H‑1B Hires Change Jobs, Are Not Indentured: Cato Institute

India-West News Desk

WASHINGTON, DC – H‑1B workers are not only paid—they receive wages in the top 10 percent of wage earners in the United States. As importantly, although they face more obstacles to changing jobs, H‑1B workers are not tied to a single employer and they change jobs regularly, a Cato Institute report said.

In fact, H‑1B workers are leaving their initial H‑1B employers more than ever, it said. The government has made it easier to switch H‑1B jobs by giving them a sixty‐day grace period to find a new job after losing a job.

Some of the salient points in the report:

-From fiscal year 2005 to 2023, H‑1B workers changed jobs over 1 million times.

-H‑1B job shifting is more common than H‑1B workers starting H‑1B employment for the first time. This means that US employers are more likely to hire an H‑1B worker already in the United States in H‑1B status, the report pointed out.

– There are more H‑1B workers employed in the United States now for other employers to poach, and because the H‑1B cap has been so quickly met every year since 2014, there is more reason to poach.

The Cato Institute said H‑1B workers are, however, still not treated equally in the labor market. “New H‑1B employers must pay hefty fees to poach them, and the shortage of green cards for Indian workers can wrongly make those workers feel that they have to stick with their existing employer to complete that process. The best solution would be to make the conversion to a green card automatic rather than requiring a renewal after three years. The sixty‐day grace period to find a new job is still not long enough to give many workers the confidence to simply quit a problematic job without a new one already lined up,” it said.

Citing the Pew Research Center, the report said that the “existence of widespread H‑1B job shifting further refutes the idea that H‑1B workers are “indentured” servants.”