Comment by negrit | Hacker News Reader

Comment by negrit | Hacker News Reader

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By law, foreigners should not have a lower salary. When a company sponsor an employee for a visa, the salary is one of the criteria to check for the immigration. They should/have to make sure it match the average salary in the office location. So, if the office is in Boulder, CO instead of San Francisco then it's ok to not pay your employee $100k+.

But a least 4 of the top 10 companies sponsoring for visas in the US are playing very dirty[1][2][3][4] and pay there employee a lot less than they should.

And for what it's worth, most of this companies, now in trouble, are:

- Exploiting cheap labor from India.

- Compromising career and future opportunity of the employee they sponsor

- Affecting thousands of other visa applicants workers who want to move to the US and can't due to the illegal practice of those companies.

[1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023045275045791674...

[2] http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-04-04/news...

[3] http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-07-20/news...

[4] http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/feb2009/...

tldr; turnover of visa holders vs. non-visa holders should be used as the metric more than wages. Significantly lower turnover of visa holders suggests they're being exploited since those who can quit and find another job do.

But this doesn't work. For many people on H1B's the visa and greencard sponsoring has tremendous value. The do depress wages, but it's because of the risk around the visas.

If you have an H1B, you're less likely to work at startups -- if the company goes bust and you need to find a job fast, you're at tremendous risk of needing to leave the US. You have 4-5 weeks to get a new job, but it has to start by then. Thinking about how long interview cycles can be at some companies, 4 weeks from application to start date is challenging.

Also, people getting sponsored are much less likely to leave. This should be the real metric for evaluation -- turnover. If you're on a visa, especially if you're getting sponsored for a green card, you're much less likely to quit and go to another company. You can get hired at a competitive salary, but over a few years and a few promotions you can be underpaid.

To completely stereotype, I used to work with a ton of these guys at Amazon -- they're all in line for Green Cards and will not consider quitting or even complaining about things until they get it. The turnover among non-visa people is much higher.

You're less likely to get a H1B at a startup yes but it's not for the reasons you think.

For a company to apply to a H1B visa they have to prove they have enough financial assets to not get bust.

There are however several reasons why startups are not sponsoring H1B visas as much as they should:

-It's time consuming. It really takes a lot of time, most of the immigration law firm are not startup friendly and are using old schools forms and stuff.

- They are not educated on visas sponsoring. They just don't know what it takes and stuff.

I'm here talking from experiences

I wonder how that affects pg's views on allowing more H1B workers. (http://www.paulgraham.com/95.html)

The H1B program doesn't really help or address the need by startups for qualified employees.

It is actually alarming how 'anti startup' USCIS can be. Here are list of fraud indicators they released: http://www.happyschools.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/h1b-v...

They aren't anti-startup as much as anti-fraud.

Yes, my wording was bad. It's more like not startup friendly.

Don't forget that currently H1-B applications exceed the quota, which means you can only hire H1Bs in October, if you sponsor them the April before, if they get through the lottery (~50% chance). So your hire turns into a maybe-hire-in-six-months.

"To completely stereotype"

I wouldn't characterize that as a stereotype as much as a data point. It's very good info and insight, thanks for that.

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