Yeah, it is horrible. Why limit your professional life, team, workplace and day to day exchanges to a tiny pool of people when there are billions of people who inhabit planet earth.
To give context "Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships — relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person" [1].
The whole "major SV tech companies use H1B to employ underpaid slaves" accusation is bunk. Maybe H1B is abused by other companies, but the big Bay Area corps are giving perfectly fine salaries to their H1B staff, as others have shown on HN in the past. Like everything else Trump does, there is no purpose for corrective action, because the problem Trump sees does not exist. H1B is bad for workers' and immigrants' rights, but that isn't a problem Trump ever brought up.
Outside of SV, in the rest of the country I have spoken with a number of people in IT recruiting who told me that a this has driven down wages. Especially when they opened the door for the L1 visas. Wanna know why so many SV firms are against Trump. Follow the money! The virtuous aspects (IE: humanitarian concerns) are a way to get the sheep to follow. They all have a lot of blood on their hands.
Many SV companies are against Trump because their employees are prevented from leaving and entering the country. And since this decision was not communicated to anyone or timed appropriately it is caused widespread panic.
Chaos is antithetical to a successful business.
SV companies were largely supportive of Trump (due to the chance of corporate tax cuts) up until this point.
I was under the impression that an L1 or L2 currently required a candidate to have "specialist knowledge" that a company wouldn't be able to recruit domestically anyway?
I could be misunderstanding, but isn't this just bringing the h1b in line with that?
"specialist knowledge" makes sense in L1 because L1 is for intra-company transfer. You are already working for this company (outside of the US), so it's possible that you have some "specialist knowledge" about the technology this company uses, and if they transfer you to the US instead of a local new hire, it saves the company money and time to train the new hire. H1b is not for intra-company transfer so this doesn't make any sense.
No, they won't. B-1 visa holders are not allowed to work, E-2 holders are rare among the SV workforce and don't represent any slice of the job market, L-1 visas are limited to SV companies with foreign presence, of which there are not so many compared to the total amount of startups in SV.
If anything, any potential change to O-1 visas (don't know whether any are planned) will have larger impact than what you're describing.
No it's not that good for software developers or anyone really.
Many of those hired on H1B are doing roles for which they simply can't get enough local talent. And so all that is going to happen is that companies are going to shift entire projects offshore or simply not take on as many projects.
There does need to be reform. But frankly given the chaotic manner in which the Trump administration is crafting and implementing policy I don't think their approach to reform will be nuanced enough.
I keep hearing this but personally have seen people passed over for H1B candidates when both were equally qualified. Even seen a few senior developer positions filled this way and in every case it was money.
It feels good to tell ourselves we didn't hire locally because there wasn't enough talent when in many cases its just far easier to accept a recruiters suggestions where multiple recruiters simply undercut each other.
Exchange interns are J1, student interns in the US use their current F1 Visa with a CPT (Curricular Practical Training) permit for summer internship, or sometimes an OPT (Optional Practical Training) permit.
In France its quite straight forward to get a skilled worker visa -- just earn more than 3100 Euros per month (~1.5 * average earnings in France). Shouldn't be a problem for tech workers.
(They are also introducing a 'tech startup visa' in the near future.)
True. There has been a significant increase in outsourcing in France in the last 5 years, but I don't know that it involves labour from lower wage countries. Obviously few Indians speak French, but there are many call centres outsourced to Senegal and other former French colonies. I think it is only a matter of time before ICT jobs migrate as well.
Sure. It's a nuanced discussion. It's not just about price. It's also about the various experience within the local talent pool. I still remember at Apple looking for WebObjects developers, finding none locally but dozens at Infosys. What exactly are companies supposed to do ?
And companies like Infosys are often playing in specific, less sexy spaces i.e. enterprise J2EE, DBAs, System Administration etc whilst newer generation of developers prefer Go, Rust, Javascript etc.
> It's not just about price. It's also about the various experience within the local talent pool.
Same thing. H1B just made them that way, with both metrics being in favor of the employer (except the vast majority of times the skillset is misrepresented).
The astroturfing by someone who has no experience with how H1B is used, is telling.
> Many of those hired on H1B are doing roles for which they simply can't get enough local talent.
I can only speak to my experience. At my current employer we have about 60-70% H1Bs in my department (development). Even more in QA. And they aren't particularly talented. After reviewing the public information though, they are getting paid 50% of what I am.
So they are living with multiple other visa workers in one apartment, can barely afford repairs to their old cars, etc.
It'd be great if the wages were more equalized. It's really not about talent at anywhere but the big 4. It's about money.
I am not working at the Big 4, am on H-1B, and am a hiring manager at an SV firm. When I hire an H-1B it is not about the money. Not challenging your experience, but pointing out that there are other possibilities also.
Well, yes. I mean at the Big 4 (and really, this applies to any large, cutting-edge company: Twitter, Oracle, etc.) they do reach out of the US to find great talent for higher up positions. But they also abuse the visa process for lower wages in lower positions.
Lots of other companies without hype just want lower wage workers. I figure these are the majority.
> But they also abuse the visa process for lower wages in lower positions.
No, in lower-level positions also they are paid the same as their colleagues who are citizens. During the hiring process, the immigration status is not get considered as a positive or negative qualifier.
> Lots of other companies without hype just want lower wage workers.
I agree.
> I figure these are the majority.
This is possible, but I am not sure. It is true that many companies who get the most visas don't pay well. But the well-paying firms do not apply for lots of visas, and there are lots of them, leading to a long thin-tailed distribution. Also, many of these H-1B immigrants, once they get their green cards, go on to found successful startups increasing the size of the economic pie for everyone. One such person, Jyoti Bansal, sold his startup for $3.7B last week.
> No, in lower-level positions also they are paid the same as their colleagues who are citizens. During the hiring process, the immigration status is not get considered as a positive or negative qualifier.
Not if they are hired through a contracting company:
People who are in startups and other unicorns are telling me this, sure.
But lots of established SW companies use contracting companies that abuse the visa process. I should have been more clear, it's these contracting companies (usually based out of India) that are abusing the process. US companies that use them are pretty much complicit:
The inclination for people to hire those who remind them of themselves is well documented which means if you're not doing it to save money then you're doing it to favor your tribe.
I hire both people on H-1B visas and those who are not. All I was saying that the immigration status does not positively or negatively affects a candidate's job application, where I work.
>Many of those hired on H1B are doing roles for which they simply can't get enough local talent
This is the scam they want you to believe, but it's being abused to simply keep wages low.
It's very easy to post fake job ads to make it seem like "you can't find someone" for the job, and there are plenty of lawyers who will help you get around those loopholes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU
I have been reading for years how broken the current system is, so I would bet that there is a market for that.
The issue is the motivation behind the change. What if the changes are designed to please an electorate that is not directly impacted but they just really really want to see some heads rolling?
There are some serious credibility issues with the current US govt. Left or right, populists pretend to swing a magic wand and magically fixing problems. Ban immigrants, implement 90% tax for the rich and so on, until these vote generating policies break apart.
Also don't forget that Trump is emotionally immature.
He has a long track record of viciously attacking those whom attack him. Could well be payback for many of the SV companies that criticised him both publicly and privately e.g. Lisa Jackson from Apple meeting with Kushner/Ivanka this week.
It's definitely a program that could use reform. However from what little the article mentions of the 'draft' executive order, I don't see many specific policy changes to the status quo.
If this follows the pattern of 'make a big news splash' and 'leave huge ambiguity regarding actual policy' then it is really not helpful for any kind of business decision.
The rational response right now might be to avoid new H1B hiring completely, lest you spend months on an application that later gets nullified by shifting policy. That's not a win for SV companies that favor H1B hiring.
If they make clear changes that do help create more visas for high skilled workers, I agree that's a win for silicon valley, and a win for US labor. Overall the US does well when other countries send their top brains here.
I don't live in the USA currently but I have worked there before on a visa and I think the current system does require some sort of an overhaul. The current way of doing things is great for some companies and for customers who want to save money on IT services but I believe it does undermine wages (for Americans and others) and being on a visa tied to a company just opens up foreign developers to abuse (not the horrific kind but certainly things like having to endure a lack of certain freedom and lack of stability, begging for green cards and the like). If the overhaul is even worse than what they have now then the rest of the world should stop moaning and treat this like an opportunity. Same applies to the immigration thing. If they turn into a basket case and it is hard to trade and do business with them then why not promote conventions and business elsewhere and grow other economies instead.
> If the overhaul is even worse than what they have now then the rest of the world should stop moaning and treat this like an opportunity
It's not only about what non-US people think about it. Whatever happens effects Americans, through the effects on the U.S. economy. It effects potential immigrants. And it effects the rest of the world through its effects on the global economy.
I don't live in the US, I don't have any current plans to move there, but I still care about what happens to people in the US and other countries.
I care too, I'm just suggesting there's not much to gain for non-Americans with complaining and that if the new policy is worse (we don't know if it will be yet) to take it as an opportunity to do something constructive.
The current way of doing things is great for some companies and for customers who want to save money on IT services but I believe it does undermine wages (for Americans and others)
Why do we care about increasing inequality and increasing costs to consumers by protecting high-wage American workers from foreign competition?
and being on a visa tied to a company just opens up foreign developers to abuse
I'd love to hear what kind of actual abuses an H1B shop can pull off. Make developers work 50 hours/week for the 1-2 months it'll take the developers to find a new job that'll be willing to sponsor the visa?
" increasing costs to consumers by protecting high-wage American workers from foreign competition?"
Sorry I have to disagree, I am the most vehement loather of Trump and his fan base but fundamentally this just encourages a race to the bottom, does it not?
In the same way that California allowing workers from other states. Some industries already have state-specific licensing requirements, maybe the software industry should too, to keep the riff-raff from flyover country from lowering their wages.
There is no doubt that the software engineering discipline is plagued by passionless amateurs. I welcome the next dot-com collapse, as only those who love their craft will remain, while the rest chase the next gravy train.
Allowing competition between whites and negroes (by ending Jim Crow, Davis Bacon and similar laws) also encourages a race to the bottom. Do you have any principled reason for opposing those laws?
(Note: I'm not calling you "racist" - that's a slur that has lost all meaning these days. I'm taking a policy I'm pretty sure you oppose and asking you for a principled reason why you oppose it.)
Perhaps this ideology has been lost these days, but I believe a country has an obligation to provide services and a high quality of life to its citizens (aka taxpayers) before anyone else. Importing employees to fill roles (which local workers could do) cannibalises the taxpayer-funded foundations on which these companies were built.
The Jim Crow laws were a government favoring some of its citizens over other citizens, whereas these laws favor citizens over foreigners. In my opinion, it is a country's duty to place its own people first, but in the end it's up to the electorate.
This is favoring some of its citizens (certain classes of workers) over other citizens (buyers in general, workers affected by reciprocal changes by other countries, etc).
Those are secondary effects, and it is very much debatable who they favour. I would argue reducing the labour pool gives workers a stronger bargaining position, and thus better wages, reducing the rising income inequality.
That would only be true if it gave better wages to people below the median. If you give better wages to people above the median, you increase inequality.
Median? Why not average? Is it because the vast majority of wealth is held by the absurdly rich, and using the median allows you to largerly ignore that?
"giving more money to ... will increase inequality."
You're defining "income inequality" as only in relation to the median or average income. That is too simple to make any sense. By that model, I could have 1000 people making $1/hr, 10 people making $10/hr, and 1 person making $2000/hr. This puts the average at $3/hr. And so you say protecting the $10/hr people's salaries from being artificially suppressed increases income inequality because you've arbitrarily defined the line at the average income.
Also, you're ignoring where the money is coming from, so any math in your mental model is flawed. I would hope this discussion isn't about creating money and giving it to >$100k/year engineers, but rather the business owners with capital paying market rates instead of having a way to suppress skilled labor salaries by exploiting weaker economies and tethering foreign employees for upwards of 9 years before they can finally correct their salary and working conditions (hint: I've worked with a few people who have been exploited like this).
This whole us-vs-them scam of pitting everyone in the middle and lower class against themselves that the media/business/etc. has been doing (probably for longer than I've been alive) is amazingly effective...
Most people want and value many of the same things and greatly outnumber our overlords, but somehow we're always pointing the finger at each other ("you're just lazy", "you're just racist", "a true <blank> would/wouldn't <blank>", "check your privilege", etc.). And all the while, the powers that be siphon away money and power and continue to set the stage in their favor.
> So, according to your philosophy, I could go to Saudi Arabia and claim an oil well?
No, but you should be given a fair chance to arrive legally and legally buy land and legally search for oil. Not just take something that belongs to others, which is a violation of property rights.
He is basically trying to bring out the point that an accident of birth should not be the basis for discrimination. He is doing that by making analogies that are uncomfortable rather than stating it outright. That is his point :).
Why should a people be forced to put up their ancestral lands on the international market for exploitation by others? Because otherwise the West will bomb them?
No, because they in turn, should be given access to purchase your ancestral lands, if they are on their market.
You are unfortunately re-framing the question as some sort of property grab like the parent. Let me repeat: I do NOT condone anyone usurping property by force. My point is to illustrate the principle of making it available on a global market in a reciprocal way.
Good question. I would say, collective ownership. A country can be thought of as 'owned' by its people, with the rules of ownership agreed upon by the owners themselves (everyone owns an equal share -> 1 person 1 vote, ownership may not be transfered, but is given upon being born in the country or to an owner, and so on). This way, a country reduces to property. Should not the owners of property be free to manage it in their own favour?
It is not. Nothing in the thought experiment implies the laws of the country are not superior to those of the municipality. And as those laws require the country to treat all its citizens equaly and/or explicitly forbid discrimination, a municiaplity could not legally create such rules.
This is not a hypothetical - the collective ownership way of thinking applies just fine to the US, where such discrimination was ruled illegal.
The US has had clear definitions of race in the past - e.g. "1/16 or more". If we adopt such a definition, will you drop your objections to legalized racism? If not, why not?
It's ok, we've discussed this before. I don't expect anything other than evasion of the core philosophical issue.
The point I made very clearly before is the same as the one I made now.
If you are a US citizen, subject to US laws enforced by the very real institution of the US government which you live under, the US government owes you a living.
If you are, say, a Mongolian citizen, the US government doesn't owe you a living.
Your opinion was apparently that the US owes Mongolian citizens the same thing it owes US citizens, because... reasons.
If you are of any particular race that is an irrelevance. An irrelevance you keep bringing up because you are obsessed with race to a point that is frankly disturbing.
I'll take a stab: the world is fundamentally unfair to a certain extent...but we want to reduce that. In a perfect world, there should be no restrictions on immigration. However, we live in a world with vast inequalities and differences in culture, wealth etc. So while nationalism is unfair we live with it for now. Racism is analogous, but it concerned people within the US border, governed by US law, already part of US society, and its important for the fairness within the country and society that it be eliminated (not to mention that minorities did protest against institutional racism....and they could not be deported as they are US citizens).
To be clear, we are explicitly talking about reducing employment; reducing the number of developers eligible to work directly reduces employment, because there are fewer left to be employed.
Then consider the second-order effects. When wages rise, some development tasks are no longer worth performing, because they cost more than the value they create. In theory whole industries could become unsustainable if developers are very scarce, with knock-on effects on other professions.
"But probably won't because companies are desperate for them."
Only in SV, maybe a couple other bubble towns. The most likely outcome is decentralization of SV and expansion of remote offices and remote working.
Its easy for a world-wide company colocated with dozens of other world-wide companies in just one city to exhaust the supply of even the devs who fail fizzbuzz. If you expand that labor pool to the rest of the country given the extreme level of over-education and un- and underemployment in general, its not going to be a problem to find new devs of a higher quality than the drained pool in SV.
If a company can't recruit an immigrant worker on a visa they'll try recruit one of the currently unemployed local developers on the exact same package the immigrant would have been on. That has no impact on wages.
If the job required a unique talent that would only have been possible to fill with an exceptionally talented immigrant worker then the job won't be filled, and the company will be consequently less competitive. That will likely drive the wages of their workers down if a different company (in India perhaps) is able to utilize that worker's skills.
For example, imagine the next Jony Ive can't get a visa so he stays in the UK and works for a British company instead.. How would that impact American wages?
If local wages are high then it's possible for companies to be desperate for workers and for there to be high levels of unemployment. For example, if someone adds $50k to the company's bottom line then paying them more than $50k represents a loss.
This is actually one of the tech industries biggest challenges - how do you drive the cost of products down to compete in the marketplace when producing software costs so much due to high wages. The simplest answer is to drive wages down by recruiting immigrants. The long term answer is increase the pool of available labor by pushing for children to learn to code at school.
Why assume a specialized job "won't be filled", but a job were "the exact same package the immigrant would have been on" is offered will?
I believe H1B visas are currently used to get workers who accept lower-than-average wages; Hence the same jobs offered to non H1B workers at that level won't be attractive.
H1B visas are generally used for cheap labour. L1 and L2 visas are used for workers with "specialized knowledge" who are necessary because is no local option.
L1 visa are used for intra-company transfers. They are not freely available to anyone with special knowledge. If the company has a division outside of the US, then you'd need to work there for at least a year before applying for an L1.
L2 is for dependents of a L1 holder, like a spouse or child.
H-1B data is public. You can go see what Google, Apple, Amazon et al are paying their H-1B workers. It's no different from what any American worker would get for the same positions.
> It's no different from what any American worker would get for the same positions
It's what Americans might get if they accepted the positions,
but it isn't necessarily what they'd have to offer to get Americans to accept those positions; And if supply fell, but not demand, [make better offers is] what they'd have to do.
Why would it drive wages down?! It'd be the exact opposite, and is the reason that wages have been stagnant in STEM, and is the reason for the wage collusion scandal. Companies would have to increase their offers to attract talent from other companies. Or they would have to - as used to be the case everywhere - accept that talent is nurtured from within.
The wage collusion scandal happened at a time where yearly H-1B quotas were typically not met! (Edit: I'm wrong, they were met, but much more slowly than they are today, no lottery needed back then). Today there's roughly 4 times more applications than visas delivered through the lottery, and the wages in tech have never been so high. If you get screwed by your employer within the framework of labor laws, don't blame it on immigration.
Would that not demonstrate the point then? You're saying wages aren't stagnant anymore, occurring at a time when the demand for workers has finally outstripped supply because not enough visas are issued. So don't blame it on immigration now, fine. But if issuances of visas increase then you're back in the <2012 situation of stagnant or decreasing wages due to the availability of cheaper workers. So can you then blame stagnant industry wages on immigration?
Displacement of indigenous workers is also a major issue.
By the way, I wasn't trying to "blame it on immigration", my ire is solely directed at corporate lobbying for public policy, given that their sole motivation is an increase of private profits regardless of the socioeconomic side-effects. It should not be allowed.
I think it demonstrates there's hardly any correlation between STEM wages and H-1B abuse.
I'm all for fewer visas delivered to IT consulting firms, but I don't see not much of an intersection between this issue and stagnating wages in the tech industry. A reform of the H-1 would be nice but it should try to give a chance to small startups as well, not just hand over visas to the handful of companies that pay engineers over $250k. The current lottery is silly but at least it's unfair to everyone equally :)
Not sure what on earth you're expecting with STEM wages.
Across the economy and in most countries wages have been stagnant and STEM is no exception. And don't forget that most IT projects are not mandatory. If wages rise significantly companies will just cut back on projects which means more unemployed talent and hence the wages will drop back.
And there is no evidence that talent is better nurtured from within. It is just as beneficial for companies to have outsiders with unique experiences and viewpoints join.
You'd expect wages to rise when it's in industries with supposed skills shortages, which necessitates major corporations lobbying government for more visas.
If wages rose, companies couldn't just uniformly cut back on projects to keep their net profit the same in a hypercompetitive industry. Hence the wage collusion scandal, mentioned above.
> “If firms are using the program for cheap labor, I think it will affect them and they will have to pay workers more,” said Ron Hira, an associate professor at Howard University. “If tech firms are using the program for specialized labor, they may find there are more visas available.”
If that were true then wages would likely rise, and your "unique talent" could still be found, possibly even with increase probability, right?
> If the job required a unique talent that would only have been possible to fill with an exceptionally talented immigrant worker then the job won't be filled,
Actually wage floors or setting up a bid/auction based system makes it more likely the exceptionally talented worker can get a visa.
The clients all bargain for the best deal in the market. If costs go up across the board they will have no option, if they want to stick with outsourcing. Outsourcing has its own peculiar costs, the market may evolve.
While I don't agree with the travel ban, this is actually a sensible course of action. The H1B system needs a huge overhaul. The problem is that Trump is told by a so-called advisor that issue x is bad, and there isn't much thought given to the implementation of the solution to that problem.
Looks like this is not just targeting H-1B, but basically all work and business visas for the US:
> The draft of Trump’s executive order covers an alphabet soup of visa programs, including H-1B, L-1, E-2 and B1.
L-1 is intracompany transfer, E-2 is investor, and B-1 is the super common standard "I'm going to a meeting" business visa needed by everybody not in the visa waiver program.
It doesn't explicitly call out the E-3 in the leaked document, however IANAL and couldn't tell if any of the clauses implicitly affect it. [I'm on an E-3]
It doesn't mention the E-3 specifically, but the E-3 could come under review under the broader non-immigrant visa review provisions such as section 4d)i)A). The J-1 is specifically mentioned, which would affect Australian students on working holidays. Also, this order, if signed, would stop the international entrepreneur parole rule which would close another entry pathway.
Interesting. Singapore introduced the exact same policy (hire Singaporeans first) a few years ago. I thought it was well-intentioned even though it would hurt myself as a foreigner.
Every country has some version of this law. Your employer needs to provide some kind of proof (they have to do a song and dance everyone knows is BS) that a local cannot do the job.
I'm going to stick my neck out here and say that this may not be an altogether bad thing.
From the article: "The foreign work visas were originally established to help U.S. companies recruit from abroad when they couldn’t find qualified local workers. But in recent years, there have been allegations the programs have been abused to bring in cheaper workers from overseas to fill jobs that otherwise may go to Americans. The top recipients of the H-1B visas are outsourcers, primarily from India, who run the technology departments of large corporations with largely imported staff."
Outsourcing has come to be pretty racist, and is exploited by Big Consultancy in order to place a lower price on immigrant labour. That's a bad thing for everybody, not least the immigrants themselves.
When companies like Tata are fulfilling government contracts, they _should_ be filling those positions with local labour at local rates.
Meanwhile companies like Google, Facebook, Apple and MicroSoft should continue to be able to hire the experts they need from all over the world regardless of what passport they hold.
When companies like Tata are fulfilling government contracts, they _should_ be filling those positions with local labour at local rates.
Here's an alternate proposal. Suppose it would cost $70k for the wrong type of people to provide labor, and $100k for the right type of person to provide labor.
Lets continue having labor sold by the lowest cost provider. But then lets engage in direct wealth transfers; we'll have the government directly send $30k to the high income software engineers who might have been able to do the same job less efficiently.
This is a more or less equivalent scheme to transfer wealth from taxpayers to high income people. Do you have any objection to this scheme? If so, why does your objection not apply equally well to your protectionist scheme?
Yes, this is a new type of spending that hasn't existed before, and therefore taxes either have to increase or something else that is currently getting the 30k doesn't get it any more.
You can't hand-wave away where this money comes from.
It's not though. You don't "default" but your currency has to be well managed to a certain degree. The Dollar exists as it does because of its status as a reserve currency and because of how the Yuan is pinned relative to it.
You could break it. It's not immune to the hyperinflation that's hit other currencies.
Historically, the only other proposed option was the EU and much as been made about unsustainable financial policy there (many allege these issues are overblown to help discredit the notion of a strong Euro, but that's neither here nor there). But now we're starting to talk about creating to-order currencies with arbitrary properties, guaranteed supply limits and curiously popular ownership policies.
While governments will never give up the power to mint their own currency, it's not unimaginable that in 10 years some some countries will seriously consider participating in a digital reserve.
But it is not equivalent. Hiring local has many beneficial effects over outsourcing - increased labour demand increases wages, the local pool of talent and technology is developed, and the money you spend will in turn mostly be spent in your own economy, growing it and paying taxes to your government.
You could argue that these secondary effects do not outweigh the higher cost, and I'm sure sometimes that would be true, but this is a much weaker and less general argument.
We are discussing hiring local workers, not outsourcing. The local workers just happen to be brown and born in a different place.
The money will still be spent in your own economy. The choices are threefold:
My preferred scheme (1):
Low income taxpayers keep $30k and spend it themselves. Government pays for $70k from lowest bidding software engineer (possibly an Indian).
Fergie's preferred scheme (2):
Low income taxpayers don't get to spend $30k on themselves. Government pays $100k to a non-Indian software engineer.
My alternate scheme (3):
Low income taxpayers don't get to spend $30k on themselves. Government pays $70k to some Indian software engineer and then gives $30k to some random high income non-Indian person.
Your argument does not distinguish between (2) and (3). In both cases, money is transferred from taxpayers to high income colocated workers who will presumably spend it in the economy.
> We are discussing hiring local workers, not outsourcing. The local workers just happen to be brown and born in a different place.
One distinction is that many immigrant workers will be sending money back to their family in their home country, resulting in a net drain on the economy in which they're working.
I'm not saying this is a good reason to make life harder for them, but I do think it's a fair point.
It's not that simple. An Indian expatriate's remittance may leave American shores, for example, but then re-enters when their family buys iPhones, Ford's and Hershey's.
As someone who sends back thousands of dollars a year to family in Russia and Lithuania: they're sure as hell not spending it on American products. They spend it on food, medicine, housing, and education which are all sourced locally except for a tiny fraction of products that can't be (mostly IP restricted things like medicine, textbooks, movies). Once in a while they'll buy a computer manufactured in China from an ostensibly American company that rarely repatriates their profits.
The problem is that most American exports are luxury goods (even in agriculture) and when you come from a poor country where a few hundred dollars makes a huge difference, those exports will account for a tiny amount of the capital sent there. There are many long tail benefits but I doubt they are quantifiable enough to say that the drain from remittances is anywhere near break even.
Edited to add: my family doesn't even need the money, despite having health conditions that would economically cripple someone in the US without the best insurance. Salary + pensions + free education and healthcare are enough to survive so most of the money I send them are to give them breathing room and spending money. I think half of what I send them gets spent on spoiling the younger family members and the rest goes into a rainy day account. The only time they "spend" on American products is when one of us in the US buys them iPads/iPhones (on top of the remittance) as gifts on one of our visits and they buy a $5 game twice a year for the kids to play.
That said, if Americans knew how much of the >$100 billion remittance market went to buying little kids books, candy bars, sports equipment, and board games, they'd think the money was worth all the happiness it brings.
They still depress wages, and they will take most of their wages back with them, where their families are, and the cost of living is lower. There have also been many reports of americans training their replacements, at which point the distinction to outsourcing disappears.
Finally, I take issue with your characterization of software engineers as 'high income' - as I understand it, compared to the cost of living, they don't make that much on average. But I would welcome statistics on this matter.
In that case, should we also avoid hiring American citizens who send money to family overseas?
I agree that this reduces wages of high income workers. That's exactly why it reduces income inequality.
There are essentially no statistics in the US which adjust income for cost of living. Do you criticize all income inequality arguments on this ground, or just this one?
>I agree that this reduces wages of high income workers. That's exactly why it reduces income inequality.
The majority of the money saved from those wages would be transferred to the managerial classes (execs, etc.) and shareholders, making income inequality worse:
>We are discussing hiring local workers, not outsourcing. The local workers just happen to be brown and born in a different place.
>
>The money will still be spent in your own economy.
In other words you are valuing the $128 billion US remittance market at $0.
> In both cases, money is transferred from taxpayers to high income colocated workers who will presumably spend it in the economy.
Also, you're ignoring the national security implications of the thing. We cannot afford to be dependent on a foreign country for high tech skills. That's one reason why protectionism makes sense. As a country, we're willing to pay extra for certain basic manufacturing/services to stay in the county, such as aerospace repair and steel manufacturing, in case we ever become hostile with some other country.
You're describing a scenario where the relationship between the countries becomes so hostile that we have to worry about what happens if one of us cuts off the flow of talent. But what we should really care about is making the flow of talent so voluminous and indispensable to both nations that relations cannot deteriorate to that point. That's real national security.
Right, until that other country elects an orange demagogue that utilizes popular discontent to demonize you and cut off that flow of talent, regardless of the mutually assured harm. Societies are fickle, especially in times of war or increasing tensions. A well maintained local talent pool and industrial capacity subsidized against foreign economic forces are not.
Relying on other nations is the exact opposite of national security and it's naive to think that they will be by our side when shit hits the fan. We've seen too much in the last hundred years to leave our most critical industries to chance.
The movement of labor and ideas also means that there is no shortage of educated people to speak out against said orange demagogue's terrible policies. And most peoples' postmortems of the election agree that the election was close enough that higher immigration (or even better distribution of existing immigrants) would likely have kept him out of office.
> higher immigration (or even better distribution of existing immigrants) would likely have kept him out of office.
Only importing immigrants who have political views that agree with yours? A country has a particular culture and set of views. Why would we want to import people from countries with inferior living conditions and follow the way they do things? There's a reason they left.
No, the presence of immigrants who have political views that disagree with me would be even better.
As for why let people in from poor countries, because we are siphoning off the most educated and ambitions people from that country, who bring their drive and good genes to our country. It's the same reason Asians, who consist of the top people in their home countries who chose to came here, do better in the US than blacks, who were brought here by slavers.
What part of the point "let people in from poor countries, but don't let them keep doing things the way they were doing them" is not clear? Sure they want to move here, don't let them turn this place into the place they left by making them learn the language and culture.
>It's the same reason Asians, who consist of the top people in their home countries who chose to came here
That is an incorrect statement. Most asians who first came to america were imported as cheap labor to compete against Irish unskilled labor. The Polish, Irish, and Italian who came to the states were definitely not the best and brightest, but because they assimilated and learned the culture prospered.
> But what we should really care about is making the flow of talent so voluminous and indispensable to both nations that relations cannot deteriorate to that point.
That has not happened in the history of mankind. Talent moving around is rather high on Maslov's hierarchy of needs. If your country is out of arable farmland, clean water, or minerals, you will start looking around for places to get those materials.
If they will not trade for them, generally you invade.
I would say that is because, in the past, "work remotely" wasn't a viable option. Today, that sounds like a much better option than a war of conquest. To me, at least.
> in the past, "work remotely" wasn't a viable option.
What does this have to do with anything? We're talking about resource wars. You can kidnap talent. Look at the origin of the term "shanghaied" and the British impressing American seamen.
> Today, that sounds like a much better option than a war of conquest.
You're not getting the point. Most nations can do without talent. Talent is willing to cross borders, depending on who's winning.
What nations cannot do without is food, minerals and water. Those are definitely zero sum games. Unless you're able to defend your goods with force or there is an abundance of them, they will be taken away from you.
In scheme 1, does the lowest bidding software engineer have the right to stay in the US if they don't have work? If not, maybe that's why they can be the lowest bidder. Any American born developer of minority descent isn't going to underbid to that level. So your preferred scheme allows the free flow of capital but not labor.
I don't think there is a "right" or "wrong" company providing the labor. I just think that by exploiting vulnerable non-citizen "guest" workers and promising to sponsor a green card, these companies have been able to suppress wages to an extent that I am not comfortable with. Also, H1B looks a lot like indentured servitude to me. I have watched close friends suffer through this process.
Foreign workers need full payment of competitive market rate wages as well as the ability to fully maneuver in the marketplace so that they can act in their own best interest. It's already hard enough for them coming to the US with less competitive skillsets, but if they could bargain freely, they could at least earn market-rate wages in their skill range and grow their careers organically.
A large part of consulting recruits consist of yes-men who will work extra hours, do whatever their manager say with no critical thinking and will put up with clients' bullshit. This is what needed for the type of business and it has little to do with talent.
I am not sure how many proud Americans who would sign up for those positions.
This is just "Americans are lazy and entitled" written differently. We see similar arguments in the agriculture sector, where a different price dynamic exists. The difference is in the world of tech companies can actually afford to pay more because there isn't a horde of Americans who want the tech equivalent of dirt-cheap food keeping prices down.
Americans actually have a very strong affinity for authority. Most will put up with quite a bit especially for something they perceive as high paying.
That you think fast food is much different from no food or that the buses the impoverished here ride are "safe" (or always air conditioned, for that matter) leads me to believe you haven't experienced poverty in America.
I have. It really tweaks me when people compare poverty in America favorably to poverty elsewhere.
Why do you think one needs to experience poverty to make accurate claims about it?
Like it or not, the statistics show that poor Americans don't work very much, they are well fed, and they have living conditions that are not drastically different from the rich and are much better than most of the world.
Feel free to try and prove me wrong. But I'm willing to gamble that all you've got is anecdotes, no stats.
Why do you think I think that? You haven't offered an argument to "prove wrong." You've offered assertions and antagonism. If your intent is to invite discussion, it isn't a very good attempt.
>> the statistics show that poor Americans don't work very much, they are well fed, and they have living conditions that are not drastically different from the rich
> You haven't offered an argument to "prove wrong."
Prove the assertion wrong then. You're the one who atagonised originally:
> leads me to believe you haven't experienced poverty in America
And every time you're refuted as presenting an overly simplistic view, mistaking correlation for causation, and a having a host of other categorical and logical errors.
What you do when you link like that is make a "shotgun bullet-point argument:" you're presenting a set of loose, possibly related facts as though they're all mutually reinforcing studies leading to the same conclusions. There's no "there" there.
You may not like the argument that "proud" Americans wouldn't put up with the same thing, but it's true. Not liking the statement doesn't make reality less real. I see this day in and day out in tech companies with my own eyes. Long after everyone else has gone home, the contractors are working and dealing with last minute client changes to the point where they are exhausted. Meanwhile, their onshore counterparts make statements like, "fuck these clients for asking for something so crazy, you can bet your ass I'm not working late for this!" Or the ever popular "I don't get paid enough for this!" While the contracts are getting much less and even then, losing a cut of their own money to a contracting house.
This is a two sided coin where American companies have abused this and American workers see themselves as I've heard so many times: "temporarily embarrassed millionaires"
Our country has become the equivalent of a second generation family where the kids are all spoiled and the parents threaten to give our toys away to the poor kids down the street every other week.
>Or the ever popular "I don't get paid enough for this!"
The danger of criticising this behaviour is that it is putting the onus on the employee to earn their money rather than the employer to pay their employees. Doing so is actually anti-employee, and given that most of us are employees - self-destructive.
While I fully agree people should have some self agency to earn their wage, it is naive to think companies don't hold most the power in the employee-employer dynamic wrt salaries. When they can't force competition amongst applicants to drive down salaries, they simply move their operations to foreign countries to use cheaper migrant work. The migrants are happy to work hard because they're seeing an effective pay-rise so it's a win for them. It's also a win for the employer as they're paying less for work.
So the loser here is the domestic worker. On a personal level, how would you feel if I told you to work harder at a pay cut? In most professions, this has happened - wage inflation has not kept up with the economy in both the US and UK so people have seen their effective quality of life eroded over the past 20-30 years. Governments exist to protect their citizens from precisely this kind of exploitation by business. But protectionism and regulation have become dirty words nowadays...
Support for protectionism and regulation in this context are frequently derided as racist (or generally bigoted). It's amusing given how easily "Americans won't do these jobs" (which is code for "Americans are lazy, entitled, etc.") slips into the discussion.
> Americans actually have a very strong affinity for authority. Most will put up with quite a bit especially for something they perceive as high paying.
Americans will put up with it even when they're not being paid. Probably more so. The security theater of the TSA is a perfect example of that.
> This is just "Americans are lazy and entitled" written differently
No it isn't. It's not "lazy" to insist on working contracted hours. Americans are entitled to choose their workplace, and leave if it's bullshit; Having the economic success to be able to do this is another thing - that used to be handled through unions.
> We see similar arguments in the agriculture sector
It not the same argument, but in any case; How many agricultural workers have the insurance of going off and founding a startup?
I guarantee you, the Infosys Support Analysts at my company do not have the option of creating a "startup" any more than a plantation worker can start a plantation.
because the vast majority are doing support tickets stuck in a support center at a company like South California Edison, Verizon or Dow Chemical working with Enterprise Software like Oracle, Informatica, SAP etc. They are four to a room in an apartment in Minnesota where they send 3/4 of their paycheck back to India to support their family.
In your mind, you are thinking of the 10-15% working in Silicon Valley as coders with people skills.
And if wages increased? I'm going to disregard those with families, it's hard for anyone to compete with dependents.
Also, are you talking about Americans, or workers on visas? It sounds like the latter, but I was talking about the former, i.e. American IT workers can keep wages/conditions up by choosing startups if things start to drop, in a way I doubt agriculture workers could.
I'm from Ghana, and from what I understand Ghana and a lot of other countries with these immigrants share the common theme that when people say they're "supporting their family/people back home", "family" is not the meaning that the IRS gives for a dependent, it's very literally everyone who's back home.
For example, decades after moving to the US parents still support dozens of family members back home, not just siblings, but their own parents, cousins, nephews, even people from the same village who aren't necessarily family. Of course on the flip side those are the people who rally together to get them to the US (at least that's how it was for my parents and some other family I've known). It's a support system where people who come to the US are then able to fund things like education that will bring the next generation closer to the standard of living they left to the US for in the first place.
I suspect to workers supporting "family" in that position who don't even have financial security for themselves wouldn't even dream of something like packing it all up living out of a van and bootstrapping their dream startup. In all the years it took my parents years to even get to something considered financially secure, they still had people counting on them back home, I can only imagine the position of those counting someone who just got here on a visa, often at considerable cost relative to what wages are where they come from, meaning they needed help from family.
Well then there are reasons hard to understand unless you understand the socio-economic context in which a lot of people grow up in India. Not the kind of ones who you see come to US universities for higher education.
But there are a lot of other exceptionally brilliant people who come from poor families, to whom any opportunity is precious. Parents come from poor families typically from rural setting having worked often in hard conditions all their lives and made unbelievable sacrifices so that their kids can get some decent education and a shot at working at regular job that pays well. The kind of poverty I'm describing doesn't exist in US, so it will be hard for you to understand. Its not the $40K/year working-at-walmart/McD poverty. Its way worse.
Now when you look at this from the beginning to the end. Such people have to work on whatever opportunity they get, at whatever costs. No matter how hard they have to work. No matter how many extra hours/day they have to put, No matter how many weekends they have to show up at work. None of it matters. Because its all an opportunity so rare people before you didn't get.
Which is why I find names like 'yes-men' or the kinds used in some parent posts in this thread offensive. Unfortunately there are a lot of upper middle class Indian who themselves don't understand this.
Some people just don't have the luxury to make decisions they way others have.
If you are in a position to afford education in a US university, or quit your job and work on a start up. Or quit your job and do something else because your boss asked to you put in extra hours at work. You are already in a very different plane of luxury and will likely not understand why its not easy for others to do the same.
> The kind of poverty I'm describing doesn't exist in US,
It most definitely does. In the US there is "working class poor" (the kind you describe with the $40k/yr McJob), and then there is _poverty_: lack of adequate housing (e.g. shanties with pest infestations), lack of adequate clean water (not just occasionally, either, but consistently), lack of adequate food ("food insecurity", which is a terrible description for "we go without one or more meals regularly during the week, and sometimes have to beg for charitable food from neighbors or food banks"), and so on. These folks also typically don't have access to anything like sufficient education. The notion that "third world style poverty doesn't exist in the US" is a great propaganda victory for the wealthy elite here, but it's just not true.
Here's the thing. Think about this as an MVP slapped together in a weekend, about to hit the biggest batch of software testers around. They're going to find show stopping bugs. And every one of those bugs is going to be someone's life, uprooted.
Visa allocation changes _going_forward_ are certainly a reasonable thing. Fully within the realm of policy.
But I'm going to bet that these changes are going to be of a far wider scope than expected and include people on current visas, and I wouldn't bet against visas getting revoked and workers having to go home the next day or get deported.
Also if not discussed properly, there is a possibility of trade war.I am all for better VISA policy, but I am sure US doesn't want India to go China route and block american companies or apply more tarrifs(India also has a somewhat populist leader).
That has some huge problems which we've all seen this weekend, but in the long run, is that really worse than the old style of decades of inaction and debate topped off by an ineffectual bill that does nothing?
It's pretty similar to the disruption in the tech industry. "What do you mean you deploy bugs to production and then fix them after end users report them? Haven't you heard of QA?!!"
The difference is bugs in the current ad-tech darling or "uber for tindr dogs" won't ruin people's lives. There are good reasons why most professions (and even most difficult software) can't act as flippantly as "test it in prod".
That's not true at all. Most tech companies, like uber or tindr, are fundamentally aimed at ruining certain people's lives. And even when it's not intentional, it still happens, whether it's a bug that is effectively slander without a guilty party to bring suit against, an ad that infects you with malware that destroys your life's work, or just people being people.
Yes. The process you described is called democracy. Unilateral executive action of the top cabinet alone outside times of declared war (and even sometimes within a war) would be called dictatorial or authoritarian.
The debates, compromises checks are not just a tradition to be distrupted.
Dictatorial and authoritarian are not necessarily negatives.
Calls for a businessman to cut through the red tape and run the government more efficiently are almost as old as American democracy itself. Call it whatever you like, we knew that's how this candidate wanted to operate and voted for it anyway.
The problem more generally with that is that once you give that much power up with out an expiration date it will be very hard to restore back to a moderate position.
And even the proponents of banning muslims to cut back on terrorists entering should be upset at the implementation, because the ban hits none of the countries who have sent us actual real successful terrorists like Saudia Arabia or the UEA. So even if you think it's worth stretching out our democracy to get a no-nonsense strongman into fix border security, you should be upset that this ham handed approach hits the wrong countries, generates backlash, and will likely be repealed by federal judges, making it ineffective and worse than nothing at all.
I don't think the policy itself is good either, I'm just saying that the idea of implementing policy now, even if it has bugs, might be preferable to letting the perfect be the enemy of the good to the point where we do nothing about problems - even if they are merely imaginary problems.
As for electing someone because you don't believe they will follow through on their campaign promises, only to be disappointed when they try to do what they claimed they would, that is the culmination of a whole mess of other problems.
It sounds like we are almost entirely in agreement :D
I just think this order should be the new textbook example on why move fast and break things should not be executive policy.
Interesting, I would have called it a good example of how moving fast and breaking things is OK even for government action. It's only been two days and it's already been amended to allow green card holders to enter again, and several courts have ordered it to not be enforced. Before this, I and most people I know would not have guessed that government could move to amend broken policy this quickly.
1. We look capricious and incompetent to international allies, especially Iraqis.
2. The federal judges decision to stay parts of the order is not being enforced in its entirety. CBP refused to allow lawyers to meet with those being detained, in Dulles and in LA, even with Members of Congress attempting to enforce it in Dulles. This confusion among the rank and file about what a federal court order means is really worrysome and shows the checks aren't as strong as they should be. Real people are being harmed as a result of not at least explaining it in full to people who have to enforce it before it took effect.
3. The underlying motivations for the rule include discrimination against Muslims, as evidenced by Rudy Guilloani's statements that they were instructed to write a legal "Muslim ban". The word is out that the president, who is also a symbolic head of state and not just an acting office, is anti-Muslim in policy as well as rhetoric. No longer can we claim to take the high ground against ISIS or other radical Islamic group. (Edit: wrt religious freedom. As a commentor points out this obviously does not make us equivalent to ISIS)
This order will be mostly rescinded, leaving nothing but backlash.
The fact that CBP has very wide powers and very little supervision has been talked about for ages. Unfortunately, nothing is being done about it. Refusing to execute a court order should be grounds for immediate dismissal, and possibly following contempt of court proceedings, but I suspect CBP has a union which would fight that tooth and nail and probably win.
> No longer can we claim to take the high ground against ISIS or other radical Islamic group.
That's pretty grand claim. While Trump's order indeed caused a lot of trouble, I think trouble of being detained for a day or even sent back to the port of origin is not the same as trouble of being murdered, raped, sold to sexual slavery, having head cut off, burned alive, etc. which ISIS routinely does. The position of "is US government does something wrong they are the same of ISIS" is idiotic. Of course US government will do a lot of things wrong, they are as imperfect as huge bureaucracy composed of hundreds of thousands of imperfect people can be. It doesn't mean they are the same as terrorist death cult.
I edited my comment to clarify. I did not mean to imply that we are equivalent in all regards, or that this is the one thing that broke the camels back (guantanamo, predators bombing civilians in Pakistan, etc have been far worse for example). I just mean we lost something real and tangible there for no gain.
This is not a good MO for the government.
Even with the edit it's not right. First of all, immigration EO has nothing to do with religious freedom. 7 countries are targeted not because Muslims live there (though of course they do, but Muslims live in a lot more countries than that) but because they are either failed states or states actively supporting terrorism (of course, that doesn't mean they are only failed states or only ones supporting terrorism).
While a lot of people in US certainly think some aspects of current practices of some Muslims are problematic, there's no law in US that limits Muslim practices, exercise of their religion or any aspect of their life based on their religion. It's not even on the same planet with what ISIS does - where not only being a non-Muslim but even being a Muslim not devout enough by their standards means death sentence. You might compare it to Saudi Arabia maybe, which bans anybody who ever visited Israel from entering, it still would be way wrong and misguided, but at least it would be regular wrong, not insanely wrong.
In fact, I think this overblown rhetoric is exactly why immigration debate is getting so insane in the US - each time somebody says "ok, let's discuss how risky is to import people from Yemen or Syria and what precautions we may want to take so that good people get in and bad people stay out" people are screaming "you bigot, you hate Muslims, damn you, filthy Nazi!". So people start thinking "sigh, we can't really discuss it anymore in any sane way, so let's just elect Trump who would ban it altogether without discussing anything - at least it's more safe that way".
And the other side takes it as a confirmation that it's all plot to oppress Muslims. And so on. So the choice we get is between two insane extremums instead of a sensible policy in between. We need to get down from that tree and we need no more to see anti-Muslim bigot in each person that wants immigration to be more controlled than we need to see anti-Western terrorist in each Muslim. It just doesn't help anything.
Before I derail into attempting to refute your points, I'm going to just restate that regardless of where you stand on immigration policy, this administrations execution of their intentions does not deserve to be emulated. My original point is that they botched the execution, not that the idea itself is wrong. That being said I also don't agree with you at all about Trumps intentions or the political environment around immigration.
> 7 countries targeted not because Muslims live there
This nonsense has got to stop. Those nations have sent us exactly 0 terrorists to my knowledge. Meanwhile plenty of nations like Saudia Arabia have clear links to terror groups and remain free to travel to the US.
What they all have in common is they are convenient Muslim bogeymen without the ability to strike back internationally and with plausible deniability about this being a Muslim ban in some circles. [0]
It can be discrimination against a group without targeting the entire group if it disproportionately affects that group and if there aren't other reasonable explanations- this does fit that bill.
Trump also promised a shutdown of muslims entering the country on the campaign trail? Are you saying he just happened to sign this executive order based on other unrelated principles?
You use a false analogy to equate people calling Trumps policy bigoted with muslims being bigoted against westerners. We aren't painting an entire class of people as bigoted. Trump has said bigoted things about muslims. That is reason to believe that orders Trump gives mean exactly what he has said they would mean on the campaign trail. There is no extrapolation from a few to a whole group.
Furthermore Rudy Giuliani's description of how the ban came to be should put this point to bed. [1]
We can have immigration reform without people calling you a Nazi. Obama put into place some very strict immigration controls on those same countries without outright banning.
Of course they have to be admitted. New Secretary of Defense agrees too[1]. Since Trump's EO has specific provisions for that (DHS can accept anyone they want if deemed necessary) I hope that would be resolved quickly.
1. That was a lost cause as soon as Trump was elected. Or arguably, nominated. And although I can appreciate that it might be better for the country if we didn't look capricious and incompetent even when we are, if we are, then it's hard for me to feel too bad about it.
2. I'm fine with that. It's a work in progress, and the "harm" of travel delays that everyone in the world is aware of is pretty overstated. I think focus here is mostly a consequence of people being willing to place blame for harm caused by government action while giving harm caused by government inaction a free pass.
3. Same as 1. I'm pretty sure everyone already knew Trump, and by extension, the country, hated Muslims. As for ever having had the high ground, that's largely a delusion fueled by blind patriotism.
Re 2, You are fine with judicial review not being enforced?!
I feel like I am in a burning room and everyone is simply saying they are glad someone finally turned up the heat to a more comfortable level. These checks and balances are important.
Your original argument even stated the courts functioning as a reason that things could continue like this.
Most didn't according to a metric that's not the metric that is actually used to select the president and thus candidates and parties don't try to optimize for. As for the other point, agree to disagree.
Literal numbers that are unproportionally skewed by two overpowered population centers. It isn't just about proportionally capturing the interest of the individual voter. That individual voter in each state represents a sum total of different interests than a individual voter in another region of the States.
California and New York have different exports and interests than say, Wisconsin.
You would feel quite different about granting power to overpopulated areas if they were conservative rednecks, wouldn't you? Of course you would.
That's not how representative democracy works, in general. Direct democracy may work like that, but I don't see a way to run direct democracy on US federal scale, and even if there were a way, US is not one. In US system, there's debate, there's vote, representatives are elected and then they have power to act (within the bounds of law, of course, and within limitations like due process, procedures, judicial review, etc.) without further debating anyone. Of course, if they act poorly, they will soon find themselves out when the next election comes. But executive action is always "unilateral" and if it is consistent with the law and mandates given to the executive, not dictatorial.
I'm talking about the checks like judicial review, which is not being enforced in dulles currently as CBT continues to bar lawyers from visiting with detainees in violation of court order. I am talking about the disregard for Geneva refugee convention the United States was committed to. I am talking about looping in people are supposed to enforce this and having a common sense discussion with them about what it means in practice. None of those are incompatible with the representative democracy we hold. Nothing there requires direct democracy. Those are the things that make this "unilateral"
I never said this government was not a democracy, but that this administration's MO is inconsistent with the limitations set forth by our democratic government. For example, being elected does not give you carte-blanche to ignore federal court orders.
> I wouldn't bet against visas getting revoked and workers having to go home the next day or get deported.
As a software engineer on H1B (as is my fiancée) currently at Google, this scares the shit out of me.
I've lived my entire adult life in this country. I've got many amazing friends here, I've worked hard, built great products that I'm proud of, paid my taxes, and bought a home here with my fiancée. We're planning to get married and have a baby this year. This is our version of the American dream.
And all of that could be destroyed in an instant by an orange monster full of xenophobic rhetoric and wielding immense power. I'd trust a "normal" American president to not accidentally / maliciously destroy everything I've worked for over the past decade, but from the evidence this week, I'm scared. Really scared.
It may be good overall, but not necessarily for the US worker in particular.
The thing is, tech worker market is global and large companies always have the choice to outsource plain and simple.
The H-1B visa trick is a win-win between foreign worker and local companies (loss/draw for local worker and loss for foreign companies). Local companies get locked-in resources in a friendly timezone, foreign worker get US experience and higher than average salary. Without that trick, the large company will outsource which mean probably rising salaries in India or wherever (we are talking abuse here, you don't outsource for 1 guy in a odd position like what H-1B should be about, but for a team of generic tech resources, yes). Except for companies that were using H-1B for what it was actually designed, that's not going to change much in the US.
Now, the US government can add some trick to prevent outsourcing, Trump after all is a big fan of protectionist policies, with the usual caveats of such measures.
How did you get "higher than average salary?" All the H1Bs I have known, and I have worked with hundreds of them over the years, have all been underpaid compared to market rates. Some were outright exploited by ridiculous middle man consulting arrangements consisting of multiple levels taking a percentage of the hourly from the actual workers.
I have nothing against foreign workers, but if they are going to be allowed to work in the states they should be paid market rate or above. I consider this protectionism for my own livelihood and those of my US-citizen colleagues. The typical bill rate for software development work has not risen since 2000. Think about that.
Thank you, yes that's what I meant. I'm not sure how the salary compare relative to the cost of living, but the fact of having a US-base job is also part of the package and is valuable to foreign workers.
As someone who worked for Google while on an H1B, I can attest to this. Also, the consulting firm that I worked through (not directly hired by Google) took a hearty cut of that.
Sorry to hear that. My fiancee and I have both been working for Google (directly) on an H1B for the past 5 years. I don't know of any software engineers on an H1B at Google making less than $100K base, even straight out of college.
Google and Facebook are not employing the vast majority of H1B workers, the large BPO consulting firms like Wipro, CapGemini, Tata, Infosys, and Cognizant are (Source: http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2017-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx). Just because Google treats their H1B employees well doesn't mean everyone does, it's a small sample.
My experience is more in line with the previous poster. The workers can be terribly treated, at the mercy of their sponsoring company, and underpaid. There is the constant threat that you can be sent back to India at any time if you don't tow the company line. Many of these folks have moved their lives and their families to the US for these jobs, so this is a very serious threat.
We had one extremely talented lead engineer from Wipro that was so overworked from 10-12 hour days in the office and then another 6-8 at home on calls w/his team in India that his hair literally started falling out from the stress and lack of sleep.
Let's not kid ourselves, H1B is a source of cheap(er) skilled labor that the tech firms love because they don't need to invest in training and can exercise a level of control over them. The company can reduce or eliminate the risk that the worker will quit for a better position, unlike if they took a US worker and spent the money to train their skills up. We all know salary is just a small part of the overall cost of recruiting and retaining talent.
Personally, I'm in favor of opening up the restrictions on immigration. I believe that immigration and growing a country's population is essential to the long term viability of a nation. From my personal experience, I've seen that the H1B program has been abused and distorted to the whims of the big consulting firms at the expense of the workers in the program.
> The thing is, tech worker market is global and large companies always have the choice to outsource plain and simple.
The tech worker market segment the body shops proliferate within in the US is one-way permeable: from developing to developed world markets. There is nowhere near the kind of market demand for developed world tech workers in developing world markets. Without that equivalency, claiming a "global" market omits key information, because everyone who makes that "global" claim is trying to advance the argument that the globalization status quo is a two-way street of equal opportunity, and US workers should therefore welcome this new normal. There is in actuality an arbitrage over standard of living, environmental conditions, rule of law, etc. that coupled with US immigration laws create the market opportunity. That arbitrage is an externality cost pushed onto US taxpayers.
When US economists for globalization move en masse to India for its obvious competitive advantages over the US cost of living, because it is so cheap to live like a local in India and an economist can "obviously" work from anywhere, then their academic prescriptions align with their personal creed, and I'm all-in on globalization again.
> There is nowhere near the kind of market demand for developed world tech workers in developing world markets.
I think the suggestion from the parent was that if you prevent i.e. Google from bringing in H1B workers, they will simply hire them in their India office.
The market may not be global from an employee point of view, but that's an oxymoron, that has never been the case ever in any field. ( not saying it is a good thing )
Without any protectionist measure, it just remove one of the many resourcing options for the large US companies. It is unrealistic to think that the job will be automatically reassigned in the US when those companies are already spread all around the world.
All I'm trying to say is that suppressing H-1B is probably good because abuse is never good. However, I don't believe it will magically solve the problems of stagnating salaries without something else.
Goa is India, and quite a few (anecdotally) tech people moved there for several years (IDK about "permanently") for its lower cost of living and nice climate. They continue to work remotely for multi-national / Western companies, affording them a quite high local standard of living, and allowing to make savings.
These same people won't stay there if / when they decided to have children and educate them, though.
>The tech worker market segment the body shops proliferate within in the US is one-way permeable: from developing to developed world markets.
But software services flow the other way. Google, Facebook, Microsoft etc. are big players in India, and US employees benefit from increased revenue and profit from those populations.
You cannot arbitrarily pick and choose the aspects of globalization that hurt you vs. that benefit you.
I agree however as someone who works with a number of H-1Bs (who id argue should be here) my concern is always the collateral damage. But regardless either way things seem broken
> That's a bad thing for everybody, not least the immigrants themselves.
I don't see how it is a bad thing, as an immigrant. It seems to me it's better to get a job (and relocation) to US at slightly lower rate than US-native professional, but still much higher than one I'd get in the origin country. Note that once you're in the US, you can build the network, find better job, apply for green card, then citizenship, etc. And, of course, for many to benefit from safer environment, higher quality of life, etc.
> When companies like Tata are fulfilling government contracts, they _should_ be filling those positions with local labour at local rates.
If local rates are significantly higher, I am not sure - why taxpayer dollars should be spent more abundantly than private investor's dollar? I don't care too much if Sergey Brin loses one of his billions, it's not like he's going to raise the price of Google searches, but if my city doesn't have enough money to fix the road because they spent too much on other stuff and now have to raise taxes, that hits me right in the wallet.
If H1B is banned or becomes effectively useless, many companies will go for the worst scenario. Even now, big tech companies have been investing on their offshore dev centers. H1Bs pay taxes and spend their money here.
A lot of companies that hire the worst H1B abusers already know what happens when they offshore the development. The only reason they still use these consultancies is because of the perception that development is onshore and higher quality.
This problem is relatively easy to fix. If H1Bs weren't indentured to a company and free to move around (free market includes freedom of labor!), abuse would stop overnight. Because those workers could leave for better opportunities. Companies would be forced to pay market wage and treat them properly or face high turnover.
Thanks for this link. Reading the draft order reveals a lot - for example, Section 4 a) ii) of the order would kill the international entrepreneur parole rule before it even comes into effect.
On one hand I do believe that work-visa programs need to be reformed, on the other I can't imagine Trump using this as anything but a way attack foreigners.
As a European soon leaving university, and entering the job market, this makes working in the US more attractive.
Before I'd written it off, as the competition for H1-B visas is fierce. However, with luck this change will be aimed exactly at people like me. This makes the high-wages and innovation of the US look much more appealing.
There remains the downside of US politics in general and labor protection specifically.
Honestly I don't really think anything will change for you.
You are still going to be struggling to find work without at least some experience. Unless of course you enter a graduate program which is seperate from the rest of the job market.
Many companies are simply ill-equipped or unwilling to invest in training young developers. Especially in SV where the pace and intensity is so much higher.
Disclosure: my wife used to be on a work-permit scheme similar to H1B.
The problem with all of these schemes is they're tied to a particular job. You give up that job, your right to remain is toast. This makes it hard to move to competitors and artificially depresses wages. In turn, this artificially affects native workers in the same industry.
I think the solution here is more capitalism, not more government. Anyone coming to work shouldn't be limited in who they work for. You'd find this flow of cheap labour dry up awfully fast if they could get better jobs.
In comparison, the visa (technically, "residency permit") scheme in Japan (widely viewed as a xenophobic, anti-immigrant country) is tied to the person. You get sponsored in by an employer in a field, and then your residency is tied to you being employed in that field. You can instantly turn around and quit that job and find another one in the same field. Policy is you have 30 [or was it 60?90? something like that] days to find a new job or voluntarily forfeit your residency. You will only need to prove that though the next time you renew your residency permit.
They also make it very easy for skilled labour to immigrate. You just need a degree in your field and a sponsoring employer. There are no quotas, no need for the employer to prove they tried to find a local at above market rates, fees aren't onerous, etc.
The xenophobic view comes partly from how there aren't many skilled workers who want or can work in Japan (relatively low wages, Japanese language requirement) but mostly from their reluctance to allow unskilled labour in (which the US accepts via illegal immigration and Europe accepts via refugees)
> Plenty of unskilled workers are from other parts of the European Union
I think this mainly applies to the U.K., but I'm mainly basing that on anecdotes and the last time I looked a the numbers (ages ago) so I'd be happy to be corrected
The xenophobic view also comes from how you're treated if you are a visible minority there, comments from elected officials, the hoops you have to jump through to become a permanent resident...
What exactly do you think is sponsoring H1B? The company just pays a one time fee for applying for your permit which is negligible compared to how much engineers are paid. They don't have ongoing expenses related to work permit.
I agree. Skilled immigration doesn't have much of a downside for the US in my opinion, but immigrants do need to be free to decide what skills they choose to pursue, in response to market signals.
If silicon valley finds that people with the skills to become software developers prefer other fields, that's the market's answer. Forcing immigrants to work as software developers as a condition of living and working in the US is a horrible solution.
Immigrants must be free to participate in labor markets as they choose, without their options dictated to them by corporate "sponsors". Any attempts to "reform" this visa tat doesn't address this core issue (which in my opinion is also a basic human rights issue) is going to fail.
General skilled immigration would be good for the US, and I've love to see the H1B replaced with something that truly preserves the rights of the immigrant to choose his or her own path in life. If becoming a dev in the valley isn't part of that, well, that just means that skilled immigrants have found something higher value to do. Silicon valley can compete for them, just like everyone else, but I see no reason to interfere with the proper functioning of labor markets to make sure they get to hire on their own terms.
Maybe private offices, and less "young people are just smarter" gaffes would be a good place to start?
The u.s. is over populated with low paid indian and asian workers from the h1-b program. About time someone tried to fix it. You goto a job interview and if you don't speak hindi or mandarin you cant get hired because you wont be able to talk to your coworkers. Lol
I think the fairly straightforward solution to the H1B issue is to tie it to a salary requirement, rather than a lottery/other subjective measures.
If I want to hire a software developer from abroad and I'm willing to pay him above-market rates relative to similar jobs, that should demonstrate that I'm hiring that person because of his skills/knowledge rather than trying to cut costs.
Considering the only requirement is high school education, I think it's likely that DV is on the chopping block.
There a few fake articles that say it's cancelled already.
I've also read that DV visa holders from the 7 countries that are mentioned in last week's executive order will not be able to enter the United States.
This is another media stunt. H1B visas are already american-first. Immigration rules make the applicant go through many hoops to prove that the job has been advertised and American people have been interviewing for the position before offering it to the H1B visa applicant. Of course, this is already silly, because companies can just fake it, and usually they hire the person they want for the skills they have. Everybody who's been through the visa process can attest how hard it already is.
But that's not the point. Of course a 90-day ban on immigration from 7 countries is not going to significantly improve the security of the US. Of course overhauling the worker visa process is not going to create more jobs for the American worker in the Michigan area. Being very unpopular, Trump's goal right now is to stay in place. And to do that, he needs to keep his voters voting for him at the next election. Trump's strategy is to keep the people who elected him happy with his moves, and to keep them offended by the backlashes he provokes. He needs them to be suspicious of the news, and of the elites, because then he can tell them whatever he wants. The message he wants to push is "look I've done what I've been elected to do, and nobody will let me." The more he can say that the media/elites won't let him, the more his voters will look away when he wants to shut them down.
Not least because he's burning up his most combustible powder. It's well-known in politics that you do the antipopulist heavy lifting at the start of your term, then sugar the turd with various splurges towards the end of your term. Electoral feeling for any action, no matter how popular or unpopular, is always returning to a baseline of "meh".
If Trump had such a strategy, he'd have held this stuff over until before the mid-terms or the 2020 campaign.
The overall idea makes sense. However, HOW remains a crucial detail. The work visa is to find people outside US if you do not mind local labor. We all know some companies abuse this system currently while some companies do not. One way would be to check the distribution of market salaries for the respected position and apply the doctorine of disparate impact 80% rule [0]. That will still be an issue if people are creative with their job titles but it is incredibly
hard to find the right kind of incentives.
Maybe one day no one would like to live in USA, and the citizens will start migrating, investors will choose other countries, and then only "Americans" will live there. Then people will realise , we fucked it up , probably they will never get it.
I live in SF and hate how glibly techies talk about secession.
It may be because I grew up in the south and it's part of our history but techies seem to forget that the bloodiest US conflict in history was to prevent this very thing. To even entertain the idea that secession would not result in a mass amounts of destruction death exemplifies the Bay area bubble mentality.
Eh, it's a fun thing to think about, especially knowing it will never happen. Texas fantasizes about it all the time. Every few months there's some kind of map being posted here about how to split the US into different countries or re-draw the state borders or some other fantasy map. It's just a fun daydream.
I live in Michigan and several times we've had people from the Upper Peninsula try to get support for them to create a new state, ignoring the fact that they would be creating one of the poorest, most uneducated, and most unpopulated states, and it'd never be allowed.
It's a symbolic gesture to say "I don't agree with X policy". the UP of Michigan does it to protest Lansing tax policies, Texas does it to protest liberal federal policies, California does it to protest right-wing federal policies. And everyone knows full well it won't go any farther than a protest.
I think its just one way to vent frustration in the face of powerlessness. Like a protest against State's powerlessness. So Texas secessionists may talk and hold rallies but they don't (IMO, living in Austin, Texas) seriously consider leaving.
> To even entertain the idea that secession would not result in a mass amounts of destruction death exemplifies the Bay area bubble mentality.
Why? There's no reason secession has to be a violent affair. Very recently we almost saw Scotland succeed in a perfectly peaceful way and we're now witnessing the UK do the same.
That time is very interesting to study. The economics of it are mind-bending. I think California has a ways to go before it becomes that economically powerful.
"in 1860, the value of the slaves was “roughly three times greater than the total amount invested in banks,” and it was “equal to about seven times the total value of all currency in circulation in the country, three times the value of the entire livestock population, twelve times the value of the entire U.S. "
This is a classic logical fallacy I see too often. It's like mentally creating a Venn diagram of "People who said a" and "People who said b" and then just assuming that the two circles basically entirely overlap - without any basis.
I feel like it's somehow a variation on a straw man argument, but I can't work out if that's a good enough analog. Would be interested to know if anyone knows of a more formal name for it.
Trump hating on Iranians for no good reason. Trump hating on Mexicans who are here legally or aren't even in the country (the whole "Mexicans are rapists, but I'm sure there's some good ones" comment). Versus Trump changing immigration policy to balance foreign and domestic workers, where it's heavily tipped to foreign workers right now.
He's not building a wall to keep out Indians, he's not arresting them at airports when they have a green card, his plan is to just not issue as many visas, and put tighter restrictions on the people he gives visas to.
That's not "hating on" anyone. There are lots of reasons to oppose Trump, but this isn't one of them. The H1B visa system could use some work, and it's getting that work.
Not to mention the exhorbitant wait times to get permanent residency for Indians(and Chinese). As things stand, with an approved petition for 2011 or later it will be well over a decade before they can get a green card.
Keep in mind, a large amount of those applications are pushed by outsourcing companies, that are gaming the system.
"Federal officials allow only one application for each foreign worker, but companies can submit an unlimited number of applications for their employees, so global outsourcing giants can, and do, submit many requests."
And one third of all approved H1Bs are for those outsourcing firms.
The spammed requests by these firms make it more difficult for foreign workers to get through this process, too, unless they work for these outsourcing firms.
If it wasn't tipped toward foreign workers, you'd hear stories of H1B workers who sadly lost their job to an American. You'd hear stories about companies who hired all American employees, then apologized when they realize it didn't work out and they went back to H1B workers. You'd hear politicians calling for more foreign workers because there are too many jobs for Americans.
The 25% success rate? That's the system working as intended.
But your story of American workers just needing to find a willing employer, your story of proving that an American worker isn't available to do the job, it's just not true. Or at least it's not as true as you want to make it seem.
The minimum for an H1B employee is $60,000 right now. I made more than that at my first tech job right out of college, living in a small city in the Midwest. To get an H1B employee, all you have to do is put up a job posting for $60,000 and wait. The people who will fill that position will be expecting $80,000 and will turn it down. To get an H1B employee, all you need to do is pay far less than market rate (but at or above H1B minimum). Boom, you have highly skilled Americans out of a job and companies getting employees for less than market rate. I've seen it happen at every place I've ever worked.
Part of Trump's idea is to raise the minimum for H1B workers to $100k. The idea of an H1B is that it allows you to hire employees who have such a specialized skillset that you can't find someone in America to do the work. What it's become is finding an entry-level Java coder for less than what an American college-educated entry-level employee would make. If the work you need done is so advanced or so specialized that there is no one in America who can do it, you should be willing to pay whatever it costs to get it done.
It should be extremely difficult to hire a foreign worker. Not impossible, but really, really hard. Yes, it may be a privilege to be an American, but there are a lot of unemployed, skilled, college-educated Americans. The problem isn't not finding enough Americans to fill the positions, it's not wanting to pay what they need to get paid. And that's the wrong sort of behavior to encourage.
> If it wasn't tipped toward foreign workers, you'd hear stories of H1B workers who sadly lost their job to an American.
You don't, because when an H-1B worker loses her job, she has to leave the country or find another job real quick. Either way, she most likely do not have time to get her story across to you.
That's another problem I have with the current H1B visa system: the workers are almost literally slaves. It is so close to indentured servitude that I'm not sure if it isn't the same thing as indentured servitude. I've worked at multinational tech companies and I've worked at regional enterprises and everywhere in between and unfailingly, the H1B employees have four people in a two bedroom apartment all sharing a 1987 Toyota Camry. They work 17 hour days for less money than their coworkers, and if they complain, they're deported and banned from the country.
That's not fair. If your skillset is so important that American companies will bring you across the ocean from your home country to work for them, you should be a god to them. You should be the most valuable employee they have. They hired Joe because he was the best candidate that applied to their local ad. They hand-picked Prakesh and brought him all the way to California from his home in India because no one is better than Prakesh.
What you are asking for is a point-based skilled immigration system like in Canada, Australia etc. Nobody has proposed that in US yet. But there is a bill - H.R.392: Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2017 [1] - currently up for consideration of the Congress which removes the multi-decade green card backlogs for skilled immigrants. From [2]:
H.R. 392, Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act replaces the current per-country caps
on immigration with a first-come first-served visa system without increasing the total number
of available visas. The current system of awarding no more than 7% of available employment-based
visas to one country is discriminatory. It ultimately imposes decades-long wait times for people
from some countries, creating a backlog of qualified workers. The bill makes no changes to the
current law limiting US employers to hire foreign workers except when there are no qualified,
willing, able, and available American citizens.
Please consider supporting H.R.392 as that is closest we have now to what you are asking for.
Seems like you never read the full Trump quote on Mexicans, because that is precisely what he doesn't say. Usually when the clip is shown on television they edit it to make it seem that way though.
Not hating on Indians per se, but hating on the wage-depressing way they are hired. H1B visas tie you to your employer, so you have no leverage to increase your wages. Now if they could job-hop like the rest of us, their presence wouldn't depress wages so much, and we'll all be better off. In other words, we want more freedom for them, not less, nor the crippleware BS that is the current H1B system. Same goes for undocumented Mexicans. If they could organize and switch jobs without fear of deportation, their presence wouldn't depress manual labor wages nearly as much.
H1B visas tie you to your employer, so you have no leverage to increase your wages.
Sure you do: you can find a new employer willing to spend a couple of thousand (i.e. a lot less than recruiting costs) on transferring the visa.
There is no barrier to a Mexican illegal immigrant changing jobs whatsoever.
I'm all in favor of making it easier for people to come to the US and productively work for willing employers (whether high skilled Indians or low skilled Mexicans). But it's pretty clear that this isn't what Trump is proposing.
Except whenever you change employers your green-card application resets. For people born in India, green cards applications are currently being processed from July 2005. That means someone from India who is trying to become a permanent resident is stuck at the same company for over a decade.
> Hira, who has done extensive research on the subject, points out workers at outsourcers are typically not treated as well as others. The median wage at outsourcing firms for H-1B workers was less than $70,000, while Apple, Google and Microsoft paid their employees in the program more than $100,000, according to data he collected. That suggests the American companies are going after true, highly skilled employees, while the outsourcers are recruiting less expensive talent, he said.
Not necessarily. You could also say that the big tech companies are overpaying them or there's premium in their compensation while they're fairly compensated in those Indian outsourcing companies with no premium in their pay package.
OK so we need to agree on the definition of a market here. I'm gonna take the US tech market as the collection of all citizens and legal immigrants with the relevant skills.
Now, if you can't get a majority of workers in the market to work for you for a lower wage, that is not fair market value, by definition. If you need to bring in legal immigrants and pay them less than the above mentioned fair market value, they are being underpaid.
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[ 12.6 ms ] story [ 7633 ms ] threadWow, that's horrible. I mean, a country giving preference to their own kind. When is this nightmare going to end?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
It's gone on too long. We all see the abuses, but are afraid to say anything.
Since there's such a "tiny pool of people" move the organization to---say India? Or China? They must have eager qualified candidates?
> a tiny pool of people
Are you talking about the US (dev) population?
like all those celebs that threatened to leave the US?
Inside the computer.
Chaos is antithetical to a successful business.
SV companies were largely supportive of Trump (due to the chance of corporate tax cuts) up until this point.
I could be misunderstanding, but isn't this just bringing the h1b in line with that?
The latter being easier to demonstrate, not sure quite how you'd convince the govt that Candidate X is a superb programmer or whatever.
Guess we can look forward to whiteboard tree shaking and fizzbuzz at the airport! ;)
Americans are going to start taking jobs overseas, you're not going to have immigrants coming here. It's going to wreck the US economy.
edit: I'm mistaken, it seems... sorry.
If anything, any potential change to O-1 visas (don't know whether any are planned) will have larger impact than what you're describing.
Many of those hired on H1B are doing roles for which they simply can't get enough local talent. And so all that is going to happen is that companies are going to shift entire projects offshore or simply not take on as many projects.
There does need to be reform. But frankly given the chaotic manner in which the Trump administration is crafting and implementing policy I don't think their approach to reform will be nuanced enough.
It feels good to tell ourselves we didn't hire locally because there wasn't enough talent when in many cases its just far easier to accept a recruiters suggestions where multiple recruiters simply undercut each other.
So it's not just a way to get regular software developers at a cheap price? OK let's raise the minimum salary requirement for H1B visas to $120k.
(They are also introducing a 'tech startup visa' in the near future.)
These things always need to be suffixed with "at price point x".
And companies like Infosys are often playing in specific, less sexy spaces i.e. enterprise J2EE, DBAs, System Administration etc whilst newer generation of developers prefer Go, Rust, Javascript etc.
Hire and teach, thus benefitting everyone.
Train their staff?
How long really would it take a competent Java developer to get up to speed with WebObjects?
Nope.
> It's not just about price. It's also about the various experience within the local talent pool.
Same thing. H1B just made them that way, with both metrics being in favor of the employer (except the vast majority of times the skillset is misrepresented).
The astroturfing by someone who has no experience with how H1B is used, is telling.
I can only speak to my experience. At my current employer we have about 60-70% H1Bs in my department (development). Even more in QA. And they aren't particularly talented. After reviewing the public information though, they are getting paid 50% of what I am.
So they are living with multiple other visa workers in one apartment, can barely afford repairs to their old cars, etc.
It'd be great if the wages were more equalized. It's really not about talent at anywhere but the big 4. It's about money.
Lots of other companies without hype just want lower wage workers. I figure these are the majority.
No, in lower-level positions also they are paid the same as their colleagues who are citizens. During the hiring process, the immigration status is not get considered as a positive or negative qualifier.
> Lots of other companies without hype just want lower wage workers.
I agree.
> I figure these are the majority.
This is possible, but I am not sure. It is true that many companies who get the most visas don't pay well. But the well-paying firms do not apply for lots of visas, and there are lots of them, leading to a long thin-tailed distribution. Also, many of these H-1B immigrants, once they get their green cards, go on to found successful startups increasing the size of the economic pie for everyone. One such person, Jyoti Bansal, sold his startup for $3.7B last week.
Not if they are hired through a contracting company:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13525766
The numbers are public on this and look fine. People keep telling you "I'm on an H-1B and I'm paid reasonably".
Please, offer actual proof or quit spreading this around.
But lots of established SW companies use contracting companies that abuse the visa process. I should have been more clear, it's these contracting companies (usually based out of India) that are abusing the process. US companies that use them are pretty much complicit:
http://www.vocativ.com/money/business/theyll-sponsor-america...
http://www.infoworld.com/article/3004501/h1b/proof-that-h-1b...
http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Chasing-dreams-a...
http://www.epi.org/blog/new-data-infosys-tata-abuse-h-1b-pro...
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2915904/it-outsourcing/...
This is the scam they want you to believe, but it's being abused to simply keep wages low.
It's very easy to post fake job ads to make it seem like "you can't find someone" for the job, and there are plenty of lawyers who will help you get around those loopholes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU
The issue is the motivation behind the change. What if the changes are designed to please an electorate that is not directly impacted but they just really really want to see some heads rolling?
There are some serious credibility issues with the current US govt. Left or right, populists pretend to swing a magic wand and magically fixing problems. Ban immigrants, implement 90% tax for the rich and so on, until these vote generating policies break apart.
He has a long track record of viciously attacking those whom attack him. Could well be payback for many of the SV companies that criticised him both publicly and privately e.g. Lisa Jackson from Apple meeting with Kushner/Ivanka this week.
If this follows the pattern of 'make a big news splash' and 'leave huge ambiguity regarding actual policy' then it is really not helpful for any kind of business decision.
The rational response right now might be to avoid new H1B hiring completely, lest you spend months on an application that later gets nullified by shifting policy. That's not a win for SV companies that favor H1B hiring.
If they make clear changes that do help create more visas for high skilled workers, I agree that's a win for silicon valley, and a win for US labor. Overall the US does well when other countries send their top brains here.
It's not only about what non-US people think about it. Whatever happens effects Americans, through the effects on the U.S. economy. It effects potential immigrants. And it effects the rest of the world through its effects on the global economy.
I don't live in the US, I don't have any current plans to move there, but I still care about what happens to people in the US and other countries.
Why do we care about increasing inequality and increasing costs to consumers by protecting high-wage American workers from foreign competition?
and being on a visa tied to a company just opens up foreign developers to abuse
I'd love to hear what kind of actual abuses an H1B shop can pull off. Make developers work 50 hours/week for the 1-2 months it'll take the developers to find a new job that'll be willing to sponsor the visa?
Sorry I have to disagree, I am the most vehement loather of Trump and his fan base but fundamentally this just encourages a race to the bottom, does it not?
No you don't. It's painful for the good ones too.
(Note: I'm not calling you "racist" - that's a slur that has lost all meaning these days. I'm taking a policy I'm pretty sure you oppose and asking you for a principled reason why you oppose it.)
According to pretty much any commonly used definition of inequality, giving more money to >$100k/year software engineers will increase inequality.
You're defining "income inequality" as only in relation to the median or average income. That is too simple to make any sense. By that model, I could have 1000 people making $1/hr, 10 people making $10/hr, and 1 person making $2000/hr. This puts the average at $3/hr. And so you say protecting the $10/hr people's salaries from being artificially suppressed increases income inequality because you've arbitrarily defined the line at the average income.
Also, you're ignoring where the money is coming from, so any math in your mental model is flawed. I would hope this discussion isn't about creating money and giving it to >$100k/year engineers, but rather the business owners with capital paying market rates instead of having a way to suppress skilled labor salaries by exploiting weaker economies and tethering foreign employees for upwards of 9 years before they can finally correct their salary and working conditions (hint: I've worked with a few people who have been exploited like this).
This whole us-vs-them scam of pitting everyone in the middle and lower class against themselves that the media/business/etc. has been doing (probably for longer than I've been alive) is amazingly effective...
Most people want and value many of the same things and greatly outnumber our overlords, but somehow we're always pointing the finger at each other ("you're just lazy", "you're just racist", "a true <blank> would/wouldn't <blank>", "check your privilege", etc.). And all the while, the powers that be siphon away money and power and continue to set the stage in their favor.
What principle makes your favored accident of birth ok to discriminate on, but not mine?
What is your principle? Anarchism, world government, no borders? I honestly do not understand your point.
No, but you should be given a fair chance to arrive legally and legally buy land and legally search for oil. Not just take something that belongs to others, which is a violation of property rights.
He is basically trying to bring out the point that an accident of birth should not be the basis for discrimination. He is doing that by making analogies that are uncomfortable rather than stating it outright. That is his point :).
You are unfortunately re-framing the question as some sort of property grab like the parent. Let me repeat: I do NOT condone anyone usurping property by force. My point is to illustrate the principle of making it available on a global market in a reciprocal way.
That way, a municipality reduces to property. Should not the owners of property be free to manage it in their own favor?
This is not a hypothetical - the collective ownership way of thinking applies just fine to the US, where such discrimination was ruled illegal.
What is the fundamental difference that makes "municipality : country" nonanalogous to "country : world"?
Are you suggesting India become the 51st state of America?
So can the idea of "Americanness" - either laws around citizenship/work permission/etc, or cultural/social norms around this.
That isn't a particularly unclear definition.
It's ok, we've discussed this before. I don't expect anything other than evasion of the core philosophical issue.
If you are a US citizen, subject to US laws enforced by the very real institution of the US government which you live under, the US government owes you a living.
If you are, say, a Mongolian citizen, the US government doesn't owe you a living.
Your opinion was apparently that the US owes Mongolian citizens the same thing it owes US citizens, because... reasons.
If you are of any particular race that is an irrelevance. An irrelevance you keep bringing up because you are obsessed with race to a point that is frankly disturbing.
Seems to me that's the most principled stance one can take.
https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-egregious-examples-of-H1...
If you think they are highly skilled workers who can waltz over to Facebook, google, etc and get a job then I've got a bridge to sell you.
(Two sides of the same coin.)
There would be nothing stopping a individual developer accepting a lower salary. But probably won't because companies are desperate for them.
Then consider the second-order effects. When wages rise, some development tasks are no longer worth performing, because they cost more than the value they create. In theory whole industries could become unsustainable if developers are very scarce, with knock-on effects on other professions.
Only in SV, maybe a couple other bubble towns. The most likely outcome is decentralization of SV and expansion of remote offices and remote working.
Its easy for a world-wide company colocated with dozens of other world-wide companies in just one city to exhaust the supply of even the devs who fail fizzbuzz. If you expand that labor pool to the rest of the country given the extreme level of over-education and un- and underemployment in general, its not going to be a problem to find new devs of a higher quality than the drained pool in SV.
If the job required a unique talent that would only have been possible to fill with an exceptionally talented immigrant worker then the job won't be filled, and the company will be consequently less competitive. That will likely drive the wages of their workers down if a different company (in India perhaps) is able to utilize that worker's skills.
For example, imagine the next Jony Ive can't get a visa so he stays in the UK and works for a British company instead.. How would that impact American wages?
This is actually one of the tech industries biggest challenges - how do you drive the cost of products down to compete in the marketplace when producing software costs so much due to high wages. The simplest answer is to drive wages down by recruiting immigrants. The long term answer is increase the pool of available labor by pushing for children to learn to code at school.
That's literally how markets work. They go up or down based on demand.
I believe H1B visas are currently used to get workers who accept lower-than-average wages; Hence the same jobs offered to non H1B workers at that level won't be attractive.
But in any case:
> It's no different from what any American worker would get for the same positions
It's what Americans might get if they accepted the positions, but it isn't necessarily what they'd have to offer to get Americans to accept those positions; And if supply fell, but not demand, [make better offers is] what they'd have to do.
The wage collusion scandal happened at a time where yearly H-1B quotas were typically not met! (Edit: I'm wrong, they were met, but much more slowly than they are today, no lottery needed back then). Today there's roughly 4 times more applications than visas delivered through the lottery, and the wages in tech have never been so high. If you get screwed by your employer within the framework of labor laws, don't blame it on immigration.
Displacement of indigenous workers is also a major issue.
By the way, I wasn't trying to "blame it on immigration", my ire is solely directed at corporate lobbying for public policy, given that their sole motivation is an increase of private profits regardless of the socioeconomic side-effects. It should not be allowed.
I'm all for fewer visas delivered to IT consulting firms, but I don't see not much of an intersection between this issue and stagnating wages in the tech industry. A reform of the H-1 would be nice but it should try to give a chance to small startups as well, not just hand over visas to the handful of companies that pay engineers over $250k. The current lottery is silly but at least it's unfair to everyone equally :)
Across the economy and in most countries wages have been stagnant and STEM is no exception. And don't forget that most IT projects are not mandatory. If wages rise significantly companies will just cut back on projects which means more unemployed talent and hence the wages will drop back.
And there is no evidence that talent is better nurtured from within. It is just as beneficial for companies to have outsiders with unique experiences and viewpoints join.
If wages rose, companies couldn't just uniformly cut back on projects to keep their net profit the same in a hypercompetitive industry. Hence the wage collusion scandal, mentioned above.
The more likely outcome is companies will adopt more efficient work practices.
A slowly rising cost of labor fuels automation and increased value for society.
As mentioned in the article:
> “If firms are using the program for cheap labor, I think it will affect them and they will have to pay workers more,” said Ron Hira, an associate professor at Howard University. “If tech firms are using the program for specialized labor, they may find there are more visas available.”
If that were true then wages would likely rise, and your "unique talent" could still be found, possibly even with increase probability, right?
Actually wage floors or setting up a bid/auction based system makes it more likely the exceptionally talented worker can get a visa.
> The draft of Trump’s executive order covers an alphabet soup of visa programs, including H-1B, L-1, E-2 and B1.
L-1 is intracompany transfer, E-2 is investor, and B-1 is the super common standard "I'm going to a meeting" business visa needed by everybody not in the visa waiver program.
It doesn't mention the E-3 specifically, but the E-3 could come under review under the broader non-immigrant visa review provisions such as section 4d)i)A). The J-1 is specifically mentioned, which would affect Australian students on working holidays. Also, this order, if signed, would stop the international entrepreneur parole rule which would close another entry pathway.
It's funny because the L1 visa brings in far more people than the H1B because it has no cap.
I shall have to see how it pans out, would have liked to work my next job in the USA.
Edit to add source:
http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/firms-must-show-they-t...
http://www.mom.gov.sg/newsroom/press-releases/2016/0726-upda...
Virtually all of the hiring managers I talked to were clueless about technology and were content to pay shitty wages for substandard work.
The nature of their 2 year military service also has the effect of turning the locals into servile yes-men.
Median salary for software engineers are a measly SGD$48,953 (34,360 USD). Average rents being SGD$1,971 for a one bedroom.
This should be unanimously supported by the developed tech world.
From the article: "The foreign work visas were originally established to help U.S. companies recruit from abroad when they couldn’t find qualified local workers. But in recent years, there have been allegations the programs have been abused to bring in cheaper workers from overseas to fill jobs that otherwise may go to Americans. The top recipients of the H-1B visas are outsourcers, primarily from India, who run the technology departments of large corporations with largely imported staff."
Outsourcing has come to be pretty racist, and is exploited by Big Consultancy in order to place a lower price on immigrant labour. That's a bad thing for everybody, not least the immigrants themselves.
When companies like Tata are fulfilling government contracts, they _should_ be filling those positions with local labour at local rates.
Meanwhile companies like Google, Facebook, Apple and MicroSoft should continue to be able to hire the experts they need from all over the world regardless of what passport they hold.
Here's an alternate proposal. Suppose it would cost $70k for the wrong type of people to provide labor, and $100k for the right type of person to provide labor.
Lets continue having labor sold by the lowest cost provider. But then lets engage in direct wealth transfers; we'll have the government directly send $30k to the high income software engineers who might have been able to do the same job less efficiently.
This is a more or less equivalent scheme to transfer wealth from taxpayers to high income people. Do you have any objection to this scheme? If so, why does your objection not apply equally well to your protectionist scheme?
You can't hand-wave away where this money comes from.
“This is the United States government. First of all, you never have to default because you print the money, I hate to tell you, OK?”
You could break it. It's not immune to the hyperinflation that's hit other currencies.
Historically, the only other proposed option was the EU and much as been made about unsustainable financial policy there (many allege these issues are overblown to help discredit the notion of a strong Euro, but that's neither here nor there). But now we're starting to talk about creating to-order currencies with arbitrary properties, guaranteed supply limits and curiously popular ownership policies.
While governments will never give up the power to mint their own currency, it's not unimaginable that in 10 years some some countries will seriously consider participating in a digital reserve.
You could argue that these secondary effects do not outweigh the higher cost, and I'm sure sometimes that would be true, but this is a much weaker and less general argument.
The money will still be spent in your own economy. The choices are threefold:
My preferred scheme (1): Low income taxpayers keep $30k and spend it themselves. Government pays for $70k from lowest bidding software engineer (possibly an Indian).
Fergie's preferred scheme (2): Low income taxpayers don't get to spend $30k on themselves. Government pays $100k to a non-Indian software engineer.
My alternate scheme (3): Low income taxpayers don't get to spend $30k on themselves. Government pays $70k to some Indian software engineer and then gives $30k to some random high income non-Indian person.
Your argument does not distinguish between (2) and (3). In both cases, money is transferred from taxpayers to high income colocated workers who will presumably spend it in the economy.
One distinction is that many immigrant workers will be sending money back to their family in their home country, resulting in a net drain on the economy in which they're working.
I'm not saying this is a good reason to make life harder for them, but I do think it's a fair point.
The problem is that most American exports are luxury goods (even in agriculture) and when you come from a poor country where a few hundred dollars makes a huge difference, those exports will account for a tiny amount of the capital sent there. There are many long tail benefits but I doubt they are quantifiable enough to say that the drain from remittances is anywhere near break even.
Edited to add: my family doesn't even need the money, despite having health conditions that would economically cripple someone in the US without the best insurance. Salary + pensions + free education and healthcare are enough to survive so most of the money I send them are to give them breathing room and spending money. I think half of what I send them gets spent on spoiling the younger family members and the rest goes into a rainy day account. The only time they "spend" on American products is when one of us in the US buys them iPads/iPhones (on top of the remittance) as gifts on one of our visits and they buy a $5 game twice a year for the kids to play.
That said, if Americans knew how much of the >$100 billion remittance market went to buying little kids books, candy bars, sports equipment, and board games, they'd think the money was worth all the happiness it brings.
Finally, I take issue with your characterization of software engineers as 'high income' - as I understand it, compared to the cost of living, they don't make that much on average. But I would welcome statistics on this matter.
I agree that this reduces wages of high income workers. That's exactly why it reduces income inequality.
There are essentially no statistics in the US which adjust income for cost of living. Do you criticize all income inequality arguments on this ground, or just this one?
The majority of the money saved from those wages would be transferred to the managerial classes (execs, etc.) and shareholders, making income inequality worse:
http://www.forbes.com/2004/08/31/cx_da_0831topnews.html
Income inequality isn't high because people who work for a living are earning too much.
In other words you are valuing the $128 billion US remittance market at $0.
Also, you're ignoring the national security implications of the thing. We cannot afford to be dependent on a foreign country for high tech skills. That's one reason why protectionism makes sense. As a country, we're willing to pay extra for certain basic manufacturing/services to stay in the county, such as aerospace repair and steel manufacturing, in case we ever become hostile with some other country.
You're describing a scenario where the relationship between the countries becomes so hostile that we have to worry about what happens if one of us cuts off the flow of talent. But what we should really care about is making the flow of talent so voluminous and indispensable to both nations that relations cannot deteriorate to that point. That's real national security.
Relying on other nations is the exact opposite of national security and it's naive to think that they will be by our side when shit hits the fan. We've seen too much in the last hundred years to leave our most critical industries to chance.
Only importing immigrants who have political views that agree with yours? A country has a particular culture and set of views. Why would we want to import people from countries with inferior living conditions and follow the way they do things? There's a reason they left.
As for why let people in from poor countries, because we are siphoning off the most educated and ambitions people from that country, who bring their drive and good genes to our country. It's the same reason Asians, who consist of the top people in their home countries who chose to came here, do better in the US than blacks, who were brought here by slavers.
What part of the point "let people in from poor countries, but don't let them keep doing things the way they were doing them" is not clear? Sure they want to move here, don't let them turn this place into the place they left by making them learn the language and culture.
>It's the same reason Asians, who consist of the top people in their home countries who chose to came here
That is an incorrect statement. Most asians who first came to america were imported as cheap labor to compete against Irish unskilled labor. The Polish, Irish, and Italian who came to the states were definitely not the best and brightest, but because they assimilated and learned the culture prospered.
That has not happened in the history of mankind. Talent moving around is rather high on Maslov's hierarchy of needs. If your country is out of arable farmland, clean water, or minerals, you will start looking around for places to get those materials.
If they will not trade for them, generally you invade.
What does this have to do with anything? We're talking about resource wars. You can kidnap talent. Look at the origin of the term "shanghaied" and the British impressing American seamen.
> Today, that sounds like a much better option than a war of conquest.
You're not getting the point. Most nations can do without talent. Talent is willing to cross borders, depending on who's winning.
What nations cannot do without is food, minerals and water. Those are definitely zero sum games. Unless you're able to defend your goods with force or there is an abundance of them, they will be taken away from you.
It's not equivalent at all. All taxpayers would now be on the hook for that 30k rather than just the corporations who pay for that labor.
Foreign workers need full payment of competitive market rate wages as well as the ability to fully maneuver in the marketplace so that they can act in their own best interest. It's already hard enough for them coming to the US with less competitive skillsets, but if they could bargain freely, they could at least earn market-rate wages in their skill range and grow their careers organically.
I am not sure how many proud Americans who would sign up for those positions.
Americans actually have a very strong affinity for authority. Most will put up with quite a bit especially for something they perceive as high paying.
Regarding lazy and entitled - I am envious when poverty there is considered eating fast food and using safe, air conditioned bus.
If you are taking these pragmatic decisions at least have some self-deprecating humour with it.
I have. It really tweaks me when people compare poverty in America favorably to poverty elsewhere.
Like it or not, the statistics show that poor Americans don't work very much, they are well fed, and they have living conditions that are not drastically different from the rich and are much better than most of the world.
Feel free to try and prove me wrong. But I'm willing to gamble that all you've got is anecdotes, no stats.
> You haven't offered an argument to "prove wrong."
Prove the assertion wrong then. You're the one who atagonised originally:
> leads me to believe you haven't experienced poverty in America
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12381938#12382336
What you do when you link like that is make a "shotgun bullet-point argument:" you're presenting a set of loose, possibly related facts as though they're all mutually reinforcing studies leading to the same conclusions. There's no "there" there.
?
This is a two sided coin where American companies have abused this and American workers see themselves as I've heard so many times: "temporarily embarrassed millionaires"
Our country has become the equivalent of a second generation family where the kids are all spoiled and the parents threaten to give our toys away to the poor kids down the street every other week.
The danger of criticising this behaviour is that it is putting the onus on the employee to earn their money rather than the employer to pay their employees. Doing so is actually anti-employee, and given that most of us are employees - self-destructive.
While I fully agree people should have some self agency to earn their wage, it is naive to think companies don't hold most the power in the employee-employer dynamic wrt salaries. When they can't force competition amongst applicants to drive down salaries, they simply move their operations to foreign countries to use cheaper migrant work. The migrants are happy to work hard because they're seeing an effective pay-rise so it's a win for them. It's also a win for the employer as they're paying less for work.
So the loser here is the domestic worker. On a personal level, how would you feel if I told you to work harder at a pay cut? In most professions, this has happened - wage inflation has not kept up with the economy in both the US and UK so people have seen their effective quality of life eroded over the past 20-30 years. Governments exist to protect their citizens from precisely this kind of exploitation by business. But protectionism and regulation have become dirty words nowadays...
...at the slave wage being offered.
That's the part they never mention.
Americans will put up with it even when they're not being paid. Probably more so. The security theater of the TSA is a perfect example of that.
No it isn't. It's not "lazy" to insist on working contracted hours. Americans are entitled to choose their workplace, and leave if it's bullshit; Having the economic success to be able to do this is another thing - that used to be handled through unions.
> We see similar arguments in the agriculture sector
It not the same argument, but in any case; How many agricultural workers have the insurance of going off and founding a startup?
In your mind, you are thinking of the 10-15% working in Silicon Valley as coders with people skills.
Also, are you talking about Americans, or workers on visas? It sounds like the latter, but I was talking about the former, i.e. American IT workers can keep wages/conditions up by choosing startups if things start to drop, in a way I doubt agriculture workers could.
I'm from Ghana, and from what I understand Ghana and a lot of other countries with these immigrants share the common theme that when people say they're "supporting their family/people back home", "family" is not the meaning that the IRS gives for a dependent, it's very literally everyone who's back home.
For example, decades after moving to the US parents still support dozens of family members back home, not just siblings, but their own parents, cousins, nephews, even people from the same village who aren't necessarily family. Of course on the flip side those are the people who rally together to get them to the US (at least that's how it was for my parents and some other family I've known). It's a support system where people who come to the US are then able to fund things like education that will bring the next generation closer to the standard of living they left to the US for in the first place.
I suspect to workers supporting "family" in that position who don't even have financial security for themselves wouldn't even dream of something like packing it all up living out of a van and bootstrapping their dream startup. In all the years it took my parents years to even get to something considered financially secure, they still had people counting on them back home, I can only imagine the position of those counting someone who just got here on a visa, often at considerable cost relative to what wages are where they come from, meaning they needed help from family.
Why they can't start a start up?
Well then there are reasons hard to understand unless you understand the socio-economic context in which a lot of people grow up in India. Not the kind of ones who you see come to US universities for higher education.
But there are a lot of other exceptionally brilliant people who come from poor families, to whom any opportunity is precious. Parents come from poor families typically from rural setting having worked often in hard conditions all their lives and made unbelievable sacrifices so that their kids can get some decent education and a shot at working at regular job that pays well. The kind of poverty I'm describing doesn't exist in US, so it will be hard for you to understand. Its not the $40K/year working-at-walmart/McD poverty. Its way worse.
Now when you look at this from the beginning to the end. Such people have to work on whatever opportunity they get, at whatever costs. No matter how hard they have to work. No matter how many extra hours/day they have to put, No matter how many weekends they have to show up at work. None of it matters. Because its all an opportunity so rare people before you didn't get.
Which is why I find names like 'yes-men' or the kinds used in some parent posts in this thread offensive. Unfortunately there are a lot of upper middle class Indian who themselves don't understand this.
Some people just don't have the luxury to make decisions they way others have.
If you are in a position to afford education in a US university, or quit your job and work on a start up. Or quit your job and do something else because your boss asked to you put in extra hours at work. You are already in a very different plane of luxury and will likely not understand why its not easy for others to do the same.
It most definitely does. In the US there is "working class poor" (the kind you describe with the $40k/yr McJob), and then there is _poverty_: lack of adequate housing (e.g. shanties with pest infestations), lack of adequate clean water (not just occasionally, either, but consistently), lack of adequate food ("food insecurity", which is a terrible description for "we go without one or more meals regularly during the week, and sometimes have to beg for charitable food from neighbors or food banks"), and so on. These folks also typically don't have access to anything like sufficient education. The notion that "third world style poverty doesn't exist in the US" is a great propaganda victory for the wealthy elite here, but it's just not true.
I think you misunderstand my post. I'm saying Americans can found start-ups more easily than immigrant workers.
Here's the thing. Think about this as an MVP slapped together in a weekend, about to hit the biggest batch of software testers around. They're going to find show stopping bugs. And every one of those bugs is going to be someone's life, uprooted.
Visa allocation changes _going_forward_ are certainly a reasonable thing. Fully within the realm of policy.
But I'm going to bet that these changes are going to be of a far wider scope than expected and include people on current visas, and I wouldn't bet against visas getting revoked and workers having to go home the next day or get deported.
It's pretty similar to the disruption in the tech industry. "What do you mean you deploy bugs to production and then fix them after end users report them? Haven't you heard of QA?!!"
The problem more generally with that is that once you give that much power up with out an expiration date it will be very hard to restore back to a moderate position.
And even the proponents of banning muslims to cut back on terrorists entering should be upset at the implementation, because the ban hits none of the countries who have sent us actual real successful terrorists like Saudia Arabia or the UEA. So even if you think it's worth stretching out our democracy to get a no-nonsense strongman into fix border security, you should be upset that this ham handed approach hits the wrong countries, generates backlash, and will likely be repealed by federal judges, making it ineffective and worse than nothing at all.
As for electing someone because you don't believe they will follow through on their campaign promises, only to be disappointed when they try to do what they claimed they would, that is the culmination of a whole mess of other problems.
1. We look capricious and incompetent to international allies, especially Iraqis.
2. The federal judges decision to stay parts of the order is not being enforced in its entirety. CBP refused to allow lawyers to meet with those being detained, in Dulles and in LA, even with Members of Congress attempting to enforce it in Dulles. This confusion among the rank and file about what a federal court order means is really worrysome and shows the checks aren't as strong as they should be. Real people are being harmed as a result of not at least explaining it in full to people who have to enforce it before it took effect.
3. The underlying motivations for the rule include discrimination against Muslims, as evidenced by Rudy Guilloani's statements that they were instructed to write a legal "Muslim ban". The word is out that the president, who is also a symbolic head of state and not just an acting office, is anti-Muslim in policy as well as rhetoric. No longer can we claim to take the high ground against ISIS or other radical Islamic group. (Edit: wrt religious freedom. As a commentor points out this obviously does not make us equivalent to ISIS)
This order will be mostly rescinded, leaving nothing but backlash.
> No longer can we claim to take the high ground against ISIS or other radical Islamic group.
That's pretty grand claim. While Trump's order indeed caused a lot of trouble, I think trouble of being detained for a day or even sent back to the port of origin is not the same as trouble of being murdered, raped, sold to sexual slavery, having head cut off, burned alive, etc. which ISIS routinely does. The position of "is US government does something wrong they are the same of ISIS" is idiotic. Of course US government will do a lot of things wrong, they are as imperfect as huge bureaucracy composed of hundreds of thousands of imperfect people can be. It doesn't mean they are the same as terrorist death cult.
While a lot of people in US certainly think some aspects of current practices of some Muslims are problematic, there's no law in US that limits Muslim practices, exercise of their religion or any aspect of their life based on their religion. It's not even on the same planet with what ISIS does - where not only being a non-Muslim but even being a Muslim not devout enough by their standards means death sentence. You might compare it to Saudi Arabia maybe, which bans anybody who ever visited Israel from entering, it still would be way wrong and misguided, but at least it would be regular wrong, not insanely wrong.
In fact, I think this overblown rhetoric is exactly why immigration debate is getting so insane in the US - each time somebody says "ok, let's discuss how risky is to import people from Yemen or Syria and what precautions we may want to take so that good people get in and bad people stay out" people are screaming "you bigot, you hate Muslims, damn you, filthy Nazi!". So people start thinking "sigh, we can't really discuss it anymore in any sane way, so let's just elect Trump who would ban it altogether without discussing anything - at least it's more safe that way".
And the other side takes it as a confirmation that it's all plot to oppress Muslims. And so on. So the choice we get is between two insane extremums instead of a sensible policy in between. We need to get down from that tree and we need no more to see anti-Muslim bigot in each person that wants immigration to be more controlled than we need to see anti-Western terrorist in each Muslim. It just doesn't help anything.
> 7 countries targeted not because Muslims live there
This nonsense has got to stop. Those nations have sent us exactly 0 terrorists to my knowledge. Meanwhile plenty of nations like Saudia Arabia have clear links to terror groups and remain free to travel to the US. What they all have in common is they are convenient Muslim bogeymen without the ability to strike back internationally and with plausible deniability about this being a Muslim ban in some circles. [0]
It can be discrimination against a group without targeting the entire group if it disproportionately affects that group and if there aren't other reasonable explanations- this does fit that bill.
Trump also promised a shutdown of muslims entering the country on the campaign trail? Are you saying he just happened to sign this executive order based on other unrelated principles?
You use a false analogy to equate people calling Trumps policy bigoted with muslims being bigoted against westerners. We aren't painting an entire class of people as bigoted. Trump has said bigoted things about muslims. That is reason to believe that orders Trump gives mean exactly what he has said they would mean on the campaign trail. There is no extrapolation from a few to a whole group.
Furthermore Rudy Giuliani's description of how the ban came to be should put this point to bed. [1]
We can have immigration reform without people calling you a Nazi. Obama put into place some very strict immigration controls on those same countries without outright banning.
[0] conveniently also no Trump company interests in those states [1] http://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2017/01/30/political-panel-on-t...
[1] http://www.redstate.com/sweetie15/2017/01/30/defense-secreta...
2. I'm fine with that. It's a work in progress, and the "harm" of travel delays that everyone in the world is aware of is pretty overstated. I think focus here is mostly a consequence of people being willing to place blame for harm caused by government action while giving harm caused by government inaction a free pass.
3. Same as 1. I'm pretty sure everyone already knew Trump, and by extension, the country, hated Muslims. As for ever having had the high ground, that's largely a delusion fueled by blind patriotism.
Your original argument even stated the courts functioning as a reason that things could continue like this.
Yes they fucking are.
> we knew that's how this candidate wanted to operate and voted for it anyway
Most didn't vote for him.
California and New York have different exports and interests than say, Wisconsin.
You would feel quite different about granting power to overpopulated areas if they were conservative rednecks, wouldn't you? Of course you would.
Without saying the election was rigged by Russia.
As a software engineer on H1B (as is my fiancée) currently at Google, this scares the shit out of me.
I've lived my entire adult life in this country. I've got many amazing friends here, I've worked hard, built great products that I'm proud of, paid my taxes, and bought a home here with my fiancée. We're planning to get married and have a baby this year. This is our version of the American dream.
And all of that could be destroyed in an instant by an orange monster full of xenophobic rhetoric and wielding immense power. I'd trust a "normal" American president to not accidentally / maliciously destroy everything I've worked for over the past decade, but from the evidence this week, I'm scared. Really scared.
The thing is, tech worker market is global and large companies always have the choice to outsource plain and simple.
The H-1B visa trick is a win-win between foreign worker and local companies (loss/draw for local worker and loss for foreign companies). Local companies get locked-in resources in a friendly timezone, foreign worker get US experience and higher than average salary. Without that trick, the large company will outsource which mean probably rising salaries in India or wherever (we are talking abuse here, you don't outsource for 1 guy in a odd position like what H-1B should be about, but for a team of generic tech resources, yes). Except for companies that were using H-1B for what it was actually designed, that's not going to change much in the US.
Now, the US government can add some trick to prevent outsourcing, Trump after all is a big fan of protectionist policies, with the usual caveats of such measures.
I have nothing against foreign workers, but if they are going to be allowed to work in the states they should be paid market rate or above. I consider this protectionism for my own livelihood and those of my US-citizen colleagues. The typical bill rate for software development work has not risen since 2000. Think about that.
My experience is more in line with the previous poster. The workers can be terribly treated, at the mercy of their sponsoring company, and underpaid. There is the constant threat that you can be sent back to India at any time if you don't tow the company line. Many of these folks have moved their lives and their families to the US for these jobs, so this is a very serious threat.
We had one extremely talented lead engineer from Wipro that was so overworked from 10-12 hour days in the office and then another 6-8 at home on calls w/his team in India that his hair literally started falling out from the stress and lack of sleep.
Let's not kid ourselves, H1B is a source of cheap(er) skilled labor that the tech firms love because they don't need to invest in training and can exercise a level of control over them. The company can reduce or eliminate the risk that the worker will quit for a better position, unlike if they took a US worker and spent the money to train their skills up. We all know salary is just a small part of the overall cost of recruiting and retaining talent.
Personally, I'm in favor of opening up the restrictions on immigration. I believe that immigration and growing a country's population is essential to the long term viability of a nation. From my personal experience, I've seen that the H1B program has been abused and distorted to the whims of the big consulting firms at the expense of the workers in the program.
The tech worker market segment the body shops proliferate within in the US is one-way permeable: from developing to developed world markets. There is nowhere near the kind of market demand for developed world tech workers in developing world markets. Without that equivalency, claiming a "global" market omits key information, because everyone who makes that "global" claim is trying to advance the argument that the globalization status quo is a two-way street of equal opportunity, and US workers should therefore welcome this new normal. There is in actuality an arbitrage over standard of living, environmental conditions, rule of law, etc. that coupled with US immigration laws create the market opportunity. That arbitrage is an externality cost pushed onto US taxpayers.
When US economists for globalization move en masse to India for its obvious competitive advantages over the US cost of living, because it is so cheap to live like a local in India and an economist can "obviously" work from anywhere, then their academic prescriptions align with their personal creed, and I'm all-in on globalization again.
I think the suggestion from the parent was that if you prevent i.e. Google from bringing in H1B workers, they will simply hire them in their India office.
The market may not be global from an employee point of view, but that's an oxymoron, that has never been the case ever in any field. ( not saying it is a good thing )
Without any protectionist measure, it just remove one of the many resourcing options for the large US companies. It is unrealistic to think that the job will be automatically reassigned in the US when those companies are already spread all around the world.
All I'm trying to say is that suppressing H-1B is probably good because abuse is never good. However, I don't believe it will magically solve the problems of stagnating salaries without something else.
These same people won't stay there if / when they decided to have children and educate them, though.
But software services flow the other way. Google, Facebook, Microsoft etc. are big players in India, and US employees benefit from increased revenue and profit from those populations.
You cannot arbitrarily pick and choose the aspects of globalization that hurt you vs. that benefit you.
US employees of "Google, Facebook, Microsoft etc.", or US employees in aggregate?
I don't see how it is a bad thing, as an immigrant. It seems to me it's better to get a job (and relocation) to US at slightly lower rate than US-native professional, but still much higher than one I'd get in the origin country. Note that once you're in the US, you can build the network, find better job, apply for green card, then citizenship, etc. And, of course, for many to benefit from safer environment, higher quality of life, etc.
> When companies like Tata are fulfilling government contracts, they _should_ be filling those positions with local labour at local rates.
If local rates are significantly higher, I am not sure - why taxpayer dollars should be spent more abundantly than private investor's dollar? I don't care too much if Sergey Brin loses one of his billions, it's not like he's going to raise the price of Google searches, but if my city doesn't have enough money to fix the road because they spent too much on other stuff and now have to raise taxes, that hits me right in the wallet.
The best scenario for U.S.: Hiring only locals
The worst scenario for U.S.: Offshore outsourcing
The base scenario for U.S.: Hiring H1Bs
If H1B is banned or becomes effectively useless, many companies will go for the worst scenario. Even now, big tech companies have been investing on their offshore dev centers. H1Bs pay taxes and spend their money here.
Before I'd written it off, as the competition for H1-B visas is fierce. However, with luck this change will be aimed exactly at people like me. This makes the high-wages and innovation of the US look much more appealing.
There remains the downside of US politics in general and labor protection specifically.
You are still going to be struggling to find work without at least some experience. Unless of course you enter a graduate program which is seperate from the rest of the job market.
Many companies are simply ill-equipped or unwilling to invest in training young developers. Especially in SV where the pace and intensity is so much higher.
The problem with all of these schemes is they're tied to a particular job. You give up that job, your right to remain is toast. This makes it hard to move to competitors and artificially depresses wages. In turn, this artificially affects native workers in the same industry.
I think the solution here is more capitalism, not more government. Anyone coming to work shouldn't be limited in who they work for. You'd find this flow of cheap labour dry up awfully fast if they could get better jobs.
They also make it very easy for skilled labour to immigrate. You just need a degree in your field and a sponsoring employer. There are no quotas, no need for the employer to prove they tried to find a local at above market rates, fees aren't onerous, etc.
The xenophobic view comes partly from how there aren't many skilled workers who want or can work in Japan (relatively low wages, Japanese language requirement) but mostly from their reluctance to allow unskilled labour in (which the US accepts via illegal immigration and Europe accepts via refugees)
I think this mainly applies to the U.K., but I'm mainly basing that on anecdotes and the last time I looked a the numbers (ages ago) so I'd be happy to be corrected
https://www.uscis.gov/news/news-releases/uscis-publishes-fin...
If silicon valley finds that people with the skills to become software developers prefer other fields, that's the market's answer. Forcing immigrants to work as software developers as a condition of living and working in the US is a horrible solution.
Immigrants must be free to participate in labor markets as they choose, without their options dictated to them by corporate "sponsors". Any attempts to "reform" this visa tat doesn't address this core issue (which in my opinion is also a basic human rights issue) is going to fail.
General skilled immigration would be good for the US, and I've love to see the H1B replaced with something that truly preserves the rights of the immigrant to choose his or her own path in life. If becoming a dev in the valley isn't part of that, well, that just means that skilled immigrants have found something higher value to do. Silicon valley can compete for them, just like everyone else, but I see no reason to interfere with the proper functioning of labor markets to make sure they get to hire on their own terms.
Maybe private offices, and less "young people are just smarter" gaffes would be a good place to start?
If I want to hire a software developer from abroad and I'm willing to pay him above-market rates relative to similar jobs, that should demonstrate that I'm hiring that person because of his skills/knowledge rather than trying to cut costs.
I get paid >$80k. Yet the wage that all of our "similar position" (actual wage) visa applicants get is $40k.
The "prevailing wage" for a SwE is not $40k, in the NYC area. Neither is the "actual wage". Companies abuse this constantly.
There a few fake articles that say it's cancelled already.
I've also read that DV visa holders from the 7 countries that are mentioned in last week's executive order will not be able to enter the United States.
But that's not the point. Of course a 90-day ban on immigration from 7 countries is not going to significantly improve the security of the US. Of course overhauling the worker visa process is not going to create more jobs for the American worker in the Michigan area. Being very unpopular, Trump's goal right now is to stay in place. And to do that, he needs to keep his voters voting for him at the next election. Trump's strategy is to keep the people who elected him happy with his moves, and to keep them offended by the backlashes he provokes. He needs them to be suspicious of the news, and of the elites, because then he can tell them whatever he wants. The message he wants to push is "look I've done what I've been elected to do, and nobody will let me." The more he can say that the media/elites won't let him, the more his voters will look away when he wants to shut them down.
Not least because he's burning up his most combustible powder. It's well-known in politics that you do the antipopulist heavy lifting at the start of your term, then sugar the turd with various splurges towards the end of your term. Electoral feeling for any action, no matter how popular or unpopular, is always returning to a baseline of "meh".
If Trump had such a strategy, he'd have held this stuff over until before the mid-terms or the 2020 campaign.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact#The_80.25_rul...
It may be because I grew up in the south and it's part of our history but techies seem to forget that the bloodiest US conflict in history was to prevent this very thing. To even entertain the idea that secession would not result in a mass amounts of destruction death exemplifies the Bay area bubble mentality.
I live in Michigan and several times we've had people from the Upper Peninsula try to get support for them to create a new state, ignoring the fact that they would be creating one of the poorest, most uneducated, and most unpopulated states, and it'd never be allowed.
It's a symbolic gesture to say "I don't agree with X policy". the UP of Michigan does it to protest Lansing tax policies, Texas does it to protest liberal federal policies, California does it to protest right-wing federal policies. And everyone knows full well it won't go any farther than a protest.
Seriously, it may be all in fun, but it paints a sad message about the perceptions of people who participate.
Why? There's no reason secession has to be a violent affair. Very recently we almost saw Scotland succeed in a perfectly peaceful way and we're now witnessing the UK do the same.
"in 1860, the value of the slaves was “roughly three times greater than the total amount invested in banks,” and it was “equal to about seven times the total value of all currency in circulation in the country, three times the value of the entire livestock population, twelve times the value of the entire U.S. "
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cro...
Trump hating on Iranians and Mexicans.
HN: "I hate Trump, he's so mean to immigrants. And avocado prices will go up! ::angry face::
Trump hating on Indians who took our jobs!
HN: "Protectionism for me too? ::swoons::"
That's the issue with "The Reddit/HN/Gawker/*chan/Twitter's community is toxic".
I feel like it's somehow a variation on a straw man argument, but I can't work out if that's a good enough analog. Would be interested to know if anyone knows of a more formal name for it.
Or some hybrid of the two.
It was always about protecting our interests.
Trump hating on Iranians for no good reason. Trump hating on Mexicans who are here legally or aren't even in the country (the whole "Mexicans are rapists, but I'm sure there's some good ones" comment). Versus Trump changing immigration policy to balance foreign and domestic workers, where it's heavily tipped to foreign workers right now.
He's not building a wall to keep out Indians, he's not arresting them at airports when they have a green card, his plan is to just not issue as many visas, and put tighter restrictions on the people he gives visas to.
That's not "hating on" anyone. There are lots of reasons to oppose Trump, but this isn't one of them. The H1B visa system could use some work, and it's getting that work.
For a US worker to find a job, they need to find a willing employer.
For a foreign worker, they need to:
0) Find a willing employer.
1) Get lucky. For 2017, there were 236,000 applications for 65,000 H1Bs (about a 25% success rate).
2) Prove that an American worker isn't available to do the job.
3) Wait > 8 months to start the job (applications happen in April 2016 for 2017 employment).
Yeah, things are totally tipped in favor of foreign workers. I'm constantly wondering if I should give up my US citizenship to gain these advantages.
"Federal officials allow only one application for each foreign worker, but companies can submit an unlimited number of applications for their employees, so global outsourcing giants can, and do, submit many requests."
And one third of all approved H1Bs are for those outsourcing firms.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/06/us/outsourcin...
The spammed requests by these firms make it more difficult for foreign workers to get through this process, too, unless they work for these outsourcing firms.
I'm a foreign worker, and while I am very happy to live in the US being here on a visa sucks.
i love my country and my city, but my life would be a lot easier if i lived in the us.
The 25% success rate? That's the system working as intended.
But your story of American workers just needing to find a willing employer, your story of proving that an American worker isn't available to do the job, it's just not true. Or at least it's not as true as you want to make it seem.
The minimum for an H1B employee is $60,000 right now. I made more than that at my first tech job right out of college, living in a small city in the Midwest. To get an H1B employee, all you have to do is put up a job posting for $60,000 and wait. The people who will fill that position will be expecting $80,000 and will turn it down. To get an H1B employee, all you need to do is pay far less than market rate (but at or above H1B minimum). Boom, you have highly skilled Americans out of a job and companies getting employees for less than market rate. I've seen it happen at every place I've ever worked.
Part of Trump's idea is to raise the minimum for H1B workers to $100k. The idea of an H1B is that it allows you to hire employees who have such a specialized skillset that you can't find someone in America to do the work. What it's become is finding an entry-level Java coder for less than what an American college-educated entry-level employee would make. If the work you need done is so advanced or so specialized that there is no one in America who can do it, you should be willing to pay whatever it costs to get it done.
It should be extremely difficult to hire a foreign worker. Not impossible, but really, really hard. Yes, it may be a privilege to be an American, but there are a lot of unemployed, skilled, college-educated Americans. The problem isn't not finding enough Americans to fill the positions, it's not wanting to pay what they need to get paid. And that's the wrong sort of behavior to encourage.
H1B visas should drive pay up, not down.
You don't, because when an H-1B worker loses her job, she has to leave the country or find another job real quick. Either way, she most likely do not have time to get her story across to you.
That's not fair. If your skillset is so important that American companies will bring you across the ocean from your home country to work for them, you should be a god to them. You should be the most valuable employee they have. They hired Joe because he was the best candidate that applied to their local ad. They hand-picked Prakesh and brought him all the way to California from his home in India because no one is better than Prakesh.
The best way to make that happen? Pay them more.
What you are asking for is a point-based skilled immigration system like in Canada, Australia etc. Nobody has proposed that in US yet. But there is a bill - H.R.392: Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2017 [1] - currently up for consideration of the Congress which removes the multi-decade green card backlogs for skilled immigrants. From [2]:
Please consider supporting H.R.392 as that is closest we have now to what you are asking for.[1]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/392/...
[2]: http://chaffetz.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentI...
Sure you do: you can find a new employer willing to spend a couple of thousand (i.e. a lot less than recruiting costs) on transferring the visa.
There is no barrier to a Mexican illegal immigrant changing jobs whatsoever.
I'm all in favor of making it easier for people to come to the US and productively work for willing employers (whether high skilled Indians or low skilled Mexicans). But it's pretty clear that this isn't what Trump is proposing.
The green card application has to be redone again, but the place in line will be intact in most cases.
Still, you are right that the backlog can take over a decade.
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/392/...
Not necessarily. You could also say that the big tech companies are overpaying them or there's premium in their compensation while they're fairly compensated in those Indian outsourcing companies with no premium in their pay package.
Now, if you can't get a majority of workers in the market to work for you for a lower wage, that is not fair market value, by definition. If you need to bring in legal immigrants and pay them less than the above mentioned fair market value, they are being underpaid.