News I-Squared Act Bill

The term "tax" does not appear in the bill. How does hiring an H1B avoid taxes?

 

I think that's at the very least debatable, even assuming its a given employers are apt to exaggerate shortages. Industry does not per se require STEM graduates, industry requires specific STEM competencies. For example, one current, commonly heard complaint is with CS majors who obtain degrees knowing little about robust software development in teams and have zero experience with recent platforms (e.g. mobile Android, iPhone).

 

For 2014, each employee has deducted from his pay 6.2% of gross compensation under $117,000 for SS and 1.45% for Medicare (no income limits). The employer must match these deductions, so the total FICA comes to 12.4% for SS and 2.9% for Medicare, or 15.3% total

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Insurance_Contributions_Act_tax

If instead of paying a US worker $100,000 a year in salary you can find an H1B visa holder for $50,000 a year, the employer not only saves $50,000 due to the gross salary differential, but he must pay only $3825.00 for his portion of the FICA, instead of $7650.00.

Unemployment insurance rates depend on the state in which the employer operates and the industry in which he is engaged.

Also, if an H1B visa holder loses his job, his visa is subject to being revoked.

 

I doubt the H1Bs are coming in to the US to compete with the mean "computer programmer" category quoted in those pay scale stats. Rather, I expect they're coming in to compete at this level, where the prevailing wage has indeed gone astronomical:

 

Hmm... let's see, $500 K salary from a startup or $3 million in cash & Google stock. It doesn't take an MBA to figure this one out.

But H1Bs are not merely being used as stalking horses to slay high-salaried programmers at startups. The famous layoffs at Disney were reportedly reversed after the Mouse garnered a lot of attention and no small amount of negative press over their plans to replace some IT workers with H1Bs, with the added insult that those being laid off were supposed to train their replacements before heading out the door.

http://dailycaller.com/2015/06/12/disney-abc-cancels-plans-to-layoff-dozens-of-tech-workers/

Some tech workers were brought in from India to work on installing systems at an American business and paid as little as $1.21 an hour.

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_26778017/tech-company-paid-employees-from-india-little-1

Once these workers were finished, they were flown right back to India. No $15 / hour for them.

But it's not just IT and electronics employers who are abusing the visa system. Large numbers of foreign workers are imported by shipyards, for instance, housed in company quarters on site, and work nearby on the vessels they are building or repairing. If the workers cause any trouble, they get fired summarily and put on the next plane out of town. With record numbers of Americans out of the labor force, these abuses should not be tolerated.

 

As the linked story makes clear, and I wrote, those S. Valley jobs are not the norm. If for some reason you find that CEO unbelievable (??), confirmation is easily found elsewhere. And H1Bs don't lose their visa if they can quickly get another job, which somebody at this level likely can.

http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Software-Engineer-Salaries-E9079_D_KO7,24.htm
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Employer=Facebook_Inc/Salary
http://www.businessinsider.com/a-go...es-already-making-3-million-every-year-2014-1

 

My point is, if you are going to recruit someone to jump ship from a good job, you don't start out by offering less money ...

Now, this startup may be the next Google, or it could be the next Napster, you just don't know ...

 

The latter example has to do with outrageous employer behavior and nothing to do with H1B; the Indian immigrants were not H1Bs but entered the country under false pretenses for a few months. If they had been H1Bs, the employer could not have gotten away with the illegal wages.

That said,
i) I'm aware that there are abuses of H1B, and I'm skeptical of raising the cap to over 100K per year because Google's Schmidt thinks its the thing to do.
ii) Abolishing all H1Bs does not necessarily mean US jobs will be retained over a foreign national, as owners/founders can and do pack up and move overseas, or simply start the next Google 2.0 in some other country in the first place.

 

There's nothing to stop them from doing this now.

Everybody knocks Bill Gates and Microsoft for whatever reason, but it still amazes me that he didn't abandon Redmond, WA years ago. He could have moved across the border to BC, or bought his own island (or small country) somewhere ... Heck, he could have built a big bote or two, put MS on the High Seas, and declared himself stateless. Why didn't he?

Why is Silicon Valley still operating in California, with the earthquakes and the droughts and the fires and the high cost of living and the high taxes and crumbling, almost Third-World infrastructure and feudal politics? Is the view of sunsets on the Pacific really that great?

Everybody wants US kids to grow up, study hard, go to college and get a STEM degree, and when all this is done, we say, "Sorry, but I'm gonna hire this H1B visa holder to fill that job you wanted. But, hey, now they're paying $15 an hour at Starbucks! Get your application in before they convert to robot baristas!"

 

http://www.uscis.gov/working-united...-specialty-occupation-professionals-australia