Well, okay. It's actually Mastercard that runs those "priceless" ads, not Visa. But this post is about visas, mostly the H-1B visa, since we don't have too many H2-A temporary agricultural workers in tech. There are lots of other visa types too, such as the EB-1A for an "alien of extraordinary ability". If you ever wondered how John Lennon and Yoko Ono immigrated to the US, now you know. First, a quick lesson on punctuation. The hyphen in H-1B (and all other visas) goes between the main visa type letter(s), and the number that is a sub-classification. Not after the number, as you will often see it. Google tells me that there are 4M occurrences of it spelled wrong, but only 2M of it spelled right. My Story I came to the US in 1982 from Britain on an H-1B visa to work for VLSI Technology (VLSI). I should state that the H-1B visa has changed a lot since then, especially in the George H. W. Bush era 1990 immigration act. We'll take a look at how it is working in practice these days later in this post. In 1982, once VLSI decided they wanted to hire me, they applied for a visa. I think there were still quotas as to how many H-1B visas could be issued, but they were never reached so it was academic. A company could apply for a visa, and it would normally be approved about 6 weeks later. Since I had a PhD, there was never any doubt that I was going to meet the requirement: theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge in a field of human endeavor including but not limited to...computing, engineering...and requiring the attainment of a bachelor's degree or its equivalent as a minimum VLSI booked my plane tickets to come over, but my visa still had not come through. In those days, it was illegal for me to work without a visa, but not illegal for VLSI to hire me. That would change in 1986 when the first employer sanctions were introduced. So we bent the rules, and I didn't go on the payroll. I was paid "relocation expenses" for the first couple of weeks until my visa came through. I remember that my badge number would have been about 20 less if I'd gone on the payroll when I arrived, not quite enough to put it into double digits (I was 130). Once my visa was approved, I had to go somewhere outside the US to get it stamped in my passport, so I took a day trip to Vancouver, the nearest US consulate. An H-1B visa was valid for three years and could be renewed once for another three years. Sometimes, people did come to the US and go back after a few years, but often, like I did, people wanted to stay and so would apply for permanent residence aka a green card. In that era, there was a wrinkle, which was that once you applied for a green card you could not renew your H-1B visa, since it was considered illogical to be applying for both temporary and permanent residence at the same time. This has now been changed, and once you apply for a green card, you can renew your H-1B visa a year at a time until you get your green card (or it is refused). So that meant that you had to renew your H-1B visa after three years, immediately apply for permanent residence, and hope you got it before your H-1B visa expired three years later, at which point you could no longer leave the country since you'd not be able to get back in again. This was not guaranteed. Then, as now, the government doesn't process anything to do with immigration in a timely manner. I vaguely remember that some congressman, who was an idiot (but, as Mark Twain said in the same context, I repeat myself) had attached some rider to a bill that computers would not be used in green card processing...because the people who did it manually were all in his congressional district. That is exactly what I did. I renewed my H-1B visa, and on my return to the US, VLSI's immigration lawyer submitted my green card application. Also, in those days, everyone had to go through "labor certification" where the company had to prove no Americans wanted our jobs by advertising them (ads which had to include our exact salaries) and providing details of everyone who applied and why they were deemed inadequate. In my case, it was pretty simple, since the ad required a PhD in computer science and 3 years experience in EDA tool development. I think anyone with those qualifications could get a new job if they wanted one by spending a few hours on the phone,. Plus, PSA: since real ads don't specify an exact salary, or usually even a range, if you see an ad like that, then don't bother applying. After a year or so, I got approved for a green card. But that didn't mean I got one, that meant I had to go in the queue for people from my country, and wait until I got to the head of the line. Luckily for the UK, the line was fairly short, about 6 months. It would have taken a lot longer had I been Chinese. So, finally, I got a green card. It was pink, which meant it was always fun to ask citizens, who had rarely even seen one, "What color is a green-card?". My last one was actually green again. In that era, they had no expiry date (now they are 10 years). But that didn't mean it didn't expire when the US government changed its mind aboout the no expiry thing—the immigration agent at the airport one day simply scratched a big cross on it and told me I needed to get a new one since mine was damaged. Another wrinkle about applying for a green card is that you can't change companies. With an H-1B visa, if you switch companies, your new company has to do some paperwork, but providing nothing weird is going on, the visa is transferred. But if you have applied for a green card, all that labor certification stuff needs to be redone for your new position, so the whole green card process needs to start again. So you are an indentured servant at that point, unable to quit. I never had any problem, but I have read of cases where the company only pretended to apply for the green card, or got up to other tricks, that made "indentured" rather more accurate than in my case. How It Works Today It doesn't work anything like that anymore. When I came here, the quotas were not relevant, and a company like VLSI could apply for a visa for me and receive it less than two months later. Now, because the quotas get used up each year, you cannot expect to do that any more. In fact, it is worse than that. At the beginning of April (today, as I am writing this, although it is a Sunday so presumably tomorrow) applications start to be accepted. Usually what happens is that so many visa applications are submitted that applications stop being accepted 5 days later. Then a lottery is used to decide which ones really get accepted. However, the visas that get approved don't start a month or two later, they start October 1st. This system is only workable for companies that have large numbers of people for whom they want to get H-1B visas, but don't really care which ones actually get accepted. They flood the system with applications, some of them get approved, and the people start the following October. Who can work with a system like that? Large companies, who can recruit extensively internationally, but mostly Indian outsourcing companies like Infosys, Tata, and WiPro. They can then contract the people who got the visas to companies in the US. If the Indian contracting companies truly paid the going rate, as they are meant to, then there would be little point in a company (the most infamous ones last year being Disney, Cal Edision, and UCSF) laying off lots of their IT department, then using outsourcing firms to replace them (and make the laid-off employees train their replacements if they are not to lose their severance). There is a rule that any company that has more than 15% of employees on H-1B visas are required to recruit Americans (or permanent residents) before bringing in foreigners. But there is a loophole. It doesn't apply if the salary is more than $60,000. This is a number that has not been increased for 20 years and is now well below the level of most tech jobs, at least here in Silicon Valley. You can see in the graph above on the right that the red bar for salary is comfortably above $60,000 and so won't trigger the requirement to recruit Americans, even though it is well below the salary paid by American companies like Microsoft when they recruit H-1Bs. You can also see how the Indian subcontract companies submit well over 80% of the applications. If we take the orange bar as indicative of the going rate, then it is a fact that most H-1B visa holders are not paid the going rate for the job they do. So the H-1B system is completely broken now, and can't be used to bring in highly qualified people at relatively short notice. It can only be used by the Facebooks and WiPros with a mass of interchangeable Bachelor-degree applicants ready to go, and who can wait 6 months for them to start. What Should Change? What could be done to fix it? One view is that the fact that the quotas are used up within a week is a sign that they are too low. I don't really have an opinion on that since I don't believe anyone knows what the true demand is. After all, with the abuse of the system, all we know is that there is strong demand for people who can be employed below the going rate, which is hardly a surprise. If the rates were truly the going rate, I have no idea how much of that demand would go away. However, the best idea I have seen is that there should not be a lottery at all. It should be a sort of auction. Not an auction where the visas are sold, but the "highest bidders" are the companies and individuals with the highest salaries. So a Masters degree will (presumably) outclass a Bachelor, and a PhD outclass a Masters, and someone with ten years of relevant experience will be paid more than all of them and so be on the top of the pile. Barely qualified Bachelor candidates (the minimum qualification for an H-1B) would largely miss the cut. Some percentage of the quota should also be held back for recruitment that doesn't match the "apply in April, start work in October" frame. Although maybe I'm just being self-interested for the hypothetical 30 years younger me who might like to still be able to come here. So what if you have a person you really want to get to the US? The only way that seems to work is the L-1 visa, which is for employees of the company overseas. They have to have worked for the company for a year (I think the rules are actually more complex) but then they can be brought to the US. So it's not fast, but if you have someone you really want to get on a team in the US, hire them overseas, and bring them after a year. It avoids the mess of the H-1B visa system that is broken. I continue to believe this is important. One of the US's great strengths over the years has been the ability to bring the best and brightest from all over the world and make them more productive than they were wherever they came from, and in many cases having them found companies here (Google being the obvious example). I consulted for a company where the founder/CEO was Israeli, and the CTO was Iranian. Try doing that in any other country. Sign up for Sunday Brunch, the weekly Breakfast Bytes email.![]()
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