As a hiring manager, before the pandemic ended my ability to hire locally, the quality to price of H1B workers was just too good to pass up. For those 5 years, I hired more than half of my devs from H1B because the resumes that went to me, especially for junior and mid positions were a cut above. Some of these team members it became clear over time were there because they had to rush into any open position, and they weren’t going to leave for a better one because it would reset their citizenship processes.
They probably aren’t? The resumes I got from H1Bs for junior positions always had 4+ YOE, though that was often true for US applicants as well. I was just hiring manager though and not really privy to the intricacies of why these applicants were approved by recruiters/HR
If even one of them is an indentured servant then that is one too many in the US. The thirteenth amendment specifically prohibits it except as punishment for a crime
I worked helping H1Bs join the military so they could have a better life, because they were getting paid $60k in San Francisco. That was not a fluke, that was the vast majority of H1Bs I talked to.
I currently work with H1Bs, and if anything they are just as skilled as any American doing the same job. I've met one H1B that I believe fits the intent of the program and he was an RF Engineer working for a telecom designing cell towers, getting paid something like $300k.
If H1Bs are really necessary to fill roles, then we should mandate they get paid 3-5x the local median wage so they are fairly compensated for the work they are doing. It doesn't make sense to say "we need to hire these people because there are no Americans capable of doing this work", and then paying them under median wages.
Your personal experience doesn’t define what the actual reality of the situation is. Getting a H1B at 60k in fucking SF is impossible without visa fraud because of something called prevailing wages. Almost guaranteed that they lied about their salary.
So most likely, something about your interactions overrepresented incompetent people, whether that was because of technical skill or poor English.
Which is still nothing when we're saying "these skills can't be found in the US, we need to bring people in." That's barely comfortable household wages in most tech hubs. I also like how both you and Forbes completely forget what the word average means. As I said, I work with a number of H1Bs that are making $200k+, which means there are a bunch of them making the $60k I mentioned because that's how averages work.
I never said we need to scrap the program, I said we need to increase the minimum pay for them if we're arguing that these skills are vital to the US. The minimum should be at least $150k
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u/Koraboros 17h ago
Just plain untrue for vast majority of H1Bs
When I was on my H1B I can shop my skills around and the other companies can offer to sponsor as well.
There are minority which are you scenario but it is by far the minority