:55, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
 * You are wrong about the LCA stuff. Unfortunately, there is lots of distortion, half-truths, and outright lies about this out there. The LCA has to specify the work location (metropolitan area.) So, it is not allowed for a company to get an LCA for a rural area and then have the person work in a different part of the country with a higher prevailing wage. And these things are nowadays checked, with unannounced visits at the worksite by USCIS personnel. Please educate yourself about the LCA and H-1B rules before making unfounded assumptions. jfeise (talk) 01:18, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

First Sentence INCORRECTLY MENTIONS TWICE that this is a TEMPORARY visa which if patently untrue. Also numbers issued need updating
You can't have the first sentence lead off with two mentions that this is a temporary visa when more than HALF of the people use it to get a green card and stay forever. And there is NOTHING barring them from doing so. The last numbers issues indicate that 365,000 visas were issued according to the DOL official site. So that needs to be updated. There is still no action by Trump so that might be added — Preceding unsigned comment added by Patriotmouse (talk • contribs) 01:21, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
 * It is correct. INA (Immigration and Nationality Act) 101(a)(15). The H-1B is a temporary work visa which allows immigration intent:
 * "(15) The term "immigrant" means every alien except an alien who is within one of the following classes of nonimmigrant aliens ... (H) an alien (i) (b)... who is coming temporarily to the United States to perform services..."
 * The fact that the H-1B is often used as "stepping stone" towards a Green Card is orthogonal to the temporary nature of the H-1B. It is owed to the fact that the H-1B allows immigration intent, like a few other non-immigrant visas, e.g., the L-1.
 * No comment about the numbers. jfeise (talk) 04:19, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

It's flat out balderdash. They've been claiming this "non-immigrant" shit for decades but their last official post showed 55% became PERMANENT. It's political GIBBERISH! To call it a non-immigrant visa temporary with option for green card is NONSENSE! If it WERE a nonimmigrant visa there would be NO PATH To citizenship. One might say the government refers to this visa as "non-immigrant" even though it has a path to citizenship.

OK here's the problem for the article. By saying over and over in the introduction that its non-immigrant it mistates the truth and use of the visa. the VAST MAJORITY get on the visa as a path to citizenship. That is the KEY REASON they take it and why it has such value for them. It's a path to american citizenship which one group estimated at being worht over 400k. So it's fine to put that in the details of the article, but the TONE for the beginning saying over and over "temporary, non-immigrant" is just misleading. It's a tricky technical classification which is basically the government lying.
 * Wikipedia is notWP:SOAP. You can voice your opinions on your own website/blog. For Wikipedia, it matters what the references say. And the law reference says that the H-1B is a temporary work visa. jfeise (talk) 01:22, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

statement by Dr. Gene Nelson
The retrogression issue and an attempt to "recapture" unused visa numbers from previous years was added to the Senate bill late in the process, so that the controversial changes were less likely to be detected. However, due to the House Majority leader, Rep. Tom DeLay being under indictment for violation of State of Texas election rules barring particular uses of corporate money, DeLay was unable (or unwilling) to push for passage in the House. Restrictionist groups such as http://www.NumbersUSA.com also played a role in having the immigration provisions stripped from the bill that emerged from the House - Senate Conference Committee that was signed by President Bush.

A general note regarding the lack of neutrality of this article: There is scant mention made of the huge direct and opportunity costs incurred by a trained U.S. technical professional when they are permanently displaced by a H-1B visa holder. As one of these professionals, who has twice testified in the U.S. House of Representatives, I view the article as extremely biased. We are neglected stakeholders. The article tone is closer to "Wikipedia endorses this visa program."

Here are some items to lend more balance: http://www.AnAmericanScam.com My website documents some of the connections between corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff and corporations such as Microsoft that have procured expansions of the controversial H-1B visa program. ____________________________________________________________

Watch for my upcoming book: An American Scam - How Special Interests Undermine American Security with Endless "Techie" Gluts e-mail the author for a gratis 37 - page special Congressional Summary, updated in January, 2006 ____________________________________________________________

See my two published articles in The Social Contract. Please view the much more readable PDF version, whose link appears on the page.

Colleges have become Career Destruction Factories (Spring, 2005) http://www.thesocialcontract.com/cgi-bin/showarticle.pl?articleID=1313&terms=

How NOT to 'Solve' the Social Security Problem (Summer, 1999) http://www.thesocialcontract.com/cgi-bin/showarticle.pl?articleID=810&terms=

____________________________________________________________

Dr. Gene Nelson Dallas, Texas  USA    c0030180[at]airmail.net Please substitute "@" for "[at]" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.96.97.168 (talk) 18:19, 25 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Your site on "AnAmericanScam" is not functioning. I get the following:
 * The requested resource is currently locked. The lock must be released or proper identification given before the method can be applied. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Offshore1 (talk • contribs) 00:32, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

2007 cap in one day
to be short just link — Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.13.251.146 (talk) 19:07, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

contradictory claims in outsourcing section
The section on Indian outsourcing stated "Technically, an H1-B visa is an immigration visa. However, in defense to the critics the Indian industry has made clear that H1-B is not an immigration visa and the practice of using the visa to facilitate transferring of work from the US to lower paid workers in Indian is perfectly acceptable. 'The Indian IT industry and NASSCOM ...urge that work permits and intra-company transfers should not be intermingled and confused with immigration.'"

In fact, H1B visas are non-immigrant visas. Both the Wikipedia article and the US government [] say so. Far from being an indication of some nefarious plan, the Indian IT quote simply states existing US visa policy.

Since the section was factually incorrect, contradicted the rest of the H1B article, and gave a quote that didn't contribute anything to the discussion, I just removed it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jcarnelian (talk • contribs) 13:38, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Can you please be leave behind your POVs
I do not know if you understand this but Wikipedia is supposed to provide information, not viewpoint. Eg. in this article the first line is ' H1B is a controversial program.....' Compare that with

' H1B is a program...... There have been controversies about it....'

Maybe the extreme urge to pour in one's extreme personal vitriol / frustration leads people to not see the above. Please, this is not a blog or a discussion forum, this is an encyclopedia. Step back, look at what you just edited, and judge for yourself if that sounds like information or your personal rant. How on earth can a website titled 'he claims to have seen H1B fraud first hand' be encyclopedic? I am sorry but personal websites of unnamed people with random unsubstantiated rant is not encyclopedic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Matt1605 (talk • contribs) 14:40, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

''The fact that there is so much polarized bickering *here* is documentation alone that it is "controversial". Web searches will verify that it is controversial. The controversy itself even made the cover of Information Week, if I am not mistaken (or was it Computer World?). Anyhow, here is an example from Computer World titled "H-1B Remains a Hot-Button Issue"'' — Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.231.167.68 (talk) 19:28, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the last comment. It would be incomplete to describe a partisan program without mentioning that it is partisan. In particular, the suggested use of the words "have been" in the first comment indicates incorrectly that the controversy is in the past. EB. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.88.105.212 (talk) 07:15, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

H1b visa cap
THe H1b visa cap has been mentioned as being 65,000 per year. There is a proposal, S2611, sponsored by Arlen Specter in the 109th congress, to increase this to 115,000 per year, but it did not pass.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:S.2611.PCS:

The annual "limit" on H-1B visas, such as it is, is over 85K, not 65K. Reporting it as 65K would be misleading. It is broken down as follows, according to information obtained from the USCIS web site (I'd give a URL, but they keep moving it around and the last time I checked it was a temporary, dynamically created page): 1,400 nationals of Chile; 5,400 nationals of Singapore; 20,000 with master's and doctor's degrees from US colleges and universities; 58,200 with "bachelor's degrees or equivalent experience" from any hole-in-the-wall in the world; unlimited visas for those employed by non-profit research outfits; unlimited visas for those employed for local, state and federal research; unlimited visas for those employed by US colleges & universities.

But the numbers of applications approved each year exceed those numbers, according the the USCIS annual report "Characteristics of Specialty Occupation Workers (H-1B)": year	Initial	renewed+extended	total 1999	134,411	na	na 2000	136,787	120,853	257,640 2001	201,079	130,127	331,206 2002	103,584	93,953	197,537 2003	105,314	112,026	217,340 2004	130,497	156,921	287,418 2005	116,927	150,204	267,131 year	Initial	renewed+extended	total

The numbers of visas actually issued, OTOH, is what matters. These numbers are available in the State Department's annual reports, and include new visas issued, renewals and extensions processed within each noted fiscal year: 1996	58,327 1997	80,547 1998	91,360 1999	116,513 2000	133,290 2001	161,643 2002	118,352 2003	107,196 2004	138,977 2005	124,374 2006	135,861 2007	154,690 http://www.travel.state.gov/visa/frvi/statistics/statistics_4179.html http://travel.state.gov/pdf/FY07AnnualReportTableXVIA.pdf http://travel.state.gov/pdf/FY07AnnualReportTableXVIB.pdf http://travel.state.gov/pdf/FY06AnnualReportTableXVIA.pdf

There are usually a few thousand unclaimed visas each year, primarily from the sub-categories set aside for Chile and Singapore. USCIS says they roll these over, adding them to the 58,200 general allotment for the next year. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.44.20.55 (talk) 21:53, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Top Ten US Technology Companies Receiving H1-B's???
What happened to Cognizant Technologies? I believe it is an US company. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.173.142.162 (talk • contribs)

--

I have updated the table to include the 2009 numbers and citing the eWeek and InformationWeek article.

It is obvious that the 2009 numbers are down because of the political ramifications of companies getting visas when they continue to lay off U.S. workers (i.e. Microsoft laying off 5,000 workers, yet continuing to employ Visa Holders). 1 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Atom888 (talk • contribs) 02:18, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

RfC on H-1B and path to permanent residency and policital bias

 * The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The section titled 'H-1B and path to permanent residency' seems to have an anti-immigration bias in my opinion.

I don't believe the claims of the IT sector using it for cheap labor are true. Also terms like "gaming the system" illustrate this isn't content with strong fact behind it. This section should be balanced with how H1B visas are used properly in the educated professional space as a path to perm status. --MassNerd (talk) 21:28, 2 October 2018 (UTC)


 * This RFC is premature, see WP:RFCBEFORE. Discuss this on the talk page with involved editors and try to reach a consensus before calling people in via RFC. Alternatively, be WP:BOLD and make edits that you see fit. Looking over the sourcing provided for the examples you've highlighted, it does seem that the wording is not backed up by sources provided, making it WP:SYNTH at best.signed,Rosguill talk 19:14, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I think there are well documented abuses of H-1B https://qz.com/india/1390239/h-1b-visa-abuse-people-tech-group-guilty-of-underpaying-employees/, https://qz.com/india/1377844/h-1b-visa-fraud-indian-ceo-accused-of-duping-us-immigration/. Think some tech giants where also suspects like IBM, Microsoft etc  — Preceding unsigned comment added by MrStefanWolf (talk • contribs) 22:42, 8 October 2018 (UTC)


 * This RfC is clearly premature, but I tend to agree with the core point. There's no intrinsic connection between intent to immigrate and abuse. Intent to immigrate is built into the law. The US government (or at least the Congress that passed the relevant laws) wants (or at least wanted) H1B recipients to have the ability to immigrate, because they are by definition highly skilled technical workers, who benefit the US economy.  G M G  talk  22:49, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Maybe there is not intention from immigrants but there clearly is by their employers, they are the one in position to abuse it in first place.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by MrStefanWolf (talk • contribs) 09:31, 9 October 2018 (UTC)


 * Statements like "the system has been abused and is often a route to Permanent residence" and "the non-immigrant visa becomes by virtue an immigrant visa" should be given context, not stated in Wikipedia's voice. Maybe this belongs in the criticism section, too? ☆ Bri (talk) 23:30, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
 * H-1B visa, H-1B visa and H-1B visa are not actually criticism but part of one the common opinion regarding H-1B visa. One won't discount such views even when they are not being critical about the subject. Rzvas (talk) 04:31, 16 October 2018 (UTC)


 * Comment RFC is not written in a neutral manner. I suggest this RFC be closed and reopened in a clear and concise question in a neutral tone. Sir Joseph (talk) 13:40, 16 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I've removed a bit of text and a source that was being misused, which may help. But I agree this RFC can be closed with no particular result. There's no clear proposal in the RFC request, and it doesn't take an RFC for anyone to try to improve the section (unless an irreconcilable editing dispute occurs). Alsee (talk) 18:42, 22 October 2018 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Wiki Education assignment: LIBR 1 Working with Sources
— Assignment last updated by Kdavis25 (talk) 22:49, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Technology Workforce Directed Study
— Assignment last updated by STEMLaborPolicy (talk) 19:36, 30 January 2023 (UTC)