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Comment by URSpider94 | Hacker News Reader

When I read through your comments that you added in response to the objections below, I wonder if you consider what a bureaucratic nightmare this would be to administer? You're also creating a thicket of new calculations and regulations that could all equally be used to game the system.

Some small nit-picks as an example: H1-B's are not locked to a specific location, so it would be easy enough to bring in employees for the Kansas City office, then immediately relocate them to the Bay Area at the same salary. Changing this will be really hard since free travel across the country is a fundamental US right.

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Actually, H1B already addresses that. H1B is based on Labor Condition Application (LCA) which is location specific. If the employee changes location (even for the same employer), they are required to file an LCA with USCIS (They don't have to go through the whole H1B process). However, this rule is very poorly enforced. I have personally seen cases where USCIS has rejected the H1B renewal if they found out that you changed your location without filing a new LCA.

Many of these H1B shops game this through a consulting model. They claim the immigrant is living/working in one low wage location, then have them consult in the more expensive locations.

If you create a bidding war and localize it, the H1B shops are going to exploit this even more.

> If the employee changes location (even for the same employer), they are required to file an LCA with USCIS (They don't have to go through the whole H1B process)

I changed location from South Bay to San Francisco within the same company and they had to file a new LCA and an amended H1-B. It basically is the whole process again, minus the lottery. (Since I already had an H1-B, I'd already been counted against the yearly quota.)

> I wonder if you consider what a bureaucratic nightmare this would be to administer?

Except that minimum salary thresholds for H1B's are already set (for each region). We're talking about just increasing these thresholds (e.g. 55K --> 85K and so on...).

You don't address his question though - which was, if you set the new threshold to 85K a company can bring in a H1B at 85K in Kansas city and then relocate him/her to SFO at the same salary. This is gaming the system again - the company gets a cheap resource without having to pay Bay Area salaries.

Now we have to talk about cost of living adjusted thresholds.

As I replied to the parent comment, this is not how H1B works. H1B is given for a given LCA which is location specific.

It can be trivially amended without change in salary - you don't even need to wait for the amendment to be approved before you can move the employee to the new location. In any case the point still stands that there would need to be location specific minimum salary requirement.

Not legally they can't. I changed location from South Bay to San Francisco within the same company (a move easily within commuting distance) and they had to file a new LCA and an amended H1-B.

So? Did you have to wait until it was approved? Not sure what you're disagreeing to here.

Well in my case it was approved in 15 days via premium processing, months before I started working.

But in general you're correct that employees can change work sites while the H1-B petition is pending (because without premium processing that takes months), but only after the new LCA is approved. And the LCA is what determines the prevailing wage for the new site. So you can't move someone from Bumfuck, Nebraska to San Francisco and continue paying Bumfuck wages.

If you think the processing time is too long - I totally agree. 15 days should be regular processing time, not "premium".

Right, and these H1B shops are getting by that by telecommuting. It's exactly why Disney was able to find immigrant IT workers who could do the same job for less.

> I wonder if you consider what a bureaucratic nightmare this would be to administer?

I think many of the "nightmare" issues are already present and already being managed just as well (or badly.) The marginal addition in complexity shouldn't be that high.

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