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H-1B Visas; Why isn't This a Bigger Issue With Engineers

"Two thoughts diverged in a yellow wood, ... and I completely missed the boat."

-- attr Robert "The Snowman" Frosty

Sorry, Joerg. I've been irritated about the general employment numbers for the whole country ( "H-0"? ) and was looking for a replacement -- and hopefully more appropriate -- set of numbers. I managed to miss your focus on the H-1B segment ( yes, in spite of the Subject line ). Oops. Mea culpa.

Ah. So you want "present state" rather than "change". Okay.

Are "prevailing wage" numbers available from some public source?

Again, when I wrote this I was looking for numbers representing "State of The U.S. Economy, Subcategory Employment" rather than just the H-1B segment. Not disagreeing, just explaining why these seemed like they might be useful to me -- but not necessarily to you.

Hm. I'm not familiar enough with H-1B hires to comment, but I can ask: Do companies employing H-1B applicants, do they pay transportation and possibly housing allowances? That is, are H-1B hires at the same salaries as U.S. citizens already more expensive in terms of non-salary costs?

"That depends on what the meaning of 'is' is." (Unknown?)

I think that a desire to "fix the problem" exists, but there is some disagreement on what "the problem" might be.

Imposing an "imported labor tariff" would tend to reduce the problem of salaries of American citizens being depressed by external competition. On the other hand -- from the employer's viewpoint -- it would make it harder to reduce labor costs, thus keeping the company's expenses -- and the costs of whatever goods and services it provides

-- higher, and thus less competitive.

Which, I'm sure, would call for the creation of a Bureau of Labor Cost Adjustment whose purpose would turn out to be that of ensuring that all United States jobs received a "fair" wage ( but you'd have to vote for the bill to find out what "fair" meant ).

Sigh.

Frank

--
  ...[I]n the nineteenth century, reading novels was criticized for 
  exactly the same reasons for which watching television is criticized 
  today.    -- Paul Cantor / The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture
Reply to
Frnak McKenney
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It generally means the union wage. But most engineers are not unionized, so it isn't clear what the prevailing wage of engineers could be. Nor are engineers paid by the hour, for that matter.

Joe Gwinn

Reply to
Joe Gwinn

:-)

Yup, because we (ideally) have to prevent the system from abuse and from displacing equally qualified US workers. This is not difficult to do.

Yes, but as usual with many gvt sources the tools are a bit on the clumsy side:

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A local example:

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BLS area codes are not the postal area codes. Beats me why. There is also the IEEE salary survey. I get it for free because I participate in the survey an am a member. Otherwise I think there is a small fee.

Wage numbers are pretty easy to get a hold of. Even if they were off a bit for some reason that would be fixed by, for example, demanding that H-1B engineers must be paid 25% above prevailing wage. If a company is truly in dire need that's a small price to pay.

With honest companies like my previous employer: Yes, big time. Of course we paid the full cost of the (international) move. If you have ever moved to another state on your own dime, multiply that number by about five. Then we also paid the first few months for a fully furnished apartment, rental car, various costs for getting driver's licenses, filled the fridge with goodies and whatnot. This can get very expensive. One engineer from the UK arrived with his wife and four kids. That means six airline tickets, big apartment and so on.

I do not think there is an honest desire to fix anything, or even a willingness to discuss. Even IEEE didn't respond to my suggestions.

H-1B should not be used to reduce labor costs. It is meant to allow companies to find and hire talent they cannot find enough of here in the US. It is a very good program but it is being abused.

Wage control? No way, that's IMHO un-American. After all, this is a free-market country. Wages should derived at via supply and demand. If there is an under-supply in a certain group salaries will rise. The prevailing wage number should then reflect that.

:-)

It would be so easy to fix H-1B. However, the silly lamentations of "H-1B abolishionists" is not going to do a thing. They need to think rationally and bring forward "hard to resist" suggestions how to fix the enforcement side of this otherwise good system. But they don't.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Reply to
Joerg

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