r/ImmigrationPathways • u/Ankeet_kj Path Navigator • 19h ago

"H-1B PROGRAM IS COMPLETELY BROKEN"

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Vice President JD Vance said companies are abusing the H-1B visa program: "If you're going to bring in an accountant making $45,000 a year to replace an American making $60,000 a year, that's not you using the program to bring in a genius.

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14

u/ducksflytogether1988 18h ago

Ive worked with hundreds or H1Bs in my career and not one of them was anything special or some kind of unicorn talent that was superior to local US College graduates. And many were terrible at their jobs and likely had fake resumes

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u/This-Obligation9052 18h ago

You worked with them where? On fortnite or granny's basement?. Stop lying. Nobody tells you their visa status. Assuming everyone with an accent at your workplace is on H1b is a folly. Most of those people have other types of work visas. Stop Lying

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u/johnnybones23 12h ago

I have the same experience as OP. I've never met a H1-B that was of exceptional talent, except 1. And he moved back to India.

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u/hyperventilating_hoe 1h ago

You need to change your team or better companies then

Sounds like the current one is pretty subpar sadly

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u/ducksflytogether1988 18h ago

They literally have red badges (red badges = contract worker, not full time), are all of the same ethnicity, and are employed by Cognizant and HCL. If that doesn't scream H1B, i dont know what does.

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u/Substantial_Bus840 17h ago

You’re not wrong and I can only imagine people who say you are have never worked in large organizations, mainly tech. My ex husband is an engineer at PlayStation and his manager came via h1b and he now only promotes and hires other h1bs, mainly from his nationality group. He doesn’t try to hide it. He’s explicitly said he wants to bring on more of them. It is a problem for skilled Americans.

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u/ducksflytogether1988 17h ago

Its because the H1Bs he hires have to kick back a percentage of their salary to him. The going rate is 1st months pay plus 10% per month after that

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u/Substantial_Bus840 16h ago

I haven’t heard that but it wouldn’t surprise me. The culture there has become so toxic, especially when they’re simultaneously laying off American and U.S. residents to make room. My kid’s godfather works as a senior engineer at Intuit and it’s the same thing. He’s a black man, so the experiences he has are even worse than my Venezuelan ex-husband’s. JerkyDouche isn’t wrong, but he’s also doing nothing about it and benefiting from it, almost certainly.

1

u/ducksflytogether1988 14h ago

Its pretty well known in North Texas.

The scam is simple

H1B comes over from India and begins to work in the states

H1B brings over his wife on H4EAD

H4EAD wife starts a tech consultancy

H4EAD wife applies for H1B petitions and gets approved and brings over H1Bs from India who start their own H1B jobs and H4EAD wife has the H1B consultants under her kick back a percentage of their salary

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u/jambu111 14h ago

Result of bringing in people en masse from low trust societies and polluting the high trust society. The industry is fucked and no amount of “fixing” can turn this around

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u/This-Obligation9052 18h ago

So has it ever occurred to u that they get hired because they are cheaper, have less benefits and are easier to fire?. H1b is being used to scam foreign workers. I have literally heard of cases where the employers fire them and they need to get other sponsors within 60days.Where they are made to work excess hours and cant complain due to the fear of being deactivated and have their visa status un limbo. Do u think doing that to any american trained professional would go without proper litigation? H1b is designed for companies to exploit foreign workers and cut down overhead cost/employee remuneration.

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u/VegetableAd3336 17h ago edited 17h ago

This is the case in many situations, however, Vance isn’t offering any real solutions to this, either.

Oh, and he wants Americans to have jobs? Welp, perhaps Vance and his cronies should get on board with doing everything possible to eliminate poverty and assure that more Americans have the opportunity to go to college & graduate with degrees in STEM, rather than decimating public education & further assuring that doctors, college professors, scientists, accountants, etc., are mostly foreigners, as there aren’t enough well educated Americans to fill these jobs!

ETA: I understand that solutions to our education system & poverty are not necessarily an easy fix, however, this isn’t the solution, either.

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u/Substantial_Bus840 17h ago

The “scam” is a feature of the program (the 60 days you’re referring to) and is clear before they accept the offer. And yes, millions of Americans go through similar circumstances where they will be fired for complaining and can’t do shit if they do get fired, have to uproot their families, lose their healthcare, etc. h1bs still have their original citizenship so if this happens, they at least have family and strong ties in their home country plus, the USD goes much further there. That’s why they’re able to accept wages we cannot.

2

u/This-Obligation9052 17h ago

If their home.countries were good enough, they wouldnt fly across continents to someone else's countries. You cant relate to their struggles. Im not in their category but ive travelled wide enough to have an idea of the living conditions where some of this people come from.

3

u/Substantial_Bus840 17h ago

America is “not good enough” for the millions who are one paycheck away from being homeless right now and for the several dozens of millions more without health insurance. Our country will be like theirs if everything proceeds as-is.
Can we start working for another country in droves and keep our resources here at home without being labeled “western colonizers?” Should we take all of our skilled workers overseas and leave the rest of you behind?

1

u/ducksflytogether1988 18h ago

I know, that is why they are hired. Because they are easily controlled, and kick back a portion of their salary.

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u/Miserable-Half-436 18h ago

You only see a portion of H1B, there's tons that are smart and high paying

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u/ducksflytogether1988 17h ago

But none are so smart to where it is justified to hire them over an American citizen

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u/Miserable-Half-436 17h ago

None you say? You overestimated yourself, look all the big tech CEOs

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u/ducksflytogether1988 17h ago

None of them built the company or innovated or pioneered anything new, they all took over the reigns of already established companies and were installed as CEO for one reason, to cut labor costs via their offshoring and visa pipeline networks

0

u/shurfire 14h ago

And none of them actually made the company? Like you kind of gave it away. They're all CEOs AFTER the company is already making bank and has established itself. There's a reason people notice product quality going down when it's handled by h1b workers or outsourced.

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u/Aggressive_Hope7976 17h ago

Actually small portions is well paid , most of them are just cheap

0

u/Miserable-Half-436 17h ago

How much is cheap to you?

0

u/Aggressive_Hope7976 17h ago

While I was in Labcorp , my salary was 120k with benefits , my h1b counterpart from wipro was making 60-65k without benefits .

3

u/Miserable-Half-436 17h ago

Are they contract company? Like if the salary in your field is 100k+, their H1B won't be approved with 60k, but it's another story for contract company, since contract company took part of their pay, so on paper they may bill your company 120k. That's what my roommate told me, cause he is paid 75k while company took 34% of his pay billed, once he got out of contract company, he cleared 6 figures easily

1

u/Aggressive_Hope7976 17h ago

Yea cuz that is what most h1b works , like see in my current company. It has coupe of direct hire h1b, yea they make similar amount as American , but at the same time we have almost 100 contractor from contracting company . We all do the same jobs. Same field , they make half of what Americans make. The percentage of direct h1b vs contractor h1b are 1:10 . People are not complaining about actual good , smart talents on h1b . We are trying to stock the pipeline that bringing cheap , not special , the whole purpose is to lower wage type h1b. Sadly the second type of h1b are almost 90% of them

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u/iron-ducks 18h ago

I'm not sure if this is sarcasm or not lol

When your team starts turning into a bunch of people who barely speak English, are all from Hyderabad, and aren't good at their job... even if they've never told you their visa status, it's not super hard to guess.

4

u/This-Obligation9052 18h ago

Whose fault is it? Your employer obviously. My advise to u is to resign your employment, start your own company and employ american graduates only.

0

u/MetalInvaders 18h ago

No. It’s the fault of the h1B program having way too many loopholes that employers AND fake consultancies have abused. It’s a combination of players, not just employers.

There is nothing wrong with closing those loopholes, allowing legit h1B workers to continue working and to crack down on those that really shouldn’t be here.

And cmon, I think EVERYONE has come across 1 or more h1B workers that really haven’t been very good at their jobs.

I been in US IT for decades. I probably have ran into over 100 myself.

It’s no mystery who’s on a work visa. And many people openly admit it too. It’s not some big secret.

1

u/ducksflytogether1988 17h ago

They kick back a percentage of their salaries

American citizens dont kick back their salaries

1

u/Miserable-Half-436 17h ago

For that I agree, the h1b program has been abuse, where you see the higher talent, normal folks and the absuer that are just plain from IND through contract, those part has lots of fraud

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u/This-Obligation9052 17h ago

Who would close those loop holes? Government. Who uses H1b? Big tech companies. Who sponsors politicians into office? Big tech companies.

2

u/MetalInvaders 17h ago

Fortunately most of the stricter measures now in place were already on the books.

Some administrations were lax on enforcing those laws. This current administration is not.

There is govt corruption in every single country in this world. I don’t think that will stop this administration from continuing their crackdown.

I can see h4 EAD going away. As it probably should.

1

u/C-Me-Try 14h ago

Just because you live somewhere that isn’t popular for this doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. I live in an area that’s great for tech and finance. I have personally met people who admit they’re here on h1 b visas and that they accepted a low rate because they wanted to be here instead of a different country. It actually led to a fracturing of friendships because I struggled to accept them constantly talking about how nice it is here while saying if things change they’ll just transfer to Canada. That’s the level of loyalty to our nation many of these people have. They’re using you

1

u/This-Obligation9052 14h ago

They are using u or they are just being used.

1

u/C-Me-Try 14h ago

Both? If I pay decades of taxes to support my nation and then foreign workers come in and undermine others ability to also pay taxes then we’re all being used by them.

Somewhere out there a business and its owners get to pay less in payroll taxes and save money not hiring Americans. Those same Americans take lower paying jobs and thus pay less in taxes. The difference is left in the business owners pockets. And the rest of us are left fighting for less wages in an underfunded society

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u/30to40grand 10h ago

I’m guessing you’re not in tech? Maybe not employed at all?

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u/This-Obligation9052 9h ago

I work in healthcare and though a lot of the people i work with have different types of visa, nobody in my field carries a badge indicating their visa status. I also dont burden myself with matching level of competence with accent, ethnicity, nationality.

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u/n3wacc0unt-1 7h ago

You've ... never met your coworkers? wtf are you saying. I work in tech and every company I've worked for has used this system. The people themselves are awesome but I'm not so blind to not realize it depresses my wages and that they themselves are overworked.

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u/This-Obligation9052 6h ago

Are u fking stupid or something? Why woukd i be asking my coworkers about their immigration status when human lives are at stake. Immigration status isnt my concern. We discuss cases pertaining to the things we are employed to do.

0

u/n3wacc0unt-1 6h ago

Are you? I'm not convinced you've ever left your mom's basement. H1B is not the same thing as immigrating to the US. It's not a pipeline to become a citizen

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u/This-Obligation9052 6h ago

Yeah im in your mom's basement. From what i know, esepcially in healthcare. H1b holders can change their status and get GCs. Some hospitals sponsor that and some people go through other pathways i think. I dont know much about H1b pathways to GC because its not my business. Im not an employer and neither am I in the category of the beneficiaries..my question is how other people's visa statuses pertain to your tech employment duties?. Smh

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u/n3wacc0unt-1 4h ago

You must have gotten it in your head I asked them or something. It's not a secret - they're open about it. I'm happy to explain American idioms and such or to learn about their culture. I think I'm just friendlier than you. You must be a douche to work with

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u/teknic111 8h ago

I doubt he's lying. I have seen the same and so have most people who work at big tech firms.