Why Do Banks Not Sponsor H1-Bs?
Question is in the title. It seems completely illogical to me as to why the banks in the US, for the majority, are so against the sponsorship of candidates. From their perspective, it seems that they would gain a very motivated candidate who would most likely outwork any domestic candidate, arguably even for a lower salary.
Does it really just come down to the fact that the sponsored candidates have a lower likelihood at getting the visa through a lottery, so the banks don't deem it necessary or smart to invest resources into an analyst that might leave the country due to not winning the lottery?
Additionally, the $100,000 fee doesn't apply in 99% of cases for finance, as that fee must only be paid by employers who desire to bring in an employee into the country who did not study in the United States, whereas most candidates applying for analyst and associate roles in US banks went through education here.
Would love any thoughts on this.
It’s fairly simple, why hire internationally when you can hire domestically. Less red tape for the company as well. Sadly just the truth
Sadly?
It's just easier to hire local, you don't have to pay immigration fees and deal with the uncertainty that comes with an international candidate.
Jeet fatigue
This 100%, no need for debate
Even the other types of brown people are fatigued based on my interactions.
Its over for Indians, cant live In India(apartheid state) and if you leave every 3rd person hates you because of where you were born.
even my indian (born and raised in US) friends are sick and tired of it lol
my best friends dad is a pro-trump MAGA immigrant because he thinks the poor/FOB zones are ruining their reputation 🤣
.
From what I’ve seen, banks are more reluctant to offer it in analyst level than in associate level. Analyst turnover is (or at least has been) quite high to the point that average tenure of an analyst is as low as 1 year, so why would banks pay additional fees to bring in a junior who will leave so soon? MBA associates tend to stay much longer.
noticed this as well. we have an Indian partner in one of the offices and that office is vast majority Indians cause the partner just hires based on skin color.
Most races do this. Have seen firsthand in London that European interviewers will refuse qualified candidates because they are not European or from a place they like. East Asians prefer other East Asians. All groups do this, dont know why this is mind-blowing for you
Why hire internationally when they can hire in America?
Jeet fatigue
I don’t think the racism is okay, but even my Indian American friends (born in the US) are against H1B. Big difference between Indians/Chinese that are born and raised in America and those coming from India/China.
Ironic that their parents came here on H1B.
Not H1Bs, they came on student visas.
Cuz my team has too many Indians already. We don’t know more.
I'm surprised by how many people are obsessed with this H1B fiasco. Give it another 2-3 decades, and see the game flip. NA and Europe are in a decline, and the most obvious sign is the stenched mentality the youth has over here. Asia has waves of immigrants, but no one is whining given the focus people have on work and productivity. No point in feeling shitty if you're on an H-1B. Things will change, and westerners will be longing for visas (They already are in the Middle East btw). Keep chugging
No one in the US wants to go to India
The Middle East is funded by oil and entertainment, not much else in terms of industry. NYC with remain a financial powerhouse for next 30-40 years minimum, and even at that, it will remain powerful long after. England has fallen from grace but London still is a massive financial hub. The scenario you mentioned takes decades.
“Sorry bro, no way I’d ever live in India, it’s filled with Indians!”
Now you understand why we don’t want unlimited third world immigration, surely? The lack of self awareness with you people is astounding
Average ABCD
All BBs hire international students for IBD and S&T roles, with very few exceptions. I was one of them in early 2020s. Yes, most middle-market firms do not hire internationals, but they also hire far fewer people overall, and the per-capita cost is too high for them anyway given the need to set up immigration consultants.
Honestly, IBD work often does not play to the strengths of many internationals who excel at math and engineering, but I’ve known a few international students who made it into BB IBD and then moved on to MFs.
As for people who call Indians “jeets” and claim they aren’t talented: if you look at firms like Citadel Securities, Jane Street, or HRT, many fresh graduates earning $400–600k total compensation in their first year are from India and China, along with many other countries. Not to mention all the PhDs getting 7 figure offers right out of school working in AI. These supposedly “not talented” people will likely out-earn your racist ass for the foreseeable future.
Because the most important skill as a senior in IB is communicating your ideas to (mostly American) clients.
I have a better shot finding that by hiring American with B smarts and A communication skills vs a poorly assimilated international
I do agree with this. Immigrants who don't assimilate will tend to be extremely bad bankers. But to assume that all are bad is just a naive and stupid statement to make
Ironically, quite of a significant percentage of our CEO clients in my Fintech group were Indian.
A LOT of PE partners are also Indian, I’ve noticed. I know you didn’t mention Indians but the rest of the thread did.
They literally have entire banks in India. Why would they hire an Indian to their US bank when they can just hire them to the Indian bank and save the paperwork and cost ?
Weird hate since lot of MDs and even executives at banks are basically internationals who started post MBA on H1B. Even Erik Tokat is international lulz. Or look around Citi, JPM, Barclays, etc. They are typically smarter, harder working and a strong subset assimilate much faster than than weirdo state school hardo
The numbers have been going down because there are just more H1B applicants for the 85K seats. When they don’t match - the banks try not to fire the employee and historically shifted them to London, etc. But there are only so many you can move each year.
Valid
Eric Tokat is Turkish. Very different and culture that is much better than any other coming in nowadays.
Since you are more likely to believe Fox News, we could claim Turkey isn’t exactly aligned to Western values that you seek from immigrants that you don’t like because of skin color or whatever other criteria you use
https://www.foxnews.com/world/turkey-deports-peaceful-christians-under-guise-national-security-claims-watchdog.amp
https://www.foxnews.com/world/erdogan-government-formally-reopens-byzantine-era-church-mosque.amp
Also if what the President there is doing doesn’t matter - why blame some random immigrant for Hamas or their government or whatever else
It’s pretty common for MBA associates
This is one of the few industries in the US with
A nearly unlimited supply of native undergrads willing to give it a shot
So… why would they even consider an international candidate that requires more paperwork and costs more to hire unless they were significantly better at the job? At the same time, AI tech is shifting the workload from rote technical work to the sales side of things. International candidates are at a distinct disadvantage here. You used to be able to get away with being abrasive or plain terrible socially if you were a workhorse in excel. But custom VBA macros aren’t going to save you now. The native personality hire has more of a leg up than ever. Would suggest you improve your home country or focus on a job that actually needs the talent.
You are a Goldman > KKR guy? Otherwise would know there is a difference in quality even among your group analyst class, including the native born.
This is literally one of the dumbest arguments I've heard. If you haven't seen the caliber or are just blind to recognize the difference, I pity the team that hired you
Bro you're literally a prospect LOL get ur internship first
As a humanities major from Bowdoin, I agree
There's 340 million people in the US. Plenty of domestic talent
Bayo Ogunlesi
Bobby Jain
Eric Tokat
Prakash Melwani
Etc
Etc
This is why the good firms sponsor any candidate who makes the cut
As someone who immigrated to this country a little under a decade ago to study in a top 10 school, it's driven by the uncertainty of the lottery process (and the inconvenience of potentially having to move an analyst/assoc around if they miss their third shot - right now I think the odds are probably one in five in each lottery if not worse).
I also think that despite the $100,000 fee not applying in most cases, Becky in HR lacks the nuance to understand (and I’m pretty sure the current administration knew that this would be the case for companies across the board).
Not a hot take but it is genuinely disheartening to see the amount of anti-immigrant sentiment on this forum. While I understand where it’s coming from, I think the anger is extremely misplaced and kinda anti-American, especially when it comes to younger immigrants coming here for undergrad, trying to integrate into society and build a real life here. I was lucky enough to have the family and resources where this didn’t register for me on an emotional level lol.
My apologies in advance, but my knowledge of the Visa program in the US is limited, but I am curious, what are some of the other ways individuals can get sponsor ship without going through the H-B1 lottery.
Our firm just cracked down on F-1 Visas, as the juniors we have gotten from these programs still lose sponsorship after 24 months. Which was probably the biggest way recent grads got through the visa program.
There are a few options, keep in mind that even after getting a h1b there is a green card waiting process which can be more than 2 decades for those born in countries like India and China:
- gifted visa programs like the O1. The barriers to qualify for this are usually pretty extreme (need multiple references from peers leading the industry and recognition from a professional organization in your field etc) - this is usually something that is swung by those in the performing arts, deep tech etc. Qualification criteria is pretty opaque and doubt a company would take a chance unless you literally I bc enter something or have a Netflix show lol
- cap exempt h1bs - these are allotted to those working in non-profits and academic institutions. Think someone working in a lab at a college developing a drug therapy or someone working in a charity organization for a foreign country. Given the recent h1b rules pushed through and the administration freezing funding for NIH, these are usually much harder to come by as there are fewer of these research/non-profit positions in general
- EB5 - you pay 800k to fund a rural or urban development project (eg: building a bridge, developing a steel plant) as part of a pooled eb5 loan which is part of a larger capital structure. The idea is that the developers benefit bc the financing is cheap, the community benefits from job creation (which needs to be proven in a report reviewed by the government before a green card is granted) and you get a green card. Honestly not a bad system and has actually resulted in things being developed (though abuse of such systems is always possible). Allows rich chinese and Indian people to skip the line. Howard Lutnick and the other whores in the administration want to replace this with a gold card program which increases the dollar amount and the money directly goes to the federal government. No direct job creation, no infrastructure development, just lining pockets.
There are other options like refugee visas ofc but no one on this forum falls into this category probably. Singaporean and Costa Ricans (i think) get a h1b1 visa which is a special category for them bypassing the lottery (if they want to naturalize in the future they need a different visa status).
Those students who join your firm don’t lose sponsorship, they are legally allowed to work for up to 3 years if they have a stem degree before they either need to get a visa (sponsored) or leave. And getting a h1b visa is a total crapshoot lottery. No differentiation in skill, willingness to stay and build in America, who you are etc… Beyond cooked.
Yeah, I think anybody who is being honest with themselves knows the flaws of the H1B system that have increasingly been abused in the last decade or so, but a lot of the anti-immigrant pushback is very frankly from subpar Gen-Z candidates that fried their brain with TikTok and Instagram reels.
There’s a marked drop in the quality of this site post-COVID, and you can go through the history of all the posts and see it. I’m a senior associate now, and the candidates/interns/analysts nowadays are two steps away from being literally braindead, and I frankly can’t tell the difference between their outputs and ChatGPT. Mix the general ineptitude with a social media addiction and a dash of victim mentality, and this is the result. Every problem is always someone else’s fault.
"Why are Americans getting increasingly upset at elite schools giving away top jobs to random foreigners fresh off the boat" is one of the most tone deaf takes I think I can recall ever. The reality is we've been far too tolerant of this nonsense for too long. Literally no other civilization on earth tolerates this aside from the West.
The idea of giving them banking jobs is especially ludicrous. This job does NOT require elite mathematical ability, it's mostly pretty basic. It does require the ability to read, write and converse and those skills become dramatically more important very quickly as you progress.
Glad to see the responses in this topic though - Gen Z kids get it in a way my millennial generation (the worst generation) never did.
I know you work in IB, so cause and effect get muddled up, but there’s a reason why the West tolerates it and others don’t.
The west pushed for immigration to generate cheaper labour sources. Tends to happen when birth rates collapse whilst average life expectancy skyrockets.
This framing of diversity/immigration being pushed on the West is so bizarre to me. We pushed for cheap labour and now that we have a lot, they demand rights and identity for their children. Big surprise.
Other nations have been following suit, see Japan.
Don’t actually disagree with you though, just this dumb framing.
Yeah we have too many Irish and Italians here in America, they took our jobs!
Funny how "hire based only on merit" goes out the window when the best candidates don't have a U.S. passport. Visa requirements are just DEI based on where you were born
Yeah that’s how a country works lmao. The audacity of entitled foreigners good lord
A nation owes its citizenry equal treatment, it owes foreigners basically nothing. Dignity maybe, but certainly not jobs. Your ancestors didn’t contribute to America for multiple generations for the explicit purpose of benefiting their children and grandchildren. They didn’t pay taxes or work to build anything. The parents of actual Americans DID.
This isn’t a bag of loot for you to steal from, it’s a nation. The problem with horde migration is that when you let in so many people so fast and don’t stop nobody every congeals and your country basically dies. America maintaining its coherency required like five decades of extremely restrictive immigration laws in the early 20th century and that was so we could integrate the wrong type of white Christian people
Who knows how long it would take to fix this ridiculous Star Wars bazaar of a “nation” now
I'm a native-born U.S. citizen, just speaking the truth. America has never been "coherent"; you're almost certainly a mutt of dozens of different European ethnicities. Try again
I don’t owe my fellow nationals anything when it comes to recruiting for my bank, I owe my partners and shareholders the best ability to make money. I’m certainly not going to privilege an American if there is a better qualified person from somewhere else
I actually agree with this sentiment and don’t mind it being applied for gigs that don’t require much mental horsepower.
Not my pod/HF though, I’m still going to hire H1-Bs. Higher fees are actually good for us
There's quite a bit of blatantly racist content in this thread that WSO doesn't seem to mind. Shouldn't half these posts be deleted?
Haven't you heard? Racism is ok as long as it's against the "jeets"
Just don't mention the genocide in Gaza and you're all good.
Et consequatur rerum perferendis veniam id et est. Tempora et consequatur qui quo temporibus quos sed. Nisi consequuntur laudantium id. Blanditiis iure est quis corrupti molestiae nihil minima. Dolore nemo voluptas repellendus. Vero quod cum enim nisi corporis et.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...
Velit quidem id qui optio. Dolores aut sed dolores tempore quod enim. Qui et accusantium reiciendis ipsa nam. Modi aut a minus laudantium itaque non illum. Dolorum dolorum nam qui reprehenderit temporibus sed alias.
Sed est aliquam vel eum occaecati similique tempore occaecati. Et perferendis ut veniam consequatur officiis dolor. Praesentium inventore in amet ad earum est.
Minus quis dolorum reiciendis laudantium. Nihil nesciunt et ipsam magnam maxime praesentium. Dolor doloremque earum eligendi enim.
Minima libero voluptatem voluptas facere. Autem amet delectus possimus atque nam iure non. Ducimus nemo id quas et perferendis eaque. Nostrum autem deleniti sapiente nihil ut fugiat rerum. Consequuntur in soluta quasi. Aliquam sit qui nostrum quo nemo. Consectetur ex dolores ducimus veritatis quos fuga.
Numquam deleniti repellat fuga eius ab aut. Qui neque atque minus rerum animi. Suscipit praesentium et velit ex voluptatem quo iste. Eos iure nisi pariatur est eos nihil et. Ex nihil enim quia quidem aspernatur voluptates. Similique ipsam ut dolor consequatur incidunt ea tenetur.
Quasi voluptas nulla magni qui animi debitis. Sed libero eveniet deleniti quod officia quam laborum. Aspernatur rerum accusamus optio repellendus.
Commodi ratione enim vel adipisci assumenda. Et iure mollitia in aliquam expedita. Quo possimus aut asperiores itaque tenetur quas.