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Trump is planning on signing an executive order on Tuesday that will cause a review of the H1-B program. It is just a review, and undoubtedly business interests will step up the pressure, but there are some interesting ideas:
"If you change that current system that awards visas randomly, without regard or skill or wage, to a skill-based awarding, it makes it extremely difficult to use the visa to replace or undercut American workers, because you're not bringing in workers at beneath the market wage," the official said. "So it's a very elegant way of solving systemic problems in the H-1B guest worker visa."
Breitbart of course has an article out (though it reads like they need to hire some native speaking editors) -- still, recent college grads face a huge hurdle:
The federal government releases little data on the many different guest-worker programs, but the available evidence says the national population of white-collar contract workers is up to 1.5 million. That population is roughly twice the population of 800,000 Americans who graduate from college with skilled degrees each year.
And finally, lest people forget that progressives also have issues with H1-B visas, here is Bernie Sanders (a decade ago of course) attacking this ploy to make sure money only trickles up by ensuring low wages. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR9QdQIKqMc
[Ed Note: Trump did sign the executive order at a photo op in Wisconsin.]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday April 19 2017, @02:48PM (6 children)
Will this executive order accomplish anything? Is it somehow binding? Force of law? Will it prevent corporations from finding ways to hire cheap foreign labor? Even if forced to hire American, will corporations lower their standards of treatment of American workers to that of the H-1Bs being replaced? I am assuming that there are enough skilled American workers for skilled high tech 21st century jobs, but is this true?
If your boy is chewing on electrical cords, then ground him until he conducts himself properly.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Wednesday April 19 2017, @03:34PM (2 children)
Only if they do something with the report after it comes out. I wouldn't be surprised if it is basically marketing, a way for Trump to claim he's doing something for American workers without doing anything. Sort of like how Warren lambastes banks when there is no real risk of any sanctions against them, as a way to market herself to Democrats.
In the end, we all know where the power is and what happens as a result -- remember the hue and cry by the American public to have their private data monitored, collected, packaged, and sold by Comcast and that lot? Yeah, me neither but that bit of legislation slid through like greased lightening. On the other hand, allowing average citizens to use international markets (buy cheap drugs in Canada) was killed by a bipartisan coalition of Democrats and Republicans. Ultimately, cynicism about this review is in order.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday April 19 2017, @04:31PM
I would extend that to cynicism about anything the clown circus and the houses of congress critters do.
If your boy is chewing on electrical cords, then ground him until he conducts himself properly.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19 2017, @06:32PM
Sort of like how Warren lambastes banks when there is no real risk of any sanctions against them, as a way to market herself to Democrats.
Which must be why the banks don't give a damn about her Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. [wikipedia.org]
Oh, wait, they fucking hate it:
http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/09/investing/gop-war-elizabeth-warren-cfpb-trump/ [cnn.com]
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-17/the-glory-days-of-elizabeth-warren-s-cfpb-are-numbered [bloomberg.com]
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/10/court-rules-consumer-financial-protection-bureaus-structure-is-unconstitutional/503660/ [theatlantic.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday April 19 2017, @03:54PM (1 child)
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/04/18/presidential-executive-order-buy-american-and-hire-american [whitehouse.gov]
Section 3 is basically ordering some future behaviors of a vague sort and a bunch of reports. The EO doesn't specify how forcefully it'll be enforced nor does it provide numeric beancounter metrics.
It is a major policy change in that the past couple decades the policy has pretty much been "middle class white people you need to hurry up and die off".
So its simultaneously meaningless and epoch changing depending how you look at it.
Its kinda like when Lincoln freed the slaves toward the end of the civil war. On one hand that's shocking policy change coming from the fedgov not even a decade after "Dredd Scott" decision, on the other hand they're not living in the lap of luxury merely because some cracker yankee politician said they're free...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19 2017, @08:02PM
And nothing about it prevents companies from closing the req's down here and opening them in a low cost centers , which is very possible for many jobs being done by H1B holders today . . .
(Score: 4, Informative) by MrGuy on Wednesday April 19 2017, @05:04PM
As I understand it, congress instituted the H-1B program, but with a cap on the number that could be granted in a particular year.
The program is always oversubscribed - H-1B's are generally gone within days of the applications opening.
I do not believe that congress specified the mechanism used to determine WHICH applications get approved when the program is oversubscribed - just that no more than the cap could not be exceeded. The Department of Labor has (to date) used a random lottery to determine which valid applications get approved. The choice of a random lottery is the DoL's choice, not a congressional mandate.
Assuming I'm correct in that, then, yes, an executive order for the DoL to prioritize certain applications (as opposed to using a random lottery) would definitely accomplish something - it would effectively change the process. The DoL works for the executive branch, not congress. As long as congress didn't specify otherwise, the DoL has a lot of lattitude in determining HOW they stay within the cap. And a change like this would be within the scope of their authority.
The impact of this would depend on the specific mix of H-1B applications, but it really could do a lot to curb abuses, such as companies replacing US workers with H-1B workers to save money [workforce.com] and not because they couldn't find US workers (which is the stated purpose of the program). If only higher-salary H-1B applications would get approved, it would remove some of the financial incentive for abuse, because abusers would be less likely to get their H-1B's.