US suspends expedited processing of H-1B visas

[Cooley Hurd]

Source: CNN.com

(CNN)The US is temporarily suspending expedited processing of H-1B visas, eliminating the option of shorter wait times for the program that helps highly skilled foreigners work at US companies.

Under the current system, companies submitting applications for H-1B visas for potential employers can pay extra for expedited processing, which is referred to as premium processing.

Premium processing costs an additional $1,225 and ensures a response from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services in 15 days or the fee is refunded. Standard H-1B applications -- those that are not premium -- take between three to six months.
Indian official says H1B visas bolster jobs

The suspension is effective April 3, and could last up to six months, according to USCIS.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/04/us/h1b-visa-premium-processing-suspended/index.html

---

The anti-immigration travesty continues.

We're ruled by modern-day Know Nothings...

[secondwind]

1. I think the orange turd is nothing more than a COWARD, I bet daily briefings keep him up at night.

He's lazy and incompetent!!

[yeoman6987]

27. On the other hand, maybe companies will hire out of work citizens.

Just a thought. I'm all for immigration but there are a ton of professionals in these areas out of work.

[Kingofalldems]

28. Got a link on that, yeoman6987?

Looks like another 'Trump is great' post from here.

[modrepub]

2. I don't know

but this may be a positive. Lots of companies ask for these to hire people who are willing to work for lower wages just to get a chance to come here. If this forces companies to actually pay higher wages to fill these jobs then it might be a plus. Given most companies continue to complain they have jobs they can not fill maybe this is the kick in the rear for them to realize they've been low balling people for far too long.

To summarize if this increases wages and shrinks the overall pay gap then this could be OK (but then again increasing wages may push companies to automize and eliminate jobs). I'm not considering racial motives because it's pretty clear how this administration feels.

[Demsrule86]

10. When hubs was ill, one of my extra jobs was a stint

at Sprint...where I watched an entire floor of US workers laid off on a Friday...and replaced by foreign workers on Monday...Indian workers...some Americans were forced to stay in order to get severance and train their replacements.

[modrepub]

18. Wife had similar problems

Her company had people in India who were part of her coding group. This had an advantage, on paper at least, of having the capability to develop projects at a constant pace. When her group was done for the day they'd turn things over to the group in India until they came back the next day. Well for lots of reasons this didn't work and her group would often have to rework what the group from India had done while they were away. So rather than bringing on more coders in the US, her group got stuck doing reworks of the offshore people.

[joshcryer]

25. H1-B has a Wage and Hour Division to crack down on this very thing.

The problem is that they get paid entry level pay because they're entry level workers.

[Rhiannon12866]

3. Yet another smart move!

What will be the repercussions from this latest effort to hurt businesses??


European Parliament votes to end visa-free travel for Americans
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=8743453

[Thor_MN]

4. I wouldn't count this as a bad thing.

I lost a good job that I really liked to an H1B visa holder that I had to train. She was a idiot as far as I could see.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. Another economic factor leading to the Trump Slump.

Nobody knows which one will trigger the tipping point, be the straw that broke the camel's back, but their effects are cumulative and synergistic.

[IronLionZion]

6. Are you tired of winning yet?

I can see some DUers supporting this because jobs can be closely intertwined with racism. Many DUers oppose H1-B.

But it does encourage more Kansas style shootings. People like Garmin GPS and affordable software, but how many American want to write code?

I'm American born and raised and hate coding and testing. I don't want to do it. Every day I was doing it, I was constantly told that I was stealing jobs away from more deserving "real Americans" and am ruining America's economy by simply existing. DUers with high post counts have told me that my loyalties must obviously be for a country I didn't come from. I feel like this doesn't happen to Irish, Italians, or Anglo-Saxons. It always happens to Indian-Americans, especially US citizens who are told that we must have picked up our fake accent by working in call centers before getting our fake US passport and birth certificate.

You can't even begin to understand how ridiculous it is at many companies. I have very little training in coding. I have tons of training and experience in something completely different. No matter what job I interviewed for, they always assign me to write code or find defects in code even though my training and interview was for something very different. Yeah, go ahead and explain that one to me. Tell me how it's not about my brown skin.

[Demsrule86]

11. This has nothing to do with racism. Ask HP and other tech workers laid off or forced to take

huge pay cuts while the company hires cheaper HIB workers...this is about big companies abusing the HIB system...and costing American workers jobs...and Democrats should have put an end to it long ago...I hope they will when we win next time. This is an example of corporate welfare. The companies get out of paying a decent wage and paying for benefits.

[IronLionZion]

19. Are you a developer?

If so, I want you to have developer jobs, I really do. I don't want to do it.

I get what you're saying about companies abusing the system to get cheap labor but it's a little more culturally complex than that. They also want the type of workers who are willing to be abused out of desperation or not knowing any better. Most companies will use contractors and several layers of subcontractors for IT/development rather than hiring employees for it. This model encourages people who are willing to move across the US every few months, drive four hours a day, be separated from their families for months or even years at a time and be fired at will, no notice. Watch their desperate scramble to take whatever crappy job some other company will hire for just to stay in the country.

It almost makes me wish my grandparents had immigrated somewhere else that values workers more. I love America, but damn if workers get a raw deal here compared to most developed countries. And the independent nature of IT workers makes people avoid unionizing here like they do in some other countries.

[Demsrule86]

21. Union are out these days...they have been demonized.

I wish we could change that quickly, but it will take time. In the meantime, we need to stop the greedy corporations from importing essentially slave labor from abroad and sending Americans to the unemployment line...I saw American HP workers forced to take 75% cuts and there was a rule...three American workers laid off for one Indian worker...some were here on HIB and some were in India. Time to stop the greedy corporations who contribute nothing these days and make a great deal of money because they are Americans...corporate welfae.

[Demsrule86]

22. We need worker protection for sure...

Hubs is an engineer...he started young at one of the big three...he was forced out a couple of years ago...he had managed to hang on for a reduced pension of sorts...not an easy task so we have health insurance...shitty as it may be. He was hired quickly first in steel before steel went down a little over a year ago...and next by a company that makes parts for various companies including but not limited to autos. It is a Temporary position which is fine...but if they 'hire' him in which would give him no job protection he would be expected to work long hours with no additional pay...right now he is paid for all overtime. Also, we could not take advantage of better health care as we would lose our shitty plan forever...and with the shitshow that is the GOP we can't risk that. So the entire system is crazy...people are basically desperate and the old 'lucky to have a job' is often heard. We need to get Dems in office and reform trade (the TPP would have been a disaster), support worker rights (here in Ohio they work people 10 or 12 hours with no breaks),and to wage a PR campaign for unions. Also American in name only companies are being rewarded through the tax codes for shipping jobs overseas...and that must stop. They should be penalized for sure with a tariff...but their foreign counterparts also need to be tariffed...otherwise...this will cause American autos and other companies to fail. These are issues that simpleminded Trump and his merry band of criminals/Russians don't understand and don't care about.

[metalbot]

7. I wouldn't jump to quickly to the assumption that this is anti-immigration

The US has done this before, generally to give USCIS time to clear it's backlog. What happens is that so many people use the premium service that the backlog for non-premium processing gets large and unmanageable. Even though there is an additional fee for processing, that fee isn't actually used to hire more people to process them, it just pulls those applications to the front of the line.

I'm fairly sure that had Clinton won, USCIS would still be doing this, but it wouldn't even make the news. It's just that in context of what else is going on (which IS very anti-immigration) that this is getting any scrutiny at all.

That being said, a reform of our H1-B system is one of the few good things that might come out of the Trump administration.

I've always advocated that rather than a lottery system, the visas should be granted to the highest bidders, which would ensure upward salary pressure, and ensure that any company that wanted to hire a genius developer from overseas would be able to do so.

[keithbvadu2]

8. Trump family winery wants more foreign workers to avoid paying American workers.

Trump family winery wants more foreign workers to avoid paying American workers.

Will their workers be delayed?

[hollowdweller]

15. Can you believe our side did not expose his hypocracy on this issue more?

We just said he was unfit rather than expose him being hypocritical. Congressional dem leaders should be hitting him on it now still.

[miyazaki]

9. Dr. Michio Kaku makes a stark statement concerning the "Genius Visa" here

[joshcryer]

24. H1-Bs are too slandered by the left and right respectively...

...to understand what their real value is.

[FrodosNewPet]

12. PERM Fake Job Ads defraud Americans to secure green cards

[FreeStateDemocrat]

13. Typical corporate robots acting in a dehumanizing manner that makes me truly disgusted!

What these sycophants don't understand is that the same insensitive money grubbing corporate behavior will judge them as being unnecessary due to cheaper options in the future and then being seen as unprofitable will discard them.

[IronLionZion]

23. They are such job creators

So patriotic

[hollowdweller]

14. I don't like Trump but I fully support this

If people think this is wrong then they don't understand why we lost.

I know a LOT of people who have lost their US jobs NOT because they sent their jobs overseas, but because they laid them off and hired H1B's to replace them.

You get a US worker who paid out the ass for his education, he lands a good paying job and then he loses it because some company hired someone on an H1B that maybe got their education free and the US worker is left with big bills and no jobs.

This is the sort of issue democrats should support. Short of a global union movement to equalize salaries which seems unlikely this is the next best thing.

[Dorn]

17. It makes me sick to agree with you

I agree, I'm sorry but I agree

[Dorn]

16. Cut funds to public universities and public schools, next increase H1s

Then: Bang head against the wall

[milestogo]

20. The H1-B visa program is basically a scam.

American workers are not impossible to find - the program allows companies to bring in foreign workers and pay them less. I say good riddance.

Edit: Example - Some American companies go all the way to India to recruit students from the technical colleges. We're talking about 21 year olds with ZERO work experience, just a technical education. They are getting hired instead of an American student with a University degree and a major in computer science, with or without experience.

[Matthew28]

26. This and our messed up trade deals

are why Donald Trump is sitting in the white house right now. Democrats need to become pro-American worker again and show the voters of PA, Mich and Wis that we're their friends.