Public opinion on the H-1B visa system is diverse, with empathy for Indian professionals facing job insecurity, criticism towards companies exploiting the system, and pragmatic discussions on alternative opportunities. The system is viewed as dysfunctional, with resentment towards perceived corporate abuse. Some recognize potential benefits for India through remittances.

Indian Professionals

American Corporations

US Government

L1 category are employer sponsored intra-company movement visa. Once a person is laid off, the visa ends as well

thrSedec44070maksup

Can these H1B visa holders opt for a academic course and stay there?

Jagadish_1304

 For the 40th year in a row: &lt;title&gt;

ssnah9893

advocate_infjt

The L1 visa is basically indentured servitude of this century, those guys are screwed. Hope they made enough money while they were there.

&amp;#x200B;

Folks on H1 are going to be fine, they may need to take a paycut or work for a consultant while the market readjusts, but that's a short term thing,

[deleted]

imissze90s

Wow the number of people celebrating other people's misery.

techy098

zealous straight ancient threatening follow oil murky concerned special wipe

 *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev/home)*

Poha_Best_Breakfast

They can come to India and work under the visionary leadership of vishwagooooruji

For H1b, desi consultancies will take them in their payroll till they get a job. Consultancies will have a great days ahead.

VolTa1987

Green_jasmine_tea993

Merij_Kat_Nega_Mando

They wont come back to India due to the "log kya kahenge" syndrome...Canada, UK, Europe, Australia, Dubai, Kuwait chale jaayenge, but wont come back here.

raaveeg

These people can move to Canada/Australia

stonsksks

winstonpartell

I wonder how many of them are Modi bakhts who were praising what a wonderful job Modi is doing in India. Well, now they have the chance to come back to India and experience it firsthand!

kulikitaka

Trying_too_hard_

Come back to India, we are gong through achhe din as promised by Joker of India.

lapbreeze

Oh boy in an election year something like this could gain traction and used to target legal immigration.

Coronabandkaro

tl;dr Conservatives getting mad about the results of a free market

harami_murukami

desichica

That's because our people will work for next to nothing as a salary 😕

Pcaccount1234

I hope US hikes the minimum salary for H1B. H1B is for hiring exceptional talents with advanced degrees not your run of the mill IT professional.

nerdy_ace_penguin

People bornin India take years to escape H1B and get a green card. During their time on H1B, they lose on a lot of opportunities that may never come back again.

coorgtealover

Lanky_Ground_309

Enough_Gold6408

They can cry about it....

Free market baby

Untested_Udonkadonk

There is a clear growing discontentment in the west with regards to successful  and relatively well paid Indian professionals who are willing to work hard and at a discounted cost. It’s obviously an east decision for any company to make. The big American tech firms have been doing it for decades now. This has come up because and Indian company has chosen the same path.

benketeke

Predictions for the future my fellow redditors?

iplaytheguitarntrip

InterestingWait8902

They just need a scapegoat to win the ejections

StarryEyed-Surprise

I have a small theory - please hear me out. What if... What if the Indian guys were actually more hardworking and more intelligent and were brought up with discipline and respect for work? 

I don't know - just a theory.

zetret

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  my_qualifications: btech engineer 
2yrs IT job experience 


I am planning for masters in usa this year. I am considering all worst case scenarios if I don't get H1B visa. Is it easily possible to get IT job in eu countries or canada? Do we have any other options?


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If you dont have visa you have to leave the country.  
Its not 'easily possible' to get jobs anywhere let alone EU and CAD where you do not have a visa.

No visa = no jobs. Although if you are skilled enough you will get sponsored by companies but I doubt that is possible with 2 YOE.

Much-Might1524

Tbh, if you’re going to the US, go with the idea that your main aim is to pay off your loans, gather a bit of work experience and then come back to India. Chances are, if you’re working at an MNC, you can be transferred to the Indian branch by the MNC. If you say, had ivy league brand with 3 year work experience, you would probably get an incredible job india. If you get an H1B visa, it’s a bonus. It’s a win win scenario.

An alternative option is to do a dual degree program from europe and USA. For example- my cousin did a program in which he did a masters in management from HEC Paris in the first year and a masters in global business from Yale in the second year. He got an investment banking job in Europe. If he worked a few years in USA and then came back to India, that would have been great as well.

Forget the USA for Masters. Too costly, visa situation is a complete mess and you will have too much anxiety, hair loss, premature greying &amp; social, emotional and mental health issues. Find alternatives

BugAdministrative123

H1B visa rates have improved drastically this year onwards after they banned Indians from scamming the system. I think it's something close to 50% this year. So I think there is a high chance you can get H1B over 3 years. 

The main concern should be that the CS industry is very bad. Highly unlikely you will get a job even with any experience. And it's only getting worse with more automation.

PickleLassy

Secret tip: if u are decent looking and tall, marry an American. I've found falling in relationships with Americans in the US to be far far easier than indians who live abroad. Because for some reason, indians hate their own people 💀

Your other option is to go work in a country you *do* have work authorization in. 

In this case, India. 

And no, no country in the EU or Canada will prefer you over anyone else just because you studied in the US.

ricdy

You'll have to mostly go home, like this person unfortunately 

https://www.reddit.com/r/f1visa/s/HK3XfVbcoB

Naansense23

Since h1b is now a lottery system and the investment is 40-45 lakhs , why would your first option be to study in the states. It's like gambling away your investment. 

You must always (imo) go to a country that would offer you a PR or atleast give a work permit that has a promise of a pr in the future...

Countries like Ireland,  Australia and NZ give out permanent residency in like a few years... look into it before you make a decision...you being from stem background will get a PR with ease as compared to the US...

If your plan is to come back to India after spending 4-5 years in the US go for it... if not ,there are alternatives.

bigbo1192

So they would be "brain draining" labor but the assumption with work visa's is that a lot of the time, they will send some of that money back home. Lets just assume its 20k in India or 150k in the USA, and they send 50k back home, thats essentially 50k injected into the Indian economy.

Thats one basic reason why its still possibly decently good

preed1196

Two ways

1. Remittances - Indians are a family oriented bunch. They usually send money back home to their and their spouses parents to help them have a better standard of living. Given the 100 year wait for green card wait for anyone born in India, a lot of them buy their homes, invest their money back home in India. Makes sense given one can't retire in the US and even before that could have to leave on a 60 day notice in case of a layoff.

2. Outsourcing/Satellite offices - The reason so many US companies have tech offices in India rather than other low cost destinations is that a lot of Americans have worked with Indians, building a level of comfort and familiarity. There is usually an Indian in the room that can tilt the decision towards investing in India.

Both of them is a net benefit to the Indian government, one earning foreign exchange and the other generating tax revenue and jobs for people in India.

Prankoid

It’s not brain drain if these countries have a huge unemployment problem. By taking their workers, you’re just helping the government solve that problem. There’s also the added benefits of remittances and the fact that those people may come back to India to set up businesses

Exciting_Agency4614

Indian government basically benefits from  remittances back into the country. Some of these remittances are invested into local real estate and other tech service industries. These injections are slowly raising abysmally low wages across India, more so in the cities. I do not have a number to indicate if these remittances play any significant role towards Indian GDP. The population is so large that this inward cash flow from H1B employees may be just a drop in the bucket.

Economy-Mine4243

I think there's just too many people in India so sending people to the US is great because they send money back and most do end up coming back because Indians are extremely unlikely to get green cards so you bring the skill back home. 


Some countries PAY their citizens to go to other countries and train and return. India has so many people that even if 30% stay in the US then still a ton return home. 


The second reason is that it helps India expand it's offshoring business. Indians in America whether on h1B or green card or whatever can help facilitate offshoring. 


Everyone is worried about Indians taking their jobs in the US but you should really be worried about is your company opening up an office in India and laying off an equal number of employees in the US or just being in a hiring freeze because all new hires will be in India. 

burrito_napkin

Simple.  Look at Indian outsourcing companies.  They all start with an Indian becoming a Director in a fortune 500 company.  The director   has a "friend" back home that has a staffing company.   That staffing company now has a contract with the American company. In reality, that person has a stake in the business and gets money as well from his "friend's" staffing company.

bigkoi

They send the money back. They come here get jobs making more than Americans, and American businesses take jobs overseas. Think about any customer service calls, where do they go? Look at American stats on the highest earners in America, Indians. They hire only each other and get dual citizenship. It’s been going on quietly for decades. Come to Western Pa and see what is going on. And they go back to India taking the money they make here.

queenoftheidiots

Skill export. More like it's probably benefits who are importing them.

equinoxeror

H1b is only 3+3 years, three years visa can be extended once for another three years until you have to go through the yearly lottery again, then people are kicked out.

tobsn

Because unless they get a green card in process early in their stay they are going back after five years when their second visa runs out, taking the expertise they learned state side and working for Tata.

inarchetype

TL;DR

Immigrants pay bills and taxes, benefiting the US and they send money home allowing family to purchase items locally.

More in depth reaearch and you will find:
Tax Incentives, look into Trump's Tax act from 2017. There is a section specifically for incentives if companies utilised foreign employees(Visa and Outsource).

Outsourcing and Offshoring of jobs makes up a large percentage of the total jobs, we average 300,000 jobs sent outside the US per year.

With US Employment Visa Employees there are many ways around the timeframe limitations, mainly if you have an employer sponsored green card request(allows prolonging stay until a final decision), changing from an H-1B visa to L-1 after 3/6 years and if you wait 365 days after your 6 years expire you can be rehired on a new 6 year visa.

E-1/2/3 Visas are a less available path to an expedited green card &amp; citizenship but have more "rigours requirements", minus Melanie Trump and here extraordinary skills and abilities visa... Look it up!

ShyLeoGing

They tax remittances which are in the hundreds of millions of US dollars, and the money itself acts like a stimulus package for their economy. Remittances should be taxed by the US at 100% no exceptions

MikeHoncho1323

Working with Indian low-cost centers, I can tell you they did not have common sense in engineering. We had to pull some using the H-1B visa to give them tribal knowledge  skills. 6 years later, they went back teaching the gap.

The same thing happened to me when I was laid off in Abu Dhabi. 

I was back in Canada 60 days later. After selling my car and belongings.

Sometimes, life sucks. 

I wish them well.

Edit: Thank you for the award

Wonder how many of them will get their exact same job back (plus-or-minus "cost-of-living" adjustment) after moving back home.

nayhem_jr

As a US IT professional that has had two jobs outsourced to Indian consulting firms, them's the breaks.

nobody_smart

Never thought about this aspect of tech mass layoffs.

SquirrelDynamics

Think about this story when you look at who is still working at Twitter. A whole lot of those people couldn't walk away because their visa is tied to their job.

DGrey10

This is the unfortunate downstream effect of the broken H-1B policy, imho.

If you fix the implementation of the policy to match the intent (eg: allow bringing in "specialized" workers to fill roles which otherwise would be vacant, as per the intent of the law, but *only* under the condition that employers are paying at least 150% of the market rate for the industry and position), then this problem will effectively be solved by extension (ie: people on H-1B's either wouldn't be laid off, or would easily find new employment). If you have a broken implementation which allows companies to underpay employees by using this as a loophole to cut costs, then you get this downstream effect when layoffs happen.

As they say in the industry, look to solve the root cause, not the symptom.

sigmabody

A lot of pretty toxic comments here, and a few that spout common misunderstandings about the US immigration system. I'll take a stab at a few:

&amp;#x200B;

1. The H1-B visa is incredibly hard to get. 95% of the people writing here would not qualify. You have to prove no American could possibly take your job, meet an income threshold for your job, prove your educational achievements (anything below a masters degree is normally not accepted) and get sponsorship from a company that's willing to go through the paperwork nightmare (employers also have to pay a fee to do this). Then, after that, you enter a lottery in which you normally only have a 20% chance of winning (this varies year-on-year but I've never seen it below a 33% chance). Has this system been abused by some sponsors? Yeah, but it's been exaggerated. The idea companies can just go "Ya know? Hiring Americans is tough, let's get some cheap foreign labor in" doesn't have much grounding in reality.
2. H1-B labor has little to do with the fact your job was outsourced. If they outsourced your job to china, it's just because they wanted to do that.
3. It's hard to move jobs on a H1-B as someone else has to sponsor you. These people cannot just go get jobs at McDonalds. It's a very strict procedure. If you get laid off you're told you've got 90 days to find another sponsor. Many firms cannot be bothered with sponsorship.
4. The H1-B visa system is capped. There will always be a set number of H1-B visas issued each year. These people going home isn't going to mean there's less people arriving next year. It's not like that.
5. Jumping from H1-B to green card is not easy. There are numerous hoops to jump through and, frankly, a lot of randomness in the process. If you're from India you'll likely never get a green card because there's a yearly cap based on your country of origin.
6. Tech companies in the US provide the highest wages in the world and have continued to grow well above other sectors. The evidence H1-Bs in tech are lowering wages is pretty slim. All economic studies on this have shown they tend to increase the wages of those around them rather than lower them.
7. The fact that another country's immigration system is even stricter or draconian than the US's isn't a good defense and you know it.

And outside all that, damn, these are people's lives we're talking about. People who have settled, bought a house, made friends. After 5 to 10 years, the US is all they know. It's their life. Anyone who smiles at people being made to leave should ask themselves "How would you feel if you were told tomorrow you had to go live in Mexico for the rest of your life and you couldn't take anyone with you?". That's really what we're talking about here. Many will be returning  to a life in their home country  they are no longer part of.

&amp;#x200B;

Edit: Fixed some typos and grammar

Real question is why is google importing 80k jobs?

Academic-Winter-2621

Good. The H1B visa system has been heavily Abused in the tech sector for a couple of decades now, not by the workers but the companies. I hope the bar is higher to get a visa now, companies have been using foreign labor imported in to undercut pay for American workers.

_benp_

India actually needs their talents more than the US does. This should be a blessing in disguise for India.

Bunch of hogwash. False headlines, no data......

This is like Fox News "some people says"

from the article:

"As per some industry insiders, between 30 to 40 per cent of them are Indian IT professionals, a significant number of whom are on H-1B and L1 visas."

kveggie1

The indian companies who SELL h1b visa must be furious.

soontobecp

We have an immigration employee and she was getting paid a certain amount because it was either policy or law she had to be paid x-amount. The rest of the team got a raise to compensate her higher pay.

MustardTiger05

Honestly, if more people moved out of the cities and into country sides, that would be great. It would vote out these fucking old dinosaurs holding us all hostage in the stone age.

PotatoHunter_III

Since the given reason for H1B is a lack of qualified labor, tech companies should be required to cut those employees first.

icematrix

Saturdays at Costco are about to get a lot less busy.

petjuli

Messed up system.  Person can live in US for fifteen years and get deported!  I hope these folks land somewhere.

easyas1234

jujumber

The whole point of the H1B and L1 visa was to fill a *temporary* need...

Longjumping-Many4082

I have always despised H1B visas. I had so many friends in the Silicon Valley lose jobs being undercut by somebody who would work for 1/2 the pay. One guy went from working at Apple and Cupertino to living in a basement back east. 

I have nothing personal against these folks but I always believe you take care yourself your family and your neighbors first. 

The law says that it must be a position that can't be filled by an American worker... so they rewrite it and rewrite it until it qualifies and then have the American train the guy on the way out. 

I understand that if their position or contract ends they've got to leave.

It is for that reason I write the following:

See ya! Best of luck!

Important-Owl1661

It’s such a dysfunctional and unfair system. Designed to bring the best to the US, but heavily abused by “consulting” (more like labor extension) companies and their customers to run their IT departments cheaper. 

And the truly bright ones get shafted with a system that makes them dependent on sponsorship by companies, freezes their rank if they apply for permanent residence, and (if they happen to be born in India or China) keeps their lives in limbo since the employment green card backlogs are measured in DECADES. 

The worst part is that since those affected can’t vote, politicians don’t care. Companies benefit, so they don’t care. Citizens aren’t affected too badly, so they don’t care either.

thecoller

"The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise. Technology companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries like India and China."

&amp;#x200B;

This seems like the companies should really be hiring american citizens and paying them a living wage instead of outsourcing to china and new china.

H-1B visa people should be laid off before american workers are.

It's not fair that companies get to abuse H-1B visa holders with lesser pay and lesser benefits and screw over everyone else. If theres going to be layoffs, H-1B visas should be the first to go.

Daimakku1

Most of them are going to take their skills and move back to a country that is increasingly at odds with American interests, even though they would rather stay here.

Typo_Cat

This will continue to push wages higher.  Only mass immigration can change wage inflation, not interest rates.

H1-B has been abused so badly this was obviously going go happen.  I feel bad for the families that were dragged along but it can't continue.

Johnykbr

Any person that wouldn’t want to immigrant to the US is dumb imo. You got your self a big giant virgin land that is demographically diverse with different climates. There is a place for you if you like mountains regions , flat , forestry and if you like hot , cold , or rainy weather. You also have freedoms not enjoyed by a lot of people globally, and on top of all of that you have a strong robust economy. Most Americans would shrug this off as ehhh it’s just America surely they’re better places because that’s their normal. But as someone that has lived and visited 10+ countries throughout my childhood that difference is noticeable. The Eh quickly turned to a whoa.  Not worrying about unemployment and your economy is a privilege ,  most countries have it either do good in school or continue to live in poverty. That holds true In developed countries like South Korea too. The top companies in S Korea Literally throw your resume in the trash can if your not from a SKY university their version of the Ivy League.  Tell me if Faang does the same thing. Here kids can be kids there is no pressure you can work at retail or something and chill until you decide what to do with your life. You don’t have to worry about politics , the economy, or your personal safety you can live normally.

Nobody0829383

Racists really came out in this thread, huh?

d_frost

I had a Indian coworker h1b with 15 years of testing experience didn’t know difference between test plan and test case, she had a cousin in the company so she got the IT job

theprocanvas

Developments in the U.S. H-1B visa program, known for allowing American companies to employ skilled foreign workers, have caused significant attention, particularly among Indian professionals. Controversies abound with debates about protecting American workers and reform suggestions.

H-1B Visa Changes and Impacts on Indian Professionals

Why This Matters

Public Sentiment Summary

Highlighted Comments

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What the people want