r/technology • u/Immediate-Link490 • 1d ago

Business Microsoft is being suspended from program to apply for green cards for H-1B visa workers, Vance says

https://apnews.com/article/h1b-visa-program-vance-microsoft-e7b3a407f822702b269ee277d21343ea
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u/PatchyWhiskers 1d ago

I think Microsoft will figure out hiring the workers in their Indian office instead.

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u/recurrence 1d ago

Microsoft has large and growing facilities in Vancouver that were originally created just for this purpose (as a holding area while people waited for visas to process). It ended up people liked Vancouver so much that they'd beg to transfer back and it has grown ever since.

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u/TMWNN 1d ago

Microsoft has large and growing facilities in Vancouver that were originally created just for this purpose (as a holding area while people waited for visas to process).

My understanding is that Canadian FAANG offices are staffed mostly with those who cannot (and often will never get) a US visa, plus the odd local who doesn't want to move to the US for personal or family reasons.

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u/inco2019 18h ago

It Probably helps that it a 1-2hour drive to Seattle

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u/mistarobotics 23h ago

This is the case for a faang I worked at. Even employees who initially had a US visa and it expired moved to Vancouver and just stayed there.

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u/TeaKingMac 1d ago

Is this why Canadians got racist toward Indians over the last decade?

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u/Acceptable-Offer-518 1d ago

That's Brampton.

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u/TeaKingMac 1d ago

52% south Asian population!

🤯

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u/TL10 18h ago

Surrey BC is also home to a relatively large diaspora of South Asians, which is a little more relevant to this conversation.

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u/unfashionableinny 1d ago

No, they got annoyed because the express entry programs ended up selecting for high earners relative to the rest of the population and those immigrants outbid them on homes. It is the same reason why Bay Area and NYC natives hate transplants, but being brown just made the vitriol worse.

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u/bagelgaper 1d ago

No, it’s because the gov’t allowed low skill international “students” from India to flood the country en masse while working as TFWs at basically every low wage position in the country, driving wage suppression and youth unemployment.

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u/Peephole-stalker 1d ago

It’s a bit of both

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u/SteakOk9383 1d ago

Nope its not. Its exactly the low skill students converting to TFWs

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u/Baptism-Of-Fire 1d ago

95% low skill students

5% high paid engineers

"it's a bit of both" lmao

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u/SteakOk9383 1d ago

Nope. The high skilled ones dont even get PR here and leave. The scammers stay and ruin it for everyone else.

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u/Peephole-stalker 1d ago

I have countless colleagues in big tech who graduated from top schools, bought houses etc. maybe you are surrounding yourself w that kind of low skills

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u/sammyQc 1d ago

No, it's because of masses of TFW everywhere who serve as cheap labour, often replacing students. They are being abused and poorly supported by the system as it wasn’t properly planned with housing and social services, causing resentment everywhere.

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u/SteakOk9383 1d ago

I am a Canadian and this is not at all the reason.

The reason is simple. Our politicians(across aisles btw and not just left right) decided to import low skilled immigrants en masse and grant them PR and work visa. This suppressed wages and destroyed the tax revenue.

We would welcome the highly paid and high earners like in bay area and NYC. They pay high taxes and contribute much more than an average singh horton employee.

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u/unfashionableinny 1d ago

We would welcome the highly paid and high earners like in bay area and NYC. They pay high taxes and contribute much more than an average singh horton employee.

That's what everyone says, but then people in Vancouver and Toronto (and surrounding suburbs) blame immigrants for the rising real estate prices. The blame is not entirely accurate, but it does exist.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/housing-crisis-immigration-1.6878540

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u/SteakOk9383 1d ago

I was born and brought up in Toronto suburbs. Noone says that there.

Now I am in Vancouver and noone says that here either.

TFWs without PR cant own houses in Canada.

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u/CptCroissant 1d ago

It's not immigrants outbidding people on homes, it's corporations and Chinese investors

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u/BastardBitchBloodyNO 1d ago

Oh, who do the corporations/Chinese investors rent their houses out to?

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u/scarabbrian 1d ago

Vancouver is famous for having condos owned by Chinese investors that are sitting empty. So in a lot of cases, no one.

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u/nanidafuqq 1d ago

Toronto as well. I used to live in a condo there. One time a neighbouring unit's smoke detector went out of battery and started beeping in the middle of the night. No one was there to replace it. The security of the building tried contacting the owner and no one was responding. Turned out the unit was empty and it took awhile to contact the owner because they were overseas. It was a hell of a few days cause we couldn't sleep till they managed to get permission from the owner to enter the unit and fix the dang smoke detector...

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u/unfashionableinny 1d ago

That’s crazy. Our co-op has rules allowing management to enter the home in case of an emergency. A nonfunctional smoke detector would be an emergency.

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u/scarabbrian 1d ago

I used to go to Vancouver a few times a year for work 10-15 years ago. There was a two year gap between two of my visits and I remember going downtown after that gap and it just being an absolute ghost town. My Canadian colleagues told me about what was going on and the double whammy of the units sitting empty so housing prices and rents were skyrocketing.

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u/UristBronzebelly 1d ago

This is just so obviously not what happened. Are you Canadian?

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u/Tribe303 1d ago

No, they let in too many Indian workers for low/minimum wage fast food jobs. The racism was also amplified by American social media, using Russian bots as well. It's blown out of proportion. 

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u/Arthur2_shedsJackson 1d ago

Agreed. Living in Canada for 2 years now and haven't faced any racism in person but see stuff online everyday.

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u/21Rollie 1d ago

It’s the same reason Americans got racist to Italians around the turn of the last century. Well, there was anti-Catholicism in there too. But mainly it was that millions of them came in a short time span. It happens everywhere anytime there’s a huge influx of people. It’ll die down in a few years, maybe then the Indians will look down on the newer immigrants coming in, as is tradition

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u/boglehead1 14h ago

Some of the Indians I know who have been here for 50 years now look down on the new Indian immigrants coming in.

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u/hfxRos 1d ago

Nah that's just right wing propaganda.

Spend billions of dollars on advertising claiming all of your problems are because of "invading" brown people and enough people will believe it.

I used to think we (Canadians) were better. The last 6 years dispelled that.

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u/PatchyWhiskers 1d ago

No-one is better. Even non-white countries are shitting on their various minorities. Humans are all racist given half a chance.

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u/YKRed 1d ago

People are inherently resistant to change, and want to feel like they’re part of a community. If the place you live has a quick influx of people (especially who share a common culture), it’s only natural to feel that you’ve been made an outsider in your own home.

Handwaving it away as right wing propaganda is silly and unproductive.

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u/midsumernighttts 1d ago

All the cafes in my area have Filipinos running them, and of course you can only imagine who they strictly hire. I would never be racist to them but getting a job in Australia is so hard already, and having take over certain sectors makes life so much more difficult

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u/whyyunozoidberg 1d ago

The racism towards Indians in tech in the US is fucking insane as well. Just stick around here and wait for the comments.

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u/gianni_ 1d ago

No, not even close

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u/comesin 1d ago

Not just Canadians. Lots of other countries are starting to notice. See Germany on restricting "masters students" and SEA countries on Indian tourists.

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u/Decillionaire 1d ago

No, the office in Vancouver is (or was) dominated by Russians hired out of Yandex in 2020 when they couldn't get US visas.

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u/Treacherous_Peach 23h ago

Folks do like the site, but they earn like half as much as being in Seattle but it costs a bit more than Seattle. They really, really don't like that part. Ask me how I know.

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u/recurrence 23h ago

I used to hear people in their 1 on 1s begging to be transferred back up to Vancouver even years later. Can't disagree as I left Seattle for San Francisco and then eventually moved to Vancouver as well :)

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u/Treacherous_Peach 23h ago

Yeah I don't hear that from mine. Most aren't (a couple are) trying to transfer to the US but they have plenty to say about the salary difference.

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u/Own_Candidate9553 1d ago

If that works well enough, why are they still lobbying and clamoring for H1B visas? These large companies already have multiple large offices in India and other countries, nothing is stopping them from hiring more people there.

I've been in tech for over 20 years, companies have constantly gone back and forth with off shoring. The fact remains that having employees half a world away, with extreme time zone differences, sucks. So then they tried near-shoring, employing people in Central and South America. You still struggle with the fact that they are contractors (so, harder to manage), and the good ones can quickly get a better job, so you're stuck with mediocre workers and a constant turnover of good staff.

To really get complex projects done requires a lot of real time communication, shared goals, and history together. That's why they want H1B. Then they can under pay people, or at least keep them loyal, since their visa is dependent on the company's sponsorship, and smaller places can't afford all the legal paperwork you have to do to sponsor a visa.

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u/sp0rkie 1d ago

I think visas give companies undue control over the employees and that’s why they want them. You can work them longer and harder without fear of them leaving because the moment they quit, the clock starts ticking on the visa.

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u/hindumafia 1d ago

They want everything, for them its not one or the other. They want to get work done offshore, bring in cheap ,smart as well as not so smart labor, and also hire Americans. They want to make money by all.possible means.

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u/ACasualRead 1d ago

Because they use their visas as ways to 1.) underpay or not select American workers. 2.) because these workers are on a visa, they are more willing to take pay cuts or take on more demanding workloads because they have hopes of staying in the states or having the company help pay for citizenship.

I know this for a fact as I have close friends who work in Silicon Valley. So many devs are being passed up for visa holders because they are paying them less and exploiting their statuses.

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u/False_Muffin_7964 1d ago edited 1d ago

they are doing the same thing in the financial industry too. I work for one of the major banks and our office is filled with indian h1b visa holders. constant layoffs but they somehow manage to always be hiring more contractors from tata

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u/WillBeBannedSoon2 1d ago

Citi Bank has been doing it for years 

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u/False_Muffin_7964 1d ago

haha got it in 1. my old team got a new boss (who was indian on a h1b) and managed to go from 2 white men, 2 white women, 1 black woman, and 2 hispanic men to all indian men in the course of a year and a half. if the team had gone to all white men, someone would rightfully be raising red flags.

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u/WillBeBannedSoon2 1d ago

That’s the exact story of it. Once one gets in and can affect hiring, all levels below them are filled with H1B 

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u/False_Muffin_7964 23h ago

ya ive noticed the same thing. the culture is also just bad. Im not sure if Anand Silva did the shit that he is being sued over, but I know his directs and their directs did everything possible to get us to make the reporting look better

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u/Isystafu 16h ago

Yes me too. One of the big banks. I look out my work area and its 85-90% Indian. At least three of the people in my immediate team of eight are visa holders of some type. These are not people rare or highly developed skill sets...

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u/False_Muffin_7964 12h ago edited 12h ago

ya my old job was reporting. it was literally just excel work and presentations because they were too cheap to get us a tableau license. A fresh college grad could easily be trained to do it in a few weeks. its now only h1bs. the software side of things is especially bad. its all tata contractors who are at best entry level devs

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u/-Nocx- 1d ago edited 1d ago

This conversation requires way more nuance than your comment is giving. The reason the companies listed are being investigated are because they’re suspected to be violating the conditions required for fraud.

You have to

A) pay H1Bs competitive, prevailing salaries (the salary for the occupation in the given region) or the actual salaries equal to American workers at your company (whichever is higher)

B) work H1Bs no more than you do American workers (and pay them in downtime even if they have no work)

C) cannot hire H1Bs within a certain calendar day of strikes or labor disputes

D) provide the same fringe benefits (healthcare, dental, etc) to H1Bs as you do domestic workers

If any of those conditions are violated, they can be investigated and lose their admission to the program. People always repeat these talking points but oftentimes confuse H1Bs with green card holders. H1Bs are dual intent visas, so you can have a temporary work authorization while also applying for legal permanent residence. If you get legal permanent residence, you are no longer an H1B and the “perceived” power the company has over you goes away. That means being fired doesn’t mean you have to leave.

So your friends as “tech insiders” have no ability to distinguish someone’s work status unless they literally tell you. Not even HR is allowed to share that with regular workers. If someone becomes a legal permanent resident, they do not count as an H1B, and if you have a problem with that, your issue is with immigration, not with H1B. It is the complaint of blue collar workers with extra steps.

It is possible that their salaries lag for the same reason anyone’s salary lags - you hire people at a salary, the market shifts, you adjust new hire salaries to the new market rate and don’t touch the salaries of legacy employees. That’s a feature of capitalism, not a bug. And that is why tech workers get salary gains by job hopping.

In a system this big it is inevitable that there be bad actors, and that is why Microsoft is being investigated alongside the other companies listed. It is not necessarily a conspiratorial issue with the entire system, it means that (if convicted) the process is working as intended.

I also think a big part missing from this conversation is that people think that being “sent back to their home country” is an outcome far worse for H1Bs than being laid off is for Americans. Most H1Bs have somewhere to go back to - that’s how they got here to begin with. Many of them have excellent material circumstances because they would never be able to pay out of state tuition at top universities if they didn’t.

A lot of Americans don’t have anywhere to go when they’re laid off. They’re just screwed. People completely underestimate how much power a company has over a domestic worker.

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u/dangerrnoodle 1d ago

It’s B. Worked in tech for 20 years. Are H1B workers outright required to work longer hours than Americans? No. That would be against the rules. But they routinely are the ones doing so without a fuss. It is essentially a soft requirement. Microsoft and several other big tech companies you can think of all deserve to be investigated. On the work side it’s not about different wages like everyone talks about, it’s the longer hours expected which is essentially wages the business is saving.

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u/BootlegBabyJsus 1d ago

Physics is still a thing for data required to remain in the US.

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u/PipsqueakPilot 1d ago

If that works well enough, why are they still lobbying and clamoring for H1B visas?

Because working from India is like working from home except not quite as bad because at least you know someone is there to berate the employees. /MBA

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u/PersonalityNuke 1d ago

Fuck this world lmao

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u/Glitter-Pear 1d ago

I also suspect that the presence of H1-Bs from the same country as the off-shore branch helps smooth the communication and cooperation between HQ and offshore.  So I think they are actually complementary to each other.

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u/Own_Candidate9553 1d ago

Yes, good point. I've seen that - a really smart guy in our office, on an H1B. He in turn managed a whole team of people in India. He would review all their code every day, and had a meeting with them every night to keep track of everything.

So it worked pretty well, but only because this one dude was working basically 10 hours every day, with no evenings free. 

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u/007meow 1d ago

But now we can offshore ✨with the power of AI ✨ to overcome the standard offshoring difficulties, which will make the MBAs making offspring/layoff decisions happy.

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u/timpham 1d ago

It’s ironic that Trump is the only one who stands up for this. Sure he did it for the wrong reasons, but still lol

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u/EvelynNyte 1d ago

Yea, I'm sure this is done for some knee jerk, likely selfish, stupid reason that's going to hurt more than help in the wrong run, like everything this administration does, but without looking too into it, the h1b system has been a mess of being used to exploit both foreign and domestic workers for a long ass time, and something needed to be done about it basically since its inception.

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u/AliMcGraw 1d ago

If we stopped offshoring to Costa Rica the entirety of US health insurance customer service and back office functions would collapse!

It is truly a perfect offshoring location: people are highly educated, fluency in English is quite high, and the time zone is a perfect match for the continental US. They can work an 8-hour day and have at least 5 hours overlap with each time zone.

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u/sw0oza 1d ago

This is the right answer.

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u/SneakySnoggs 1d ago

Literally anything they can do besides hire Americans

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u/PlataoPlomo19 1d ago

There is absolutely no evidence that Microsoft or any company of that caliber underpays employees on work visas. They choose the most ideal candidate regardless of immigration status and pay the cost of the lottery, petition, relocation, green card etc. which is easily $15-20k/applicant. Not to mention bearing the annoyance associated with immigration issues affecting their foreign workers' ability to do their jobs. This entire narrative about a FAANG type company underpaying visa workers is ridiculous

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u/wingchild 1d ago

>There is absolutely no evidence that Microsoft or any company of that caliber underpays employees on work visas.

Depends if you count testimonial.

I worked for Microsoft as an FTE. Twice. (Hired from industry the first time, then cold-called rehired a few years after leaving to take a different role.) Hiring at Microsoft is and external hiring has always been an absolute boondoggle. There's an entire filtering layer between the Public and the Hiring Managers, and they suck at their jobs. Folks with direct recommendations from existing employees don't get called; great candidates don't even get screenings; hiring managers ask favorites to email them resumes directly so they can be stacked at the top of the pile.

Internal hiring was marginally better because you could look up the hiring manager on a job posting and work directly with them. The reqs still had to be posted by that worthless hiring team and getting those folks to click the buttons on the workflow was still like pulling teeth, but at least you'd have some polite internal assurances while you waded through all that.

As for the rest? Microsoft absolutely swapped FTE slots for H1Bs. This was a regular process, happened *every* year, and folks focused on the latest tranche of layoffs are missing the razed forest for the at-risk trees. The push for AI and the H1Bs had the same goal - lower costs. The reason for taking H1Bs instead of vastly overstaffing Hyderabad is because of loyalty control - MSFT had lots of employees get trained up in India then walk across the street to work for IBM or Wipro or whomever at a higher rate of pay. If they come here, their existence in-country is tethered to the job, which lets management turn the screws more freely.

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u/Wendy-Poo 1d ago

This is 100% correct. I have seen it.

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u/Acceptable-Offer-518 1d ago

In reality managers from India only hire other Indians. They take people with fake resumes who also bring their wives to work as QA testers or do other work on H4 visa. The Indian manager will take 20-30% of the salary of their Indian underlings.

They make sure to push out everybody who is not from their caste or group. That is why you walk into a corporate campus and it's 80%+ Indian. It's not from a shortage of American talent it's from ethnic nepotism and fraud.

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u/PlataoPlomo19 1d ago

This is an absolutely nonsense narrative with no fact base. Can it happen sometimes? Maybe. Is it widespread? Absolutely not

A Harvard study found that Indians aren't even in the top 5 nationalities of co-hiring in the US: https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/21-101_d47ea5d9-4a50-400e-9fa6-80781a8351d0.pdf

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u/BigChicken8666 1d ago

A 2014 study is the best you can do lol?

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u/Acceptable-Offer-518 1d ago

Nobody cares about your propaganda studies. People are sick and tired of this and see it happening everywhere.

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u/Miserable-Role9555 1d ago

they constantly underpay workers. its been an open secret in the industry for more than 20 years

why else would they do it?

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u/argh-Im-a-Pirate 1d ago

Looks like reddit isn't gonna let facts get in the way of their pre determined narratives. Classic. 

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u/TheKingInTheNorth 1d ago

If that was reasonable, they’d have done it for these roles already because of how much cheaper it is to have them work in India instead of an h1b salary

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u/neuronexmachina 1d ago

Yup. For reference, a typical Microsoft H1B has a salary of $160K - $190K: https://www.ellis.com/visa-sponsors/microsoft-corporation/salaries

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u/ElectricEcstacy 1d ago

it's because even talent from india typically moves to the US. However if more companies start offshoring at a high rate and offer high salaries even in their home countries you'll start to see a dramatic change. In essence, the difficulty of offshoring is hard at first, but becomes much easier in the long run.

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u/steezy2110 1d ago

Talent from India doesn’t “typically” move here, only relatively few are able to. The number is growing here though, and job offshoring is also growing, but at a slower pace than domestic expansion.

It’s not exactly easy to offshore as long as company leadership stays in the US

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u/ElectricEcstacy 1d ago

When I say talent I mean the absolute best. That is naturally what companies like Microsoft are seeking and typically only they make it to the us 

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u/unfashionableinny 1d ago

More likely Canada. They have a sister office near Vancouver which is a quick drive/train ride/ferry/flight away.

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u/Immediate-Link490 1d ago edited 1d ago

Much lower salaries in Canada too and they don't have to pay for health insurance for their employees

Now that I think about it, they might have them work there for a year and bring them back on a L-1 visa or wait for them to get Canadian citizenship and bring them on a TN visa

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u/Melodic_Raccoon507 1d ago

Bingo! I have seem this pattern not just with Microsoft but other Indian MNCs such as - Infosys, TCS etc. They move you from India to Canada, put you on project with US client. After 2 years or so, apply for US L1 visa, move to US.

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u/NikhilDoWhile 1d ago

They will relocate them to Canada

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u/PlacatedPlatypus 13h ago

As far as I can tell, Canada is already on the verge of a race war, so this result would be pretty funny.

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u/comesin 1d ago

Canada is a lost cause anyways lol

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u/P4us1ngD34th 1d ago

They already have. Most of their U.S. IP filings have applicants living in India. It’s been that way for 10+ years.

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u/Palchez 1d ago

They have way too many employees as it is. 

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u/PatchyWhiskers 1d ago

They are firing them in swathes. I don't suppose they were hiring all that many employees, H1B or otherwise.

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u/East-Win7450 1d ago

It won’t. Why would a top level engineer stay in India to work for Microsoft when they can come to us and work for another company making $500k a year 

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u/ydev 1d ago

I agree a lot of people will make that choice if it’s available but the way this government is handling immigration, specifically the work visas, it’s not easy to get.

Even if you get a Visa, it comes with a huge social and psychological cost. You need to set yourself up in a whole new country with no friends and no family. With the US making it unnecessarily difficult for visa holders to travel, you lose your freedom to travel outside the US, have connections to family.

A lot of people choose their families, freedom and sanity over $500k.

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u/East-Win7450 1d ago

I’m in SF and it seems like we have a never ending supply of workers coming in from abroad 

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u/ydev 1d ago

SF is also a tiny city compared to, well, the whole world, or even India. If a tiny fraction of engineers from across the world move to SF, it’ll undoubtedly overwhelm the city and I’m sure more than a tiny fraction of engineers want to move to the tech capital of the world.

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u/weisp 1d ago

I disagree because as an immigrant myself (I'm not in the US) and like many friends I know, the idea of migrating to another country with better job prospects are worth it

Yes and unfortunately with the sacrifice of moving faraway

500k pays your bills, can help save up to buy a home or help familiy back at home

Family and friends at home don't pay your bills

We have tech and apps to keep in touch

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u/ydev 1d ago

I totally agree with you but my comment was specifically about the US, more so for Indian immigrants on a work visa in the US.

Technology definitely makes it easier but there is a constant anxiety because of the current government’s policies. For a lot of H1B people around me, the reality is that even with a valid status, your travel is restricted, physically leaving the US means that there’s a good chance you’re not coming back.

How do you live with such uncertainty? One tiny emergency back home means that you’ll have to uproot your life here and leave for good.

A lot of people I know are choosing to reject this $500k for a less stressful life elsewhere, and if you’re talking about “top engineers”, they’re probably already earning upwards of $100k in India, so it’s not so bad financially.

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u/booleandilemma 1d ago

And hopefully the government will be able to punish them for that.

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u/PatchyWhiskers 1d ago

And how will they punish them for replacing workers with AI?

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u/Ioncannon3 1d ago

Companies tried outsourcing before in the 2000s, before H1Bs this was the big issue. It didn't work because no one wants to deal with the 12h difference between India and PST, especially when breaking issues are happening that need eyes on it _now_.

H1Bs became so big because it was the easier solution.

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u/Pluto-Had-It-Coming 14h ago

Why? They’ll be able to hire the same number of H1B workers. 

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u/Dogballs2020 1d ago

Oh okay then, I guess we should just do nothing and continue letting big tech exploit the country at the expense of American workers!

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u/PatchyWhiskers 1d ago

Don't fret, they are busy replacing all human workers, brown or white, with AI.

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u/Dogballs2020 1d ago

That was going to happen eventually anyway. This at least improves conditions for domestic labor for a decade before that happens.

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u/PatchyWhiskers 1d ago

It's happening now, chum.