Google on H-1Bs

Posted by Geoff Davis at 11AM on 06/25/07 | Categories: Immigration | 9 comments

Google has started a public policy blog. One of their first posts: Google's stance on H-1B visas (pretty simple: "we want more!")

It's an understandable position - Google hires lots of really smart people from all over the world, and current H-1B limits cause them all sorts of headaches. They claim that there were 70 people they wanted to hire last year but were unable to because of the visa caps. There are other effects, too: a friend of mine was hired by Google but had to wait for 8 months to start working there because of H-1B-related delays.

The Googlers I've met who hail from outside the US are all incredibly talented people. It's great for the US that they are here using their talents. The same goes for the people I met back when I worked at Microsoft Research. As James Fallows writes in The Atlantic this month,

The easier America makes it for talented foreigners to work and study there, the richer, more powerful, and more respected America will be. America’s ability to absorb the world’s talent is the crucial advantage no other culture can match—as long as America doesn’t forfeit this advantage with visa rules written mainly out of fear.

The trouble with the H-1B visa program is that not all companies are good corporate citizens in their use of H-1Bs. There are allegations that many companies use the program not to bring in talent unavailable in the US, but rather to drive down wages or facilitate offshoring. The unfortunate result is that legitimate users of the program, like Google and Microsoft Research, get lumped in with firms engaged in questionable practices.

Google is usually pretty creative in their approaches to solving problems. I'm disappointed that they've taken such a conventional stance in this case.

Here's an idea for them: Why not auction off the visas? Instead of a one-time fee, have sponsors commit to a recurring annual charge. Set the number of visas such that the annual fee is on the order of a few thousand dollars (with discounts or exemptions for grad students / postdocs / etc).

An auction would have the benefit of prioritizing things: the more a company needs someone, the more they should be willing to pay. Want to make sure your superstar rocket scientist gets a visa? Bid high. A few thousand dollars a year is a small price to pay for somebody commanding a 6-figure salary. On the other hand, if your goal is just to hire cheap labor, a few thousand dollars could be a significant deterrent.

$5,000 a year from the 300,000+ H-1Bs in the country at any given time would mean a extra $1.5+ billion/year in revenue to the federal government. That money could be used to (a) improve enforcement of protections for domestic workers, (b) to ensure that the visa approval process is efficient and relatively painless for all involved, and (c) to fund educational improvements for domestic students and retraining programs for laid off tech workers.