This is a really cruel move. It honestly only affects a small population of spouses from Indian and Chinese immigrants who have to wait a long time for their green card application to go through (due to per country quotas). The reason why spouses of H1-B immigrants can't find jobs on their own, even when qualified, is because of H1 quotas which fill on the first day of application - and, if they aren't lucky to get it, they are just stuck. Also very few companies want to wait for 6+ months from the time the job has been accepted to when the candidate starts given H1 application needs to be filed on April 1st while the person can only start working on October 1st (if they are lucky to make through the quota). H4 EAD provided a way for them to be employed and do something with their life. With this repeal, that option will be taken away.
On the other hand, Trump is doing a few things to alleviate the situation:
1. He will likely strike down hard against Indian IT companies which take more than half of H1 visa quotas. That should help spouses, who are qualified, to have a better shot at getting an H1.
2. He is proposing a merit based GC going forward vs. the current system where there are country quotas and where family applications take priority.
Both these will help. However, I would have liked to see these happening first vs. H4-EAD taken away.
The merit-based proposal that I've seen last time around had very high bars; much higher than Canada, say. I would dare say that most H1Bs would be worse off under it, in that they wouldn't be able to secure the visa at all.
No, the best performers couldn't get a visa or had to leave the country, because of the cheap Asian imports, who overrun the system. With the proposed min. salary this would have helped a bit, but the numbers are still too high so that many high performers have to work remote. Which hurts the US economy because their workforce will not learn anything from the high performers.
Now with the retracted spouse rule you again benefits Asian visas because their spouses usually don't work. In contrary to Europeans.
I think, you are far from truth. To work on EAD, one needs i-140, which is enroute to green card. So non Indian and chinese, get their green card in 2 years. After green card, every thing becomes immaterial. So ONLY Indians and Chinese get messed up.
He will likely strike down hard against Indian IT companies which take more than half of H1 visa quotas
Is there any indication that any of these or their domestic representatives donated to Trump's campaign? I'd search but I don't know any names. Seems like a gravy train the companies would be attentive to maintaining, though.
I think he will likely increase the minimum salary bar for IT professionals to qualify for H1 from the current $60k to potentially over $100k. That will wreck a lot Indian IT companies business models where currently it is a price arbitrage game.
You say he will do this, and he will do that. It is very odd how the administration puts out so many contradictory messages that people from all different viewpoints and political leanings make confident conflicting assertions about what will happen. But, when you look at the actual things that are implemented by the administration it is just straight up cruelty and class warfare.
Sounds fishy, but would it be possible that the increase in salary would still end up coming from the pocket of the "employer"? Like some sort of "kickback" employee has to pay per year to a shell agency for recruiting kindof thing.
It's more likely we'll see a reduction in benefits like company health insurance or bonuses to offset a rise in salary. It won't get you from 60k to 100k, but I can see how one might squeeze out 15-20k from this.
Let’s get something straight: H1B is not an immigrant visa. It’s a temporary work visa. So the idea of “H1B Immigrants” is wrong and represents an abuse of the program. Someone who intends to immigrate ought not be using the H1B.
Really there should be no path to a green card for H1Bs.. that is against the purpose of that visa. Get an EB3 if you intend to immigrate.
You say "let's get something straight" but follow up with blatant misinformation.
Directly from wikipedia:
"Even though the H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa, it is one of the few temporary visa categories recognized as dual intent, meaning an H-1B holder can have legal immigration intent (apply for and obtain the green card) while still a holder of the H-1B visa. Effectively, the requirement to maintain a foreign address for this non-immigrant classification was removed in the Immigration Act of 1990."
For engineers like me who went to the US in the mid-90s on H1B, spouses were not allowed to work. The US government changed it, to be in sync with other countries that allowed American employees' spouses work in the host countries.
This new move will have an effect on the spouses of American workers abroad, since host countries will retaliate as a mark of protest.
If enacted, more R&D tech centers might pop up in other countries, esp Canada. The demand for high-level global tech talent is strong enough that most of them would not put up with much and companies will be forced to adapt.
While speaking either German, French or Italian certainly helps english is more than enough in most jobs. In IT most stuff we read / discuss online is in english anyway.
The DHS as an organization should be disbanded. It barely made sense when it was founded after 9/11, but now it's actively working against America's interests. Our borders and immigration rules are so unpleasant, people would rather work in other countries than deal with them even a few times a year.
That's definitely working as designed. There's enough hostility to "immigrants" from voters that the system is deliberately made as hostile as possible. Same for the UK system.
Given that wages are a function of supply and demand, and given that wages have been stagnant for Americans since the 70's, why is having tighter constraints on the supply of labor a bad thing?
Wouldn't this mean that Americans would have higher wages? Wouldn't a tight labor market incentivize investment in the growth of our own workers instead of working to maximize profits for corporations that already have historic profits by deleveraging workers?
Well, yes, based on a simple supply-and-demand model, that is what we'd expect to see. It's not what we're seeing in practice, though. We keep making immigration harder and harder, and it doesn't seem to be doing much to fix our economy -- certainly not enough to justify the real human cost.
Most software engineers would qualify for L1. One of the other requirements of L1 is that you need to spend a year in the company office outside of the US. During that year, you will learn some of the internal processes and technology used inside the company, which then will count as specialized knowledge.
I know several software engineers who qualified for L1B (rather than L1A) after one year of working for foreign subsidiaries of US companies.
One person was able to transfer to the US after 6 months due to L1 blanket status of the US company. This just requires presenting a form to a consulate and does not require an individual petition to be filed with USCIS first.
This will effect the really high level very high skill immigrants who tend to have highly qualified partners who might well stop their partner from taking a job in the USA.
I know of one CTO who came back to UK from SV because of pressure from his wife
> DHS anticipates that there would be two primary impacts that DHS can estimate: the cost-savings accruing to forgone future filings by H-4 spouses, and labor turnover costs that employers of H-4 workers could incur.
Does anyone know what cost savings are they talking about?
Processing any kind of paperwork takes time and costs money. If the applications are no longer accepted, those costs no longer exist.
The second impact is an increase in costs, not a savings. It's referring to the fact that companies who currently have H4 employees will lose those employees, and will incur costs in replacing them.
The E-3 visa (meant for Australians) doesn't have any work restrictions on spouses. Why isn't the administration targeting those visas/ead if this is indeed about "Hire American and buy American" ?
The quota for E-3s is 10,000/year, it gets about 30% subscribed (with new applications, renewals aren't capped), and it's providing the free and open movement of labour that the AU-US FTA requires.
but also: white Australians don't trigger racist reactions & clamping down on all Australian E-3 immigrants would not be as effect of a dogwhistle.
Is it really that Americans are just not racist against Australian workers , but are racist towards brown people on work visas?
Or could it be something else?
Maybe Americans don't tend to see their whole IT and Dev departments being filled with Australians, who are NOT willing to work in high COL areas on $60k year, share apartments and a car among 6 adults, and work 60 hours a week since the money they're saving won't buy them squat once home in Australia.
This is not true for Indians and others from low wage nations.
Most Americans aren't stupid. They know that businesses here use these visas to push down wages and working conditions. Considering this, I think Americans have been pretty damn friendly to most foreign workers for quite some time.
But eventually, even the most friendly of societies is going to say enough is enough.
> Is it really that Americans are just not racist against Australian workers , but are racist towards brown people on work visas?
The dogwhistle is signaling to racists exactly this: that removing the ability for spouses on H4 visas to get EAD will reduce immigration from non-white countries. So's your comment.
The issue isn't that the immigrants are coming from a non-white country. The issue is that they are coming from a _poor_ country with poor labor laws, and that they're displacing American workers in the process. Australia and other countries have similar quality of life as the US, thus immigration doesn't deleverage American workers like it does with poor countries.
You injecting race into the conversation is racist itself, and does nothing to help advance the conversation.
This is like saying that socialized healthcare is a dogwhistle for communism. It's a modified form of a slippery slope fallacy, suggesting that any movement in one direction will cause an extreme movement in that direction[1].
No it’s not. Calls for socialised healthcare are not a coded expression calling for the overthrowing of our capitalist overlord via violent revolution. I know it’s tricky because these look similar but please accept that this is a social problem, not a logic problem, and thus traditional engineering argument techniques are completely useless.
> Maybe Americans don't tend to see their whole IT and Dev departments being filled with Australians, who are NOT willing to work in high COL areas on $60k year, share apartments and a car among 6 adults, and work 60 hours a week since the money they're saving won't buy them squat once home in Australia.
How does stopping their spouses from working prevent that? If anything, they would be the least affected by this change because anyone doing that is probably young and single.
I sense BS here. Come to SF, you'll see everyone sharing apartments. Having roommate is a personal choice, either you get in debt like typical american or live frugally. If someone doesn't have family in US and knows that he'll be kicked out because of his brown color, why would he spend money? Most americans are not stupid and americans have been pretty friendly to immigrants? Plain, simple lie. America has been always racist, look back how the orientals were treated in recent past. And, I/m talking about recent past.
Wow! You don't hold back on the stereotypes do you? Practically none of the people I know do this. Infact they tend to do better wage/house wise than the general population if you take a look at the data.
By no restriction of spouses on E3, it allows a person to do any job including being a Walmart cashier, hairdresser anything like that - which generally tend to be lower paying jobs - even less than 60k. There are people on h4 ead making more than 120k+. So it's not even about low wages as well. If you take a look at all the decisions taken on immigration over the past year (Muslim country ban, GC lottery and chain migration policy potential changes, extensive rfe on applications)it looks like an attempt to make immigration from non-"Western" countries tougher - which is perfectly fine. It just shouldn't be packaged as something else.
Not but also, but only. Here is the thing, spouses of h1b can only work after getting I-140. For most of the indians, when they are legit, it will take 2-4 years after they start working on fresh h1b to get I-140. For non Indians, they will mostly have green card by then, so for them, all good. for 85,000 (h1b per year) 0.7(70% indians) 3 (years) * 0.5( 50% i-140 approval), families would would be forced to live on single income.
I have done masters in US and I am on h1b visa I get 30k$ PA working as developer in java technology and my spouse on h4 visa gets 40k $ PA .If h4 visa is revoked is it better to apply for h1b visa or f1 visa.
Message is loud and clear. No Indians are welcome. Now indians on h1b need to figure out, if they will migrate to Canada with skills they have, will they start business in India. Govt have no intentions of improving GC process. Govt want to stop legal immigration under different disguises. I don't know how many people are aware that it takes 3-4 years to get I-120, after some one starts job on H1b. That means all H1b's, who have been here for 3+ years need to go back or become poor in USA.
For me as a European this is really simple: foreigners are not welcome in the US so I won't bother the US with my presence.
If I'm going to be selfish: the US establishing itself as a politically unstable and inconsistent country means more opportunities closer to where I live. More talent staying in Europe, more talent attracted to Europe.
If I were American I would worry about important talent pools now finding more opportunities in Asia.
It has its appeals for people from some parts of the world. I'm from Scandinavia. The US isn't terribly appealing when you live in a part of the world where stuff works and people tend to be rational.
I think it is meant to benefit US mid-tier tech workers, who are expected to experience less competition and downward wage pressure as the attractiveness (and even feasibility) of work in the US is substantially decreased for couples not consisting of at least one 'superstar' (persons earning well over $100k as an individual, or couples in which both members are earners at the top end of the ability distribution). I guess we'll see if that expectation bears out, of if companies respond by offshoring.
Except for the US citizens who now might have a job or even a bit of wage growth after 30 years of non-stop immigration from mostly low wage countries, with the ensuing wage arbitrage used by US businesses.
Individuals may do better than average, but the trend in the US has been a widening gap between the upper class and everyone else combined with stagnant wages[1]. This has been due to many reasons like outsourcing, (illegal) immigration, automation, dissolution of anti-trust legislation, and the trend away from unionization in most industries.
The rights were given to them, that's when a lot of spouses gave up their careers elsewhere to build a family life here.
Now, like a video game, the rights are being yanked away.
What are they supposed to do? Leave kids here and go back try to rebuild a life without family? Take everyone with them and try to readjust?
Imagine being lured into college with funding and after 2 years, they just yank that funding away, leaving you hapless. What do you do then?
On the other hand, Trump is doing a few things to alleviate the situation:
1. He will likely strike down hard against Indian IT companies which take more than half of H1 visa quotas. That should help spouses, who are qualified, to have a better shot at getting an H1.
2. He is proposing a merit based GC going forward vs. the current system where there are country quotas and where family applications take priority.
Both these will help. However, I would have liked to see these happening first vs. H4-EAD taken away.