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For the new political order taking shape in Washington, however, H-1Bs aren't quite welcome. Amid promises of sweeping changes to immigration policy, President-elect Donald Trump and his choice for attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), have tabbed the program for a major overhaul, and might even scrap it altogether. In the House, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is on the same wavelength.
Trump has described H-1Bs as a "cheap labor program" subject to "widespread, rampant" abuse. Sessions co-sponsored legislation last year with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) to effectively gut the program; Issa, a congressman with Trump's ear, released a statement Wednesday saying he was reintroducing similar legislation called the Protect and Grow American Jobs Act.
Sessions and Issa's legislation primarily targets large outsourcing companies, such as Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services, that receive the vast majority of H-1B visas and use them to deploy workers to American companies seeking to cut costs. In 2015, the top 10 recipients of H-1B visas were outsourcing firms. As recently as 2013, the Justice Department, which Sessions stands to take over, settled with Infosys for $34 million in a visa fraud case.
If they were smart they'd change the program to maximize brain-drain from other countries by making H-1B a fast-track to citizenship instead of the 6+ year wait for a green-card that it now is. Bring in the best of them rather than the cheapest of them and let them compete on equal footing rather than the indentured servitude of the current H-1B program.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 11 2017, @02:25PM
For a H1B, it appears Congress managed to craft a dumb immigration policy.
"My understanding is that in India, the role of the H1B program is that it's becoming a rite of passage for many young Indian men: They work their butt off in their early 20's ...and then return ... and be comfortably middle-class the rest of their lives."
Aside from a little short term indentured servitude,
That is a really good deal for the person and India and a really bad deal for the company and the US.
The US is both bootstrapping a major competitor and killing their internal labor force.
Immigration could/should be way better if the talented, trained folks end up in the US.
So how did we get here?
This started with an MBA theory that it's ok to export non-core competencies.
But Apple appears to have exported their manufacturing supply chain?
Sad story for the US, but the world is probably a better place.
Kind of a situation of unintended altruism.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday January 11 2017, @06:22PM
> This started with an MBA theory that it's ok to export non-core competencies.
> But Apple appears to have exported their manufacturing supply chain?
Apple could export the dirty capital-intensive supply and manufacturing, because their core competency is "user interface" and programming.
But Linux and Android brought "easy familiar user interface" to their competitors, so Apple's main assets are now customer inertia (brand value) and massive piles of cash.
Not great of a business plan going forward.
Kind of a standard US tech issue for the last couple decades: profit now before they catch up, even if pursuing marginally higher profit helps them catch up, because we'll be on the the magical "next thing" by then.
What's the "next thing" now?