Off-topic-- This is the argument against H-1B visas. (The OP has implied that his father has an H-1B visa, since the H-4 is issued only to dependents of H-1B visa holders).
Employers complain they cannot find good competent engineers because they would prefer to exploit degreed engineers with tons of experience by paying them $55K per annum. That would be $28/hr. if the father worked 40 hour weeks (which I doubt), so somewhere south of $25/hr. for an experienced degreed engineer. Where else could one get this bargain- without exploiting foreign nationals (fleeing religious persecution)? Starting salaries for fresh engineering college graduates are higher than that!
Employers can find great US engineers, but not for that price. So they claim there is a dearth of the talent in the US and more H-1B’s should be authorized. The greatly depressed salary is a benefit to the employer since they have the worker “over a barrel.” If the job goes away, the worker must return to his home country, or find another sponsor (but the sponsor must go through the immigration red tape). The worker accepts the lower salary as a tax that must be paid to remain in this country.
OP, I am sorry for your situation. I am happy you have made options for yourself and will be able to put all of these troubles behind you! Best wishes for speedy PR green card status; hopefully before college application deadlines!
@ItsJustSchool You’re exactly correct! And yeah for an engineer with 20 years of experience $55k is quite a bargain, which is the reason his employer sponsored his visa. However, I’m in the process of applying for political asylum, so I might be able to gain citizenship in a couple years.
@ItsJustSchool Also, my family is in the process of getting green cards. But it will take many years for it to process; there’s no way I’ll have it by college application deadlines
I just checked: I’m eligible for a full ride from UA Huntsville. Their merit aid extends to international students as well.
My weighted GPA is 4.0, which is what I believe they look at.
A. Outsourcing / consulting companies (Infosys, Tata, IBM, Wipro, etc.), whose pay is on the lower side.
B. Companies hiring employees for their own purposes (Microsoft, Google, Oracle, etc.), whose pay is on the higher side.
Note that group A takes up most of the H-1B visas, while group B does all of the visible complaining. Group B appears to be using H-1B visas for the intended purpose of hiring higher end talent, unlike group A. Seems like a sensible reform would be to add rules that make it more difficult for outsourcing / consulting companies to use H-1B visas.
I’m pretty sure I could go to UAlabama Huntsville almost for free (full ride for 34+). However, I’m not sure how good of a college it is. Can someone please comment on how respected Huntsville is as a whole?
@ucbalumnus, the people I work with on visa carry the O 1 visa, which is the one your “Group B” should be interested in. If H 1B could be reined in somehow, that would be nice! It’s not the number of visas so much as the exploitation of the workers that needs remediation.
Huntsville is a state school with strong engineering supporting the missile defense command. There are many government contractors supporting the command that would require a US citizenship for work in Huntsville, in addition to US government agencies. @Erin’s Dad has a good suggestion to discover percentage of internships available for non-US citizens.
The simplest H-1B reform would be to limit it to employees who will not be doing work as a consultant or subcontractor.
However, it is not obvious that stopping the outsourcing companies from using H-1B visas will really do much in the bigger scheme of things. The outsourcing companies obviously have found a market of those companies who want cheaper business services; if they are unable to provide them with lower end H-1B labor, they will likely export the jobs to some other country. Although this has disadvantages to the customer company, the outsourcing companies can offer even lower prices.
Basically, this is part of a business trend to outsourcing business services to the lowest bidder rather than paying one’s own employees to do them in-house. For the company, sometimes it works, and sometimes it fails (often depending on whether the in-house group that gets replaced was doing a good job or not). For the employees, this is generally bad for their paychecks.
Every major aerospace and defense company has offices in the Huntsville area. Redstone Arsenal contains the headquarters of NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, The DoD’s Missile Defense Agency, the US Army’s Aviation and Missile Command, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Missile and Space Intelligence Center, to name a few. Thiokol has a rocket engine plant not too far, I believe in Decatur. I think most of the US Army’s acquisition budget is contracted out of its Huntsville offices more than any other place (just like the USAF does it out of Wrigt-Patt in Ohio).
