My co-workers raised a note that H1B no longer relevant so much for the purpose described in headline.
It's much easier to bring workers on L visa - they have even less opportunity to skip jobs or aruge for a raise than H1B holders, and there's no lottery and no limits. Just bring as much people on L as possible.
As far as I know, Microsoft did this with Canada long ago. They hire you and relocate to Canada, then after a year they make L visa for you and toss over the border to Redmond.
L visas are abused like crazy but there are important differences, namely that a company has to employ you for a certain amount of time offshore and that you can not work offsite in the USA. The first rule means they're only available for international companies and the second means they don't work for outsourcing firms.
Usually when people talk about the "H1b" debate they're talking about the whole constellation of skilled temporary worker visas (H1, L1, OPT, etc).
We're in XXI century, so I think it's trivial to make your company international if you ever have something to gain from it.
> can not work offsite
Can you elaborate what's officially permitted and what is not? Because wikipedia is unclear on the subject and refers to legalese that I have no hope of understanding.
Don't forget the TN visa. Those Canadians are stealing American jobs. Really surprised that everyone likes to complain about the H1B/L1 but not the TN visa.
Totally agree with you. H1b visa combined with the green card backlogs are meant to systematically keep immigration of Indians and Chinese citizens disproportionately low.
Many countries have agreements with US that allow their citizens to work without the hassle of h-1b
Sadly, because of the clout Indian outsourcing firms have in filing the number of h1b applications, most people think Indian outsourcing firms are steeling jobs.
Feel like many think this is the only use of H-1B. They don't ever hear about how the best employees at Microsoft, Google, and Facebook are also H-1B's.
> Feel like many think this is the only use of H-1B. They don't ever hear about how the best employees at Microsoft, Google, and Facebook are also H-1B's.
Because H-1B visa is broken. Just cause there's a good side to it doesn't mean we can ignore the broken parts.
Take the good parts and fix the bad one.
Worker exploitation is not going to help native workers nor helped international workers.
> They don't ever hear about how the best employees at Microsoft, Google, and Facebook are also H-1B's.
Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc.. have caught colluded in wages before.
> Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc.. have caught colluded in wages before.
Nitpick - if you meant the "no cold call agreement" case, the defendants were Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay. Microsoft was not accused.
Okay, so obviously, an employment based visa program does create conflicts of interest and in general, is not good for the immigrant employee, compared to a non employment based visa.
However, the claim that immigrant employees are somehow not as good as their American counterparts is based on shoddy logic.
The criteria he uses in his paper to measure this:
- high salary
- high rate of patent production
- Ph.D. dissertation awards
- doctorate earned at a top-ranked university
- employment in R&D
Because of issues with the employment based visa, he himself argues earlier in the article that immigrant employees end up with a lower salary.
Top ranked universities don't always admit people based on merit. Being in the country when applying to school and speaking the language have huge advantages. A lot of graduate admissions are on a case by case basis, and getting an in person meeting with the professor can make all the difference. Also, top graduate schools tend to be a lot more expensive.
Employment is R&D is also hampered by the fact that immigrants don't have comparatively fewer choices when looking for a job, again because of issues with employment based visas. This is especially true is you want to do research in aerospace or materials because of security clearances.
Overall, this doesn't give me a lot of confidence in his other analyses.
Disclaimer: I'm an immigrant, so I'm not without my biases here.
The argument isn't that they're not as good as their American peers. The argument is that they're not exceptionally better than their American peers. The stated purpose of the visa program is to bring people in who can do work nobody else can do. But what happens is that companies bring in tons of perfectly ordinary people to do perfectly ordinary work because they want people who are cheaper, younger, and easier to abuse.
Okay, but he's basing this argument on his paper, where he sets out to show that immigrants are in fact, not exceptional.
However, if you believe my reasoning, then he isn't really measuring anything. So, we don't know if immigrants are exceptional or ordinary or worse. Or at least not based on his paper.
But is the H1-B really for "exceptionally better than"? Isn't that what O-1 is for? H1-B is for "highly skilled workers in an area in which there is strong demand for highly skilled workers". Where, at the time the program was created, highly skilled probably meant anyone with a college degree on the same area as their work.
The problem with suggesting that the salary bar be set at the median of the lifetime salary, is that it does mean closing the door to current international students in the U.S., and to recent graduates recruited from universities abroad. The minimum bar for an immigrant should not be that they are better than half the people already employed here in their field, regardless of their stage in life. And, of course, most people immigrate when they are young and without kids.
If you truly believe that H-1B should exist only for truly extraordinary talent, not available in the U.S. at any salary, this might be a reasonable proposal. But the thing is, there is already a program for extraordinary talent, the O-1 and EB-1 categories. If you instead believe that it should be possible for companies to get the best talent, regardless of where they happen to have been born, and for people to work abroad from their nations of birth, then the H-1B program can't be quite that stringent. It is a skilled workers program, and H-1B workers are skilled. It is not a genius engineer only program.
Now, if your proposal is to change green card process so that employers can't hold people hostage over it, or to institute controls that companies can't underpay H1-B workers on average, that's one thing. But in the current political climate the suggestions seems to be "all foreigners must go! exceptions made for super stars". If the U.S. is truly becoming that closed, I genuinely think that, over time, it will find the best technology being developed elsewhere (maybe not at the research lab level if it keeps the O-1/EB-1 programs, but at the industrial/software innovation level for sure). Either in the countries that welcome immigration of skilled professionals (e.g. Canada, Germany, Singapore) or those with large pools of human capital to being with (e.g. China and India).
Is your concern about the talent/bidding argument, or the "limited number" part? Because it seems to me that if you relax the latter, the prior is much less an issue.
I dunno, I say the more the merrier. There's lots of problems to solve, may as well solve them here.
The limited number mostly. I think H-1B reform was a good idea under the previous administration, and that better rules for green card processes, salaries, etc. could make it fairer on both foreign-born and U.S.-born employees, and remove the incentives for employers to strongly prefer one over the other all else being equal (which, btw, implicitly favors people already here, but not overwhelmingly so). But I also feel that right now the U.S. political climate is headed towards pretty strong xenophobia as state policy and that re-examining the H-1B program right now will likely lead to it being quite hostile to foreign-born employees and might end up not even benefiting local employees either on the long run.
> If you truly believe that H-1B should exist only for truly extraordinary talent
Second to last paragraph:
"Employers claim that they hire H-1Bs for rare skill sets or outstanding talent ― traits that they would need to pay a premium for on the open market. Yet current law requires only that they pay the average wage. Worse, it is the average wage within one of those four experience levels. Instead, we should replace this with a single wage floor set at the 75th percentile of the overall wage distribution for the given occupation and region."
Silicon Valley is actively exploiting H1Bs and antagonizing and attacking US born/educated workers just to justify bringing in a cheaper labour force of lower skilled workers from India and China.
Rare skillset or outstanding talent can be interpreted at different levels in so far as how strong an statement that is. As a percentage of the population, software engineers have a rare skillset, and there is no employment crisis in the field that requires protectionist measures to keep people with said skillset from mass unemployment. The system you are proposing would end with companies having to hire significantly over 25% of their workforce locally. That's not "favoring skilled U.S. workers over lower skilled workers from abroad", that is "restricting our talent pool to 5% of the world population for the most part". You might chose to legislate it thus if you wish, but you would be doing so at your peril.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think the system should incentive not hiring Americans because they can resign with more ease, that is absurd. But on the other hand, I don't think the U.S. really benefits over the long run of having a system where the talent market is strongly distorted by citizenship. Let me put it another way, would you think it is a good idea, if it were legal to do so, if California passed a law saying people born out of state should only be able to work here at 75th percentile overall wage for their occupation?
I am not sure why those people can't be served by normal visas which don't tie you to your employer at risk of deportation for not agreeing to their every demand.
By that I mean non 'work' visa---the regular visa lottery system, L1 and L2 visa holders, and everyone who would fall in the E2, E3, E4 visa category for having <= 5 years of experience.
And added on that temporary work permit that'd be suitable for contractors.
The USA issues over 3 million visas under which work is permitted per year, so I wonder why isn't there room in the existing legislative framework to accommodate skilled workers without having them be given H1-B.
What the problem? You want the companies to pay more just because the person is American? No wonder a lot of jobs outsourced. If you can even compete with foreign works, maybe you should move to a developing country since you are so incompetent
You're ignoring the fact the US already produces a surplus of skilled and qualified STEM professionals. Freedom of labor movement is a nice–to–have, but not some ideological priority that must be placed above all other considerations. The size of the pool of human capital is irrelevant if there simply aren't enough jobs on offer.
The government of a country should be first and foremost advocates for, and protectors of, the welfare of its own citizens. If a large number of those citizens are being encouraged to accumulate massive debts gaining an education that them leaves them unable to find a job, then that is a social problem that needs a solution. And if the government can help the situation by putting reasonable restrictions on the number of foreign workers competing for those jobs, then they absolutely should do that.
I really do not understand how so many people came to view these kind of theoretical, free-market niceties as more important than the practical wellbeing of their fellow citizens, but it's an incredibly dangerous attitude. If you support free-markets and globalisation, then you should want them implemented in a way that doesn't cause major social damage that ends up creating hostility to them. Otherwise, you end up with the kinds of populist movements we're seeing now, which feed upon the resentments of people who've watched successive governments refuse to place their own citizen's welfare above that of an ideology that harms them.
Why are people born inside the imaginary lines of my country more important to help than those born outside of it? Someone from Bangladesh or Mexico is not a fellow citizen of my country, but they are a fellow citizen of my world. Why should the smaller and more arbitrary geographical division come first?
You can talk about culture, but I'm sure I have more in common culturally with a phd student or entrepreneur in Dhaka than a Christian fundamentalist in Kansas.
I understand that there is a lot of complexity in these issues, but it's hard for me to see nationalism as anything more than a form of widely accepted bigotry.
Because being born inside those imaginary lines means people pay ($ + other) and therefore expect the group they contribute to to put them ahead of an outsider.
So, since California has a significant state tax, it would be a reasonable expectation for Californians to put other Californians first at all times? Also note that people living inside the country contribute to it, not just those born there or those who finished their 15+ years long naturalization process...
No it wouldn't be reasonable for the same reason saying no one should have locks on their doors and anyone should be free to go inside any house and use/live isn't reasonable.
That doesn't follow. My friends who are not US citizens and are here on H-1B visas (and have similar jobs as I do) pay significantly more in taxes than I do. And many of the programs those taxes pay into (like Social Security) are closed to them because they're non-citizens.
Given that many US citizens don't start paying much if anything in the way of taxes until post-education (18-22), a non-citizen coming to the US right after college will be paying roughly the same.
But ok, let's say that's not persuasive. I was born in New Jersey, and grew up in Maryland. I moved to California when I was 23 to start working. My family had of course never paid CA state taxes. Should CA have placed artificial "preferences" on workers who were born in CA, preferences that would have put me at the bottom of the hiring pile? Should I have been excluded from a job because other Californians were unemployed at the time? If that sounds ridiculous, then applying the same reasoning to a non-citizen sounds just about as ridiculous.
They pay taxes because now they are here within the imaginary lines and even if they don't get Social security, etc they are still benefitting from being here where they have all the other niceties of being here.
Re: citizens don't start paying until 18.
Their parents paid for them.
Re: California
Still part of a larger imaginary piece where everyone contribute.
You're stuck thinking in terms of just $. And no one is saying no one should be able to come here. You simply asked why do people think negatively about H1-B and I explained it to you. What company wouldn't hire workers that cost them significantly less and can't easily leave over someone local, and hence the position against. It's not difficult.
Quite the opposite. Their parents got a tax deduction simply because their children exist.
>> Re: California
> Still part of a larger imaginary piece where everyone contribute.
Exactly! Just as the entire world is part of a still larger imaginary piece! Borders are just squiggly lines drawn on a map. I have more in common with an engineering student in India than with most people in middle America: socially, culturally, etc.
> You're stuck thinking in terms of just $.
I was replying to a post of yours wherein you were making an argument about solely $.
Negative. You can very easily go back to my posts and see where I explicitly say $ + other and mention the H1-Bs benefiting by being here even if they don't qualify for SS. Trying to frame what I said that way is just disingenuous.
Parents absolutely pay into the system when they have children even if they get a federal tax credit. The extra food they buy is more sales tax, etc. just think about it.
Why should people born outside the imaginary lines of my country be allowed to come inside it? The power structure resides inside the described imaginary lines, thus the outsiders need to make this argument to the insiders, not the opposite way, realistically. If the outsiders can't convince the insiders, they simply won't be let in.
With that framing, it is easy to see how it isn't (necessarily) bigotry, but just that the outsiders appear to offer little or negative value to many people. By saying "They are taking our jobs", people are expressing that they believe the outsiders being let has a negative effect on them, thus it is quite rational that they want to strengthen those imaginary lines.
They are not theoretical, free-market niceties when you have lived abroad for 6 years. Or when your parents are both from different countries. Or when your grandparent immigrated out of the U.S. to live 2/3rds of his life in the country you were born in and never encountered this level of pushback. There is a lot to be said for making welfare systems work together with immigration. But putting "fellow citizens" above everyone else is not an easy question for everyone (and yes, I advocate for immigration and non-discrimination for hiring in my country of origin too).
Also, acting like the STEM jobs in the U.S. exist independent of globalization is disingenuous. They exist because S.V. software is used across global markets, so if protectionism for labor is ok as long as it helps your citizens, then I assume the same is true for trade protectionism or Internet 'great firewalls'? The problem is, that way, we all end up significantly worse for it.
The problem there is the propensity for foreigners, well-educated in the back-assward ways of their country of origin, to come to America, ostensibly to partake in our, in some way measurably superior economy and culture, then expect to introduce their back-asswards ways here and expect those ways to be successful, then when they find out we think their entire country is as back-asswards as they are and refuse to put up with it, perhaps through inducing some event they might find traumatic like a firing, arrest, restraining order, and so forth, they want laws made to make everyone here back-asswards, because it's easier for them.
When your immigration laws have a high standard of entry and you tell people, even en masse, "we lowered on this item this one time", then our expectations are stated and that creates the viewpoint that they need to assume their ways might be back-asswards. When immigration laws are as lax as ours, who can blame foreigners for being obstinate about coming here an us not adopting to their expectations? After all, when you give them welfare, you're paying them to do as such.
You need to have a system in place to appropriately assess and adopt new cultural norms. Frankly, racism and bigotry has proven to do this nicely, although if you have suggestions on how we might do it better I'm all ears. Removing racism and bigotry, on the other hand, well that has had some seriously detrimental effects on our society.
Right now, you've got 5% to 15% of the population in the US living here without seeking citizenship, and this is causing a demographic shift. The indigenous population, through feminism and marxist ideology, is being set up for a fall; look at marriage rates and the resulting reproduction rates of whites and blacks. They know it, and they've quite clearly voiced their intent to take the moral high ground and resolve those issues in a peaceful manner through civil means like deportations.
If America really went Nazi Germany, we'd carpet nuke China and India, then tell the rest of the world "we solved the carbon emissions problem!". Then we'd invade Mexico, flatten the country, and promptly announce "THE WAR ON DRUGS IS WON!" and nuke Mecca pronouncing "ISLAMIC TERRORISM SOLVED" and other such nonsense. Really, what we're doing is very civilized. The foreigners even know there's plenty of time to propose a mutually beneficial solution, or simply leave on their own accord, before they're forced to leave.
Obviously, the foreigners that are here are not happy with the situation they and their back-asswards ways have placed them into. Frankly, a lot of people here feel as though foreigners are coming here instead of fixing problems in their own countries. Mexicans voted for Trump because they can clearly see, now 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants, how messed up Mexico is.
Now you continue to fan the flames of cultural warfare, and say things like "we're going to out-breed whitey" or simply repeat the same high-and-mighty drivel the American media monopoly has pushed out for the last several decades. That pushes things towards not being civilized and creates incentives for biblical extermination events. Nobody views that as reasonable right now, but if people act like cock roaches, then there's only one way to reasonably handle that situation. I'd really like to think we're beyond that one as a world, but in 2017, there's still mass graves and still stupidity going on. We need a fresh take on the entire discussion, one that provides dignity for all parties.
And you can talk about "borders are imaginary lines" all you want; everyone in IT has this mightier-than-thou notion, still high off of the 80's "I HAS A MODEM AND CAN TALK TO JAPAN, I'M SO CLASSY, ENTIRE WORLD IS HUMAN, KUMBIYAH" stupidity, they fail to see the point of borders. Fact is, there are irreconcilable differences in culture, language, religion, belief...
Admittedly, I don't think there is anything I could reply that will change such a radicalized worldview. But I am going to state three facts: a) my grandfather immigrated from the U.S. to Mexico, brought the best of his ways with him and adopted the best of ours and was quite successful with that (as are many that make the opposite trip), he ran to Mexico after spending 4 years of so in the U.S. navy at war with people who think much as you do now, b) if you think that the reason Mexico is fucked up is 'backward culture' and not centuries of white colonialism and post-colonial exploitation, I should recommend you read a history book, c) if you carpet nuke China or India, they will nuke right back at you, the U.S. can't conquer the world any more than Nazi Germany could.
America was once a white colony; your argument is factually flawed because you are stuck in the "might makes right" mentality of natural selection. Whenever resources get scarce, nature basically determines anything goes and the strongest survive. In that mentality you believe whatever you want to believe, or whatever is the most convenient to believe, as an instinctual response; effectively because of the context of the situation any action can be rationalized as moral or justified even though it is horribly sub-optimal. If you'd like I could continue this discussion with you, and we can exchange a rich dialogue involving centuries of accumulated racial slurs and stereotypes, and much like masturbation, exhaust ourselves with little actual reward. That would obviously, not be a novel approach.
There was a really awesome article on HN awhile ago describing the disconnect we're having. I suggest you read it and approach the immigration discussion as an engineering problem:
View this as an engineering problem; You are blinding yourself to finding a more optimal (we'll use the metric of dignified solution for all involved) by not fully understanding the entire problem at hand. Seek to understand the other parties viewpoint. Assume any solution to the engineering problem that results in a loss of life as sub-optimal and any solution that is not executed on a timely basis results in loss of life. Assume you and your current viewpoints are irrelevant, and any ancillary metrics such as "I want a big house and a big family" might also be impossible with a fully optimal solution.
It's only when everyone recognized the severity of the problem that any good will can be generated, and that good will is necessary for discovering the problems might not be so unsolvable after-all. But if you're stuck believing whatever you want to believe, well.
This post is going to be a great test of HN's scoring system I'll tell you that, the bias should go all over the place.
The comment above is flagged so I am unable to understand what they said, but the effect of culture on a society is underrated in my opinion. There is kind of a widespread opinion that all of the advancement of white people is due to racism, yet ignore the fact that Asian Americans have a higher average income and net worth than whites. People of Jewish heritage make up a very small percentage of the population, yet make up a large percentage of the Nobel prize holders. I'm not saying differences are completely because of differences in culture; racism definitely exists. But I wonder what kind of effect that culture truly has on a population.
I'm sorry, but the bar for civility on Hacker News is higher than this. Please don't call names, and please steer well clear of suggesting genocide (which you've already done and we've already asked you to stop).
But they are theoretical free-market niceties when you are a minority that has a low chance of getting a job in tech because companies would rather import cheap foreigners rather than work on building up a domestic workforce. The same goes for if you are a poor white person in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately, the same people driving these conditions would also use the results of this to drive the two groups against each other for ideological reasons that are seen as good.
The US is a nation of immigrants. Nobody should deny that. But when workers inside a nation are negatively affected because companies would rather source cheap labor, there's a problem. A country's job first and foremost is to protect the rights of its citizens.
They exist because S.V. software is used across global markets, so if protectionism for labor is ok as long as it helps your citizens, then I assume the same is true for trade protectionism or Internet 'great firewalls'?
No, they exist because software is used across the world. Presumably if we weren't artificially manipulating labor, it'd help the domestic industries of many countries. To your second comment, IP, labor and capital have always been separated. You are directly conflating physical and virtual goods and that would not hold up in an other discussion in this industry.
You can make this into some kind of indignant us vs them thing but I assure you there are a lot of people who care about the rights of workers everywhere and the current situation clearly has detrimental aspects.
But I am not making it an us vs them, that's the whole point. Your argument is that we should all be trying to maximize the benefits to the citizens of our own country, and no one else, literally an us vs them position. For many countries, blocking U.S. Internet services and substituting 80%-of-the-way domestic alternatives does just that in terms of boosting employment. It might not be the same legal framework, but if you are advocating for putting co-national workers first at all costs, then that's very much an option. I consider an open web to be one of those principles that are worth maintaining, though. But it definitely is lower on the list than many other concerns that might count as 'nice to haves' under the nationalistic argument I am seeing made.
Note that I am in favor of better conditions for workers, more progressive taxes, UBI, free higher education, some forms of fair-trade arrangements, you name it. What I am not for is "no foreigners until unemployment is strictly at zero". I think in the long run we should be able to come up with systems at the national and international levels that are fair to both local workers and immigrants. In the context of the current administration, though, I don't see us getting that, I see a lot of scapegoating, a lot of rash policies and an international industry supported by an international workforce, eventually either dying, fragmenting or leaving the U.S.
Your argument is that we should all be trying to maximize the benefits to the citizens of our own country, and no one else, literally an us vs them position.
Building up domestic industries is a win for everyone and that goes for any country. Send your best workers to Silicon Valley and your nation is already suffering a drain on talent.
For many countries, blocking U.S. Internet services and substituting 80%-of-the-way domestic alternatives does just that in terms of boosting employment. It might not be the same legal framework, but if you are advocating for putting co-national workers first at all costs, then that's very much an option.
Those countries are welcome to try it and it might even be good for them, but I doubt they want to lose access to US services. That's what leverage is. If those countries have leverage then let them use it.
I think in the long run we should be able to come up with systems at the national and international levels that are fair to both local workers and immigrants.
Ok, so let's deal with the current H-1B program now instead of waiting another 4 or 8 or 16 years or however long some people would like to delay it.
I have always found interesting that people try to chalk out freedom of labour movement as a "nicety, an ideological thing" - while I have to accept that Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon can become rich selling to my people while the US is protectionist with the well-paid job positions in those companies.
You can sell your shit to me and I can't sell my labour to you. Ok, at least pay taxes locally and fund my universities, roads and infrastructures to pump up the local market.
I mean, it's not like your people are being forced to use and buy products from these companies. So why should the US be forced to take in workers from other countries?
You've got it backwards. Nobody is forcing the US to take anyone. Instead, employers in the US are instead being forced to hire native workers, and are effectively being prohibited from hiring from the rest of the world. It's this prohibition that needs to be defended.
I'm an employer, and I want to hire a French software developer. I'm willing to pay him $160,000 a year. But now, immigration restrictionists are getting in my way and saying that I can't hire him. If I hire him disregarding the laws prohibiting me from doing so, I would get hit by heavy fines and might literally be thrown in jail. Immigration restrictionists effectively advocate for the use of state violence to block me from employing non-Americans.
Now this isn't some hypothetical story that I came up with. I work for a French company that has an office in New York, and we've tried to bring a Software Developer from our Paris office for two years now. For two years in a row, he lost the H-1B lottery both times. The L-1B visa didn't work out either. My company which is French-owned and French-based and has to deal with this stuff. It's this restrictionism that has got to be justified.
When every country on the planet hasn't open borders, the US can too. Until then, we will manage and judge who gets to come here. End of story. Calling it xenophobia is meaningless here, unless you're characterizing every country on the planet that way, in which case your comment has no teeth.
Preferring to hire people from already in your own country would be patriotic rather than isolationist. That's not xenophobia though because there's no irrational or intense fear of foreigners. That is unless "xenophobia" has been perverted to now mean anything that isn't hardcore globalist.
I meant anyone already in the country and legally permitted to work, not the country you were born in.
One objective reason to favor hiring a candidate living locally over one abroad is effective communication. The less local a candidate is, the greater the chance of poor communication due to increasingly diverging dialects and cultures and a lack of knowledge about the local culture.
> I meant anyone already in the country and legally permitted to work, not the country you were born in.
Ah, fair enough, I guess the reason is to "avoid the process of bringing someone from abroad". Sounds pragmatic enough to me.
> One objective reason to favor hiring a candidate living locally over one abroad is effective communication. The less local a candidate is, the greater the chance of poor communication due to increasingly diverging dialects and cultures and a lack of knowledge about the local culture.
You have just contradicted yourself; but let's bite: Even if this looks reasonable to you, it's nowhere near the problem you think it is and most of the times far outweighed by the other reasons you had to choose a non-locally-born-or-raised candidate.
It also decreases diversity, which studies show is an advantage and not just a nicety.
> You have just contradicted yourself; but let's bite: Even if this looks reasonable to you, it's nowhere near the problem you think it is and most of the times far outweighed by the other reasons you had to choose a non-locally-born-or-raised candidate.
I listed that was a reason, not the only reason. Skill sets being equal, the candidate with a knowledge of the local culture will likely be the better candidate. That's not saying choose the local candidate solely because he is local. I fail to see how it's contradictory. I think we're talking about two subtlety different things. I'm talking about where someone currently resides, not where that person was born or raised.
> It also decreases diversity, which studies show is an advantage and not just a nicety.
I'm pretty sure you meant "increases diversity" because that's the popular trend. I've never comprehended why the "diversity" attribute magically makes a candidate superior. Typically, "diversity" superficially targets ethnic diversity rather than diversity in expertise, experience, or thought. Granted, those aren't mutually exclusive but they're not mutually inclusive either.
> I listed that was a reason, not the only reason. Skill sets being equal, the candidate with a knowledge of the local culture will likely be the better candidate.
Why is it better to know the local culture? E.g. would a local 65 year old be a better or worse culture fit than a 25 year from Canada?
> That's not saying choose the local candidate solely because he is local. I fail to see how it's contradictory. I think we're talking about two subtlety different things. I'm talking about where someone currently resides, not where that person was born or raised.
The problem is you haven't given a pragmatic reason why it's better to hire a local person. Well, in fall fairness that's not fully true, you might have implied less hassle during the hiring process (the remote person has to move locally, find a place, might need more time to settle due to that).
> I'm pretty sure you meant "increases diversity" because that's the popular trend.
I meant decreases, then I've meant that diversity is an advantage as per several studies. I'm sorry it was not clear.
I am the one referencing objective reasons, not sure why would you precisely call me out as a trend follower though.
> I've never comprehended why the "diversity" attribute magically makes a candidate superior. Typically, "diversity" superficially targets ethnic diversity rather than diversity in expertise, experience, or thought. Granted, those aren't mutually exclusive but they're not mutually inclusive either.
It's interesting that I keep seeing this "diversity of thought" mantra more and more often. I am seriously asking: Where did you get it from? I mean, it starts to look like a meme, so I wonder if it's on purpose.
Anyway, back to the point: What do you think diversity brings? And what do you think we refer to with "diversity"? For me it is:
- Different age
- Different gender
- Different socioeconomic background
- And any other thing that would've exposed you to different challenges in life: Your skin colour, your country of origin, your native language, where did you study, your level of studies, etc
Bringing e.g. more women or people from a different ethnic background to the team is a sure way to increase your so-called "diversity of thought". These people have probably faced different challenges than you did. Now if you want to hire someone that looks like you, grew in the same part of town, studied at the same place, had a similar socioeconomic background while growing up... Your chances of getting very similar points of view are very high.
And again, please spend some time researching the different studies, there are several by reputable sources. Apparently it is a fact that diversity is an advantage.
Well you have culture first of all, bringing in people from different cultures can lead to animosity and interpersonal conflict at times. Not to mention divise social groups that can occur when you hire alot from one particular country.
That and language, I have worked with devs and testers who just didn't have a great grasp on the english language which lead to a lot of frustration on both sides as we probably used half our jira comments clarifying/confirming what the other person meant.
Compared to communism, this "free market" is like a shiny, golden, heavenly angel of salvation.
But, what we are talking about here is government policy. We have a government and it makes rules. There are other governments and they make rules too. Since that's the system we have, we need to analyze and balance what's right, and what works.
I think you understood "free market" backwards mate. No one is forcing me to buy US or local for that matter, but demands are for those US companies to be "forced" to buy local labour.
> You're ignoring the fact the US already produces a surplus of skilled and qualified STEM professionals.
STEM is a broad category. Saying there's a surplus of STEM graduates is a useless metric. Most of these graduates aren't interchangeable, let alone willing to work as cheap IT workers.
The H-1/L-1 visas are abused to screw American IT workers, I get that. Do you know how most developed countries prevent that despite lenient immigration requirements (compared to the US)? Better labor laws, unions, collective bargaining, ...
> You're ignoring the fact the US already produces a surplus of skilled and qualified STEM professionals.
That may be true, but we're hardly a homogeneous group. There certainly isn't a surplus of skilled and qualified professionals from my subgroup of STEM. And I suspect that's the one where most H-1B visa holders end up in.
Not saying the system isn't abused: oh sweet jesus, it most certainly is. But throwing it out or reducing the caps isn't the answer. Removing all the perverse incentives and the ability of employers to use their employees' visa status as a pair of handcuffs... now that'll help.
> The government of a country should be first and foremost advocates for, and protectors of, the welfare of its own citizens. If a large number of those citizens are being encouraged to accumulate massive debts gaining an education that them leaves them unable to find a job, then that is a social problem that needs a solution.
Why are they unable to find a job?
Are they less skilled and capable than a foreign worker? If so, then the foreign worker should get the job. I care about our country's competitiveness in the science and technology landscape. If we can entice people smarter than us to come here and help make us smarter, that's the right move.
Are foreign workers willing to work for less? Well then perhaps these citizens should suck it up and be willing to work for less as well. Or maybe they shouldn't get into a field with questionable job prospects in the first place. Four years isn't a very long time; the landscape doesn't change that much, and even if it does, changing majors/fields/etc. midway through isn't that hard (and even if it is, we're talking about your job prospects for the rest of your life; that sort of thing is good motivation to take on something hard).
I want the best people here. Period. I don't care where they are from. Protectionism will just make us less competitive globally, and will move cutting-edge research and development to countries with more permissive immigration policies. We're already losing our status as the global superpower, and kicking out qualified immigrants will only hasten that decline.
From what I can tell, this is more an argument for collective bargaining than an argument against immigrant workers. I don't care which sector you're in, immigrants have the least amount of control over both the business and the politics, and yet they seem to take the most blame.
If there's a race to the bottom, maybe the solution is for workers to force capital to stop pitting them against each other.
Of course not. I'm talking about a (slightly) idealized scenario, responding to the original assertion (paraphrased), that the US should always take care of its citizens first. I just don't agree with that.
Obviously the H-1 program is flawed, and it allows for some pretty perverse incentives. But we should be focusing on fixing that, not applying some asinine protectionism policy.
I don't know what labor market you're talking about, but this STEM "surplus" is not very believable. Even if the exact match isn't always there, the people graduating with a degree in Biology or Civil Engineering are still more marketable from the skills it takes to get those degrees than many other graduates. The issue with "unemployable" college graduates has more to do with humanities majors who probably should have gone to technical or junior college and got a certificate in something practical than too many "STEM" graduates.
And a much better question: is the problem that we're letting too many immigrants in, or that capital has had control of the laws and culture so much that labor can't fight to get their fair share? Immigrants don't write the laws, they don't make the business decisions, all they do is sign up for a space in the H1B lottery.
If your field isn't getting its share, maybe it's not the immigrants who should be getting the blame for this.
One thing to keep in mind is that unlike O-1, EB-1 is an immigrant visa. It's for people who are set on relocating to the US and eventually become US citizens.
It's a bit weird that the article takes several paragraphs at the start explaining how H1-B visas are a problem largely because they prevent job mobility, but says nothing about how this is supposed to be addressed by the executive order.
if companies was only after cheap labor, why not move software production overseas? it's not like officespace is cheaper in the valley than in ex. India.....don't think this article makes a whole lot of sense tbh
The statistical expectation from the dataset that you link to is $86,328.67 [1]. I no nothing about US salaries, but I don't consider this value a competitive salary. Therefore, I believe the premise of the article is statically correct. Citing a few example with large salaries (Apple, Google, ...) is misleading.
The main issue is that all of the stats are brought down by TCS/TechM/Infosys and other body shops that pay just over the 60k cutoff. The average for H1-B actual software engineers is likely around $100k in SV, maybe a tad higher as you usually don't relocate people from abroad unless they are really good.
86K may not be a competitive salary in heart of SV but it's damn competitive in the US, and around the world.
Unless you are living in NYC/SV your cost of living in the US is lower, you tax burden is lower.
86K$ is more than the vast majority of highly paid developers in Europe get.
I don't understand why Amazon/Google paying 50-60K Euros in Germany or even lower than that in other EU countries with a tax burden of nearly 50% of income is fine by some guy from India coming and working for 85K+ in the US is somehow exploitation.
Do companies take advantage of the fact that they relocate people from effectively developing nations and pay them below market rates, sure, that's business but honestly do you think anyone complains? The average indian developer with 5-10 years of experience earns between 350-500K RS a year, with the 350-400K being more common this is about 5500-6000$.
If you think that the cost of living in India is so low that it can offset the discrepancy in income then you clearly haven't spent much time in India.
Some employers might abuse H1B too much, some might even do illegal things with it, but that's the case those things are illegal, just offering a lower than average salary isn't illegal, it's not even amoral.
As a side note, I've lived both in San Diego and Berlin for a short period. It's true, in Germany total deduction of salary can go as high as 40 percent. But you get full health care coverage, child care, paternity and maternity leave, free university for your children and good public transport and infrastructure. This also covers unemployment and disability insurance plus the pension.
In contrast in California, one pays as high as 33% tax rate and get a fraction of these services.
I wouldn't be tempted to change my 60K euros Berlin salary with 110K $ San Diego salary. I would have a much better life quality in Berlin.
The point is not that is 86K is low. In fact it is an interesting salary if you consider all salaries in the US among all jobs. The point is that it is lower than US software engineer average salary. This leads to wage compression for the local population whom or their parent have been paying taxes hence the prosperity and attractiveness of the US.
Nobody says that the fault is with the Visa holder who happily work for less than average wage. The problem is with companies exploiting this law which was designed to attract best talents who wouldn't work for less than average because they know their worth.
As a foreigner, I say this is not fair to local population (including those immigrant after they obtain their permanent residency) whose wages are kept low by companies who abuse these laws.
Only looking at the mean does not tell the whole story. Not all companies pay their H1Bs peanuts which is what this article seems to imply.
$86K might might not be competitive for the HN crowd with their inflated egos, but it's quite high for a number that includes other industries and regions.
Tell the average American to guess what underpaid is, they're likely going to guess lower 86K. You got to wonder why these rants don't like to cite any actual numbers.
Even if companies are paying the same as local workers, there is still the issue of the employer having so much power over the worker.
Normally jobs are a two way relationship, with either party being able to back out if things are working out. With H1B's, the employee is a lot more tied down to the company.
I'm glad that here the comments section is not full of Trump trolls like it is in huffingtonpost.
First it's true that HB1 visa holder are not free agent and can't contest for the best wages.
But I trully don't understand how can ANYBODY say that, tech in general is NOT in shortage of ingineers. Median wage in SF for dev is around 110 000. But even outside SF buble it's around 70 000$. With no downward pressure, How can you complain that foreign worker is taking your job?
The median salary for a dental hygienist in San Francisco is also about $110,000 a year. That salary level qualifies for direct housing subsidies for a family of 4 in San Francisco. So why are we taking claims of a desperate shortage of developers more seriously than claims of a desperate shortage of dental hygienists?
Just to be clear, immigrants should be welcome to become devs. And dental hygienists, drywall installers, real estate agents, and sandwich shop owners. What I don't welcome is a program that specifically uses the immigration system to increase the number of developers relative to other professions. That should be left to the market and freedom of choice for the individuals who participate in it.
I just see absolutely no reason whatsoever to give tech employers the power to determine who is allowed to come to the US, what jobs they are allowed to work, and the circumstances under which they are allowed to remain in the US. This is immensely harmful, and doesn't have much to do with immigration. It has to do with corporate control over the immigration system.
Does anyone else consider immigration a significant part of US foreign policy? Wouldn't offering visas to "rising" countries allow us to pick off much of their best talent, thus boosting the US and lowering the other countries? The global power struggles of today, I believe, will be won by countries who can dictate the technology that refocuses which resources are needed.
> Wouldn't offering visas to "rising" countries allow us to pick off much of their best talent, thus boosting the US and lowering the other countries?
I haven't seen H1B visa's used like this in my personal experience. At the last company I worked for they were mostly used to fill our testing team with people from India.
Maybe they were all guinness, the problem was all but one of them could speak/write english fluently.
I can also look at my boyfriend's current employer who recently took a trip to india in order to hire a team of indians "on the cheap" only to fire all but 1 within a month after they didn't really get anything productive done.
I largely agree with both your observations and opinions.
The comment was in response to a lot of "citizens first, immigrants only if they don't hurt our current citizens at all" arguments here. By proposing that visas may be, or at least could be, a form of foreign policy I believe helps to dispute that point in general, highlighting higher goals than plugging talent shortages that may or may not exist.
Anyway, the point should be you want to get people who are skilled. Maybe/maybe not that means English fluency. But, that's another matter.
It seems most abuse[0] happens due to random Indian body-shops. Since Trump is so carte-blanche maybe he can just blacklist the ones we know to be obvious abusers.
Maybe a better answer is to require all H1-Bs be actual full-time employees of the company, rather than being under contract through a third party?
[0]I define abuse as using H1-Bs primarily for cheap labor vs skilled labor.
This only proves the company you worked and you are so incompetent. Does Google hire Indians who cannot speak English? No. You last company sucks and you worked there.
That's fine if you're not hurting your current citizens. Pick off those talented people at a proper wage. Companies aren't seeking talent that American engineers don't have. They're seeking cheap labor.
US foreign policy often hurts citizens, it is done to play a longer game. While the relative degree may matter, I'm not convinced on general terms it hurting makes it bad policy, given the other factors that may be in play.
Yes, it is bad. It lowers the wages of Americans and makes finding an entry level tech position for Americans a lot harder. The purpose of the H-1B visa program was to bring highly specialized workers to the US, not cheap labor.
In a time where company profits are higher than ever before and worker wages are remaining stagnant, I think it's a valid concern to raise. We do live in the richest country in the world, after all. Why shouldn't everyone living in it prosper?
America has an advanced economy, with a GDP per capita of over $50k. As such, the cost of living is much higher than many other countries. You need a vehicle to work almost everywhere, healthcare costs are the highest in the world, housing is becoming more and more expensive, and one must go tens of thousands of dollars in debt to get a degree. This was alright when incomes were more equal and rising, because these costs could be recognized as a cost of living in such a good country. Due to globalization, however, the lower class has been gutted due to corporations exploiting the fact that other places have lower costs of living and lower workplace standards. I could argue that this destabilization of the lower class is a large part of why Trump was elected. And now globalization is affecting the middle class(particularly among IT workers) enough to risk destabilizing the only few remaining good jobs left, all while the stock market is doing better than ever. This loss of good paying jobs with the cost of living remaining high means the quality of life for most of the country will go down while the rich get richer faster. When the overall economy is growing, why SHOULDN'T the country overall benefit?
The country is benefiting my taking in skilled labor from the rest of the world. Unless you're a Native American, you really don't have much grounds to criticize foreigners "taking your job".
If you are taking in the skilled labor at a rate lower than the average American or outsourcing to a country without as much worker protections, then I disagree. But if you are bringing them in at market rates and not exploiting them, then I agree. My problem with the H-1B visa system is that it's being exploited(by that, I mean it's not being used as intended) in a manner that brings the pay of the average American worker down, which hurts everyone but the businesses.
Also, I was born and raised in America, and I am not responsible for the transgressions of my ancestors. I also don't blame the foreigners that try to come here; I blame the government and corporations that are making a system that only works for the richest of Americans.
Please comment civilly and substantively or not at all on Hacker News. We're trying to have thoughtful and productive discussions, and this kind of one-liner takes us in the opposite direction.
The numbers you're seeing maybe somewhat inflated because of how the average salary is calculated for this report:
Sometimes the visa sponsors(employers) does not enter a specific salary, but a salary range.
Our algorithm uses the middle point of the range to calculate the average salary.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 96.5 ms ] threadHe was my CS professor as an undergrad.
However, the HN version of the headline omits "Trump is Right:", which I suppose is attention grabbing, especially from an outlet like HuffPo.
Well, whenever something isn't being done about X, that implies headlines saying "X!" probably aren't quite "duh" enough.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" -- Upton Sinclair
And also...
"News Flash: Water is Wet! Government Has No Plan To Deal With Issue, Forms Committee."
It's much easier to bring workers on L visa - they have even less opportunity to skip jobs or aruge for a raise than H1B holders, and there's no lottery and no limits. Just bring as much people on L as possible.
As far as I know, Microsoft did this with Canada long ago. They hire you and relocate to Canada, then after a year they make L visa for you and toss over the border to Redmond.
Usually when people talk about the "H1b" debate they're talking about the whole constellation of skilled temporary worker visas (H1, L1, OPT, etc).
> can not work offsite
Can you elaborate what's officially permitted and what is not? Because wikipedia is unclear on the subject and refers to legalese that I have no hope of understanding.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-3_visa
Many countries have agreements with US that allow their citizens to work without the hassle of h-1b
Sadly, because of the clout Indian outsourcing firms have in filing the number of h1b applications, most people think Indian outsourcing firms are steeling jobs.
Because H-1B visa is broken. Just cause there's a good side to it doesn't mean we can ignore the broken parts.
Take the good parts and fix the bad one.
Worker exploitation is not going to help native workers nor helped international workers.
> They don't ever hear about how the best employees at Microsoft, Google, and Facebook are also H-1B's.
Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc.. have caught colluded in wages before.
Nitpick - if you meant the "no cold call agreement" case, the defendants were Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay. Microsoft was not accused.
However, the claim that immigrant employees are somehow not as good as their American counterparts is based on shoddy logic.
The criteria he uses in his paper to measure this:
- high salary - high rate of patent production - Ph.D. dissertation awards - doctorate earned at a top-ranked university - employment in R&D
Because of issues with the employment based visa, he himself argues earlier in the article that immigrant employees end up with a lower salary.
Top ranked universities don't always admit people based on merit. Being in the country when applying to school and speaking the language have huge advantages. A lot of graduate admissions are on a case by case basis, and getting an in person meeting with the professor can make all the difference. Also, top graduate schools tend to be a lot more expensive.
Employment is R&D is also hampered by the fact that immigrants don't have comparatively fewer choices when looking for a job, again because of issues with employment based visas. This is especially true is you want to do research in aerospace or materials because of security clearances.
Overall, this doesn't give me a lot of confidence in his other analyses.
Disclaimer: I'm an immigrant, so I'm not without my biases here.
However, if you believe my reasoning, then he isn't really measuring anything. So, we don't know if immigrants are exceptional or ordinary or worse. Or at least not based on his paper.
If you truly believe that H-1B should exist only for truly extraordinary talent, not available in the U.S. at any salary, this might be a reasonable proposal. But the thing is, there is already a program for extraordinary talent, the O-1 and EB-1 categories. If you instead believe that it should be possible for companies to get the best talent, regardless of where they happen to have been born, and for people to work abroad from their nations of birth, then the H-1B program can't be quite that stringent. It is a skilled workers program, and H-1B workers are skilled. It is not a genius engineer only program.
Now, if your proposal is to change green card process so that employers can't hold people hostage over it, or to institute controls that companies can't underpay H1-B workers on average, that's one thing. But in the current political climate the suggestions seems to be "all foreigners must go! exceptions made for super stars". If the U.S. is truly becoming that closed, I genuinely think that, over time, it will find the best technology being developed elsewhere (maybe not at the research lab level if it keeps the O-1/EB-1 programs, but at the industrial/software innovation level for sure). Either in the countries that welcome immigration of skilled professionals (e.g. Canada, Germany, Singapore) or those with large pools of human capital to being with (e.g. China and India).
I dunno, I say the more the merrier. There's lots of problems to solve, may as well solve them here.
Second to last paragraph:
"Employers claim that they hire H-1Bs for rare skill sets or outstanding talent ― traits that they would need to pay a premium for on the open market. Yet current law requires only that they pay the average wage. Worse, it is the average wage within one of those four experience levels. Instead, we should replace this with a single wage floor set at the 75th percentile of the overall wage distribution for the given occupation and region."
Silicon Valley is actively exploiting H1Bs and antagonizing and attacking US born/educated workers just to justify bringing in a cheaper labour force of lower skilled workers from India and China.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think the system should incentive not hiring Americans because they can resign with more ease, that is absurd. But on the other hand, I don't think the U.S. really benefits over the long run of having a system where the talent market is strongly distorted by citizenship. Let me put it another way, would you think it is a good idea, if it were legal to do so, if California passed a law saying people born out of state should only be able to work here at 75th percentile overall wage for their occupation?
What are the names of those "normal visas"?
And added on that temporary work permit that'd be suitable for contractors.
The USA issues over 3 million visas under which work is permitted per year, so I wonder why isn't there room in the existing legislative framework to accommodate skilled workers without having them be given H1-B.
The government of a country should be first and foremost advocates for, and protectors of, the welfare of its own citizens. If a large number of those citizens are being encouraged to accumulate massive debts gaining an education that them leaves them unable to find a job, then that is a social problem that needs a solution. And if the government can help the situation by putting reasonable restrictions on the number of foreign workers competing for those jobs, then they absolutely should do that.
I really do not understand how so many people came to view these kind of theoretical, free-market niceties as more important than the practical wellbeing of their fellow citizens, but it's an incredibly dangerous attitude. If you support free-markets and globalisation, then you should want them implemented in a way that doesn't cause major social damage that ends up creating hostility to them. Otherwise, you end up with the kinds of populist movements we're seeing now, which feed upon the resentments of people who've watched successive governments refuse to place their own citizen's welfare above that of an ideology that harms them.
You can talk about culture, but I'm sure I have more in common culturally with a phd student or entrepreneur in Dhaka than a Christian fundamentalist in Kansas.
I understand that there is a lot of complexity in these issues, but it's hard for me to see nationalism as anything more than a form of widely accepted bigotry.
Given that many US citizens don't start paying much if anything in the way of taxes until post-education (18-22), a non-citizen coming to the US right after college will be paying roughly the same.
But ok, let's say that's not persuasive. I was born in New Jersey, and grew up in Maryland. I moved to California when I was 23 to start working. My family had of course never paid CA state taxes. Should CA have placed artificial "preferences" on workers who were born in CA, preferences that would have put me at the bottom of the hiring pile? Should I have been excluded from a job because other Californians were unemployed at the time? If that sounds ridiculous, then applying the same reasoning to a non-citizen sounds just about as ridiculous.
They pay taxes because now they are here within the imaginary lines and even if they don't get Social security, etc they are still benefitting from being here where they have all the other niceties of being here.
Re: citizens don't start paying until 18.
Their parents paid for them.
Re: California
Still part of a larger imaginary piece where everyone contribute.
You're stuck thinking in terms of just $. And no one is saying no one should be able to come here. You simply asked why do people think negatively about H1-B and I explained it to you. What company wouldn't hire workers that cost them significantly less and can't easily leave over someone local, and hence the position against. It's not difficult.
> Their parents paid for them.
Quite the opposite. Their parents got a tax deduction simply because their children exist.
>> Re: California
> Still part of a larger imaginary piece where everyone contribute.
Exactly! Just as the entire world is part of a still larger imaginary piece! Borders are just squiggly lines drawn on a map. I have more in common with an engineering student in India than with most people in middle America: socially, culturally, etc.
> You're stuck thinking in terms of just $.
I was replying to a post of yours wherein you were making an argument about solely $.
Parents absolutely pay into the system when they have children even if they get a federal tax credit. The extra food they buy is more sales tax, etc. just think about it.
excluding a few billionaires who really do believe in helping others.
With that framing, it is easy to see how it isn't (necessarily) bigotry, but just that the outsiders appear to offer little or negative value to many people. By saying "They are taking our jobs", people are expressing that they believe the outsiders being let has a negative effect on them, thus it is quite rational that they want to strengthen those imaginary lines.
Also, acting like the STEM jobs in the U.S. exist independent of globalization is disingenuous. They exist because S.V. software is used across global markets, so if protectionism for labor is ok as long as it helps your citizens, then I assume the same is true for trade protectionism or Internet 'great firewalls'? The problem is, that way, we all end up significantly worse for it.
When your immigration laws have a high standard of entry and you tell people, even en masse, "we lowered on this item this one time", then our expectations are stated and that creates the viewpoint that they need to assume their ways might be back-asswards. When immigration laws are as lax as ours, who can blame foreigners for being obstinate about coming here an us not adopting to their expectations? After all, when you give them welfare, you're paying them to do as such.
You need to have a system in place to appropriately assess and adopt new cultural norms. Frankly, racism and bigotry has proven to do this nicely, although if you have suggestions on how we might do it better I'm all ears. Removing racism and bigotry, on the other hand, well that has had some seriously detrimental effects on our society.
Right now, you've got 5% to 15% of the population in the US living here without seeking citizenship, and this is causing a demographic shift. The indigenous population, through feminism and marxist ideology, is being set up for a fall; look at marriage rates and the resulting reproduction rates of whites and blacks. They know it, and they've quite clearly voiced their intent to take the moral high ground and resolve those issues in a peaceful manner through civil means like deportations.
If America really went Nazi Germany, we'd carpet nuke China and India, then tell the rest of the world "we solved the carbon emissions problem!". Then we'd invade Mexico, flatten the country, and promptly announce "THE WAR ON DRUGS IS WON!" and nuke Mecca pronouncing "ISLAMIC TERRORISM SOLVED" and other such nonsense. Really, what we're doing is very civilized. The foreigners even know there's plenty of time to propose a mutually beneficial solution, or simply leave on their own accord, before they're forced to leave.
Obviously, the foreigners that are here are not happy with the situation they and their back-asswards ways have placed them into. Frankly, a lot of people here feel as though foreigners are coming here instead of fixing problems in their own countries. Mexicans voted for Trump because they can clearly see, now 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants, how messed up Mexico is.
Now you continue to fan the flames of cultural warfare, and say things like "we're going to out-breed whitey" or simply repeat the same high-and-mighty drivel the American media monopoly has pushed out for the last several decades. That pushes things towards not being civilized and creates incentives for biblical extermination events. Nobody views that as reasonable right now, but if people act like cock roaches, then there's only one way to reasonably handle that situation. I'd really like to think we're beyond that one as a world, but in 2017, there's still mass graves and still stupidity going on. We need a fresh take on the entire discussion, one that provides dignity for all parties.
And you can talk about "borders are imaginary lines" all you want; everyone in IT has this mightier-than-thou notion, still high off of the 80's "I HAS A MODEM AND CAN TALK TO JAPAN, I'M SO CLASSY, ENTIRE WORLD IS HUMAN, KUMBIYAH" stupidity, they fail to see the point of borders. Fact is, there are irreconcilable differences in culture, language, religion, belief...
There was a really awesome article on HN awhile ago describing the disconnect we're having. I suggest you read it and approach the immigration discussion as an engineering problem:
http://thefutureprimaeval.net/the-overton-bubble/
View this as an engineering problem; You are blinding yourself to finding a more optimal (we'll use the metric of dignified solution for all involved) by not fully understanding the entire problem at hand. Seek to understand the other parties viewpoint. Assume any solution to the engineering problem that results in a loss of life as sub-optimal and any solution that is not executed on a timely basis results in loss of life. Assume you and your current viewpoints are irrelevant, and any ancillary metrics such as "I want a big house and a big family" might also be impossible with a fully optimal solution.
It's only when everyone recognized the severity of the problem that any good will can be generated, and that good will is necessary for discovering the problems might not be so unsolvable after-all. But if you're stuck believing whatever you want to believe, well.
This post is going to be a great test of HN's scoring system I'll tell you that, the bias should go all over the place.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The US is a nation of immigrants. Nobody should deny that. But when workers inside a nation are negatively affected because companies would rather source cheap labor, there's a problem. A country's job first and foremost is to protect the rights of its citizens.
They exist because S.V. software is used across global markets, so if protectionism for labor is ok as long as it helps your citizens, then I assume the same is true for trade protectionism or Internet 'great firewalls'?
No, they exist because software is used across the world. Presumably if we weren't artificially manipulating labor, it'd help the domestic industries of many countries. To your second comment, IP, labor and capital have always been separated. You are directly conflating physical and virtual goods and that would not hold up in an other discussion in this industry.
You can make this into some kind of indignant us vs them thing but I assure you there are a lot of people who care about the rights of workers everywhere and the current situation clearly has detrimental aspects.
Note that I am in favor of better conditions for workers, more progressive taxes, UBI, free higher education, some forms of fair-trade arrangements, you name it. What I am not for is "no foreigners until unemployment is strictly at zero". I think in the long run we should be able to come up with systems at the national and international levels that are fair to both local workers and immigrants. In the context of the current administration, though, I don't see us getting that, I see a lot of scapegoating, a lot of rash policies and an international industry supported by an international workforce, eventually either dying, fragmenting or leaving the U.S.
Building up domestic industries is a win for everyone and that goes for any country. Send your best workers to Silicon Valley and your nation is already suffering a drain on talent.
For many countries, blocking U.S. Internet services and substituting 80%-of-the-way domestic alternatives does just that in terms of boosting employment. It might not be the same legal framework, but if you are advocating for putting co-national workers first at all costs, then that's very much an option.
Those countries are welcome to try it and it might even be good for them, but I doubt they want to lose access to US services. That's what leverage is. If those countries have leverage then let them use it.
I think in the long run we should be able to come up with systems at the national and international levels that are fair to both local workers and immigrants.
Ok, so let's deal with the current H-1B program now instead of waiting another 4 or 8 or 16 years or however long some people would like to delay it.
You can sell your shit to me and I can't sell my labour to you. Ok, at least pay taxes locally and fund my universities, roads and infrastructures to pump up the local market.
You've got it backwards. Nobody is forcing the US to take anyone. Instead, employers in the US are instead being forced to hire native workers, and are effectively being prohibited from hiring from the rest of the world. It's this prohibition that needs to be defended.
I'm an employer, and I want to hire a French software developer. I'm willing to pay him $160,000 a year. But now, immigration restrictionists are getting in my way and saying that I can't hire him. If I hire him disregarding the laws prohibiting me from doing so, I would get hit by heavy fines and might literally be thrown in jail. Immigration restrictionists effectively advocate for the use of state violence to block me from employing non-Americans.
Now this isn't some hypothetical story that I came up with. I work for a French company that has an office in New York, and we've tried to bring a Software Developer from our Paris office for two years now. For two years in a row, he lost the H-1B lottery both times. The L-1B visa didn't work out either. My company which is French-owned and French-based and has to deal with this stuff. It's this restrictionism that has got to be justified.
One objective reason to favor hiring a candidate living locally over one abroad is effective communication. The less local a candidate is, the greater the chance of poor communication due to increasingly diverging dialects and cultures and a lack of knowledge about the local culture.
Ah, fair enough, I guess the reason is to "avoid the process of bringing someone from abroad". Sounds pragmatic enough to me.
> One objective reason to favor hiring a candidate living locally over one abroad is effective communication. The less local a candidate is, the greater the chance of poor communication due to increasingly diverging dialects and cultures and a lack of knowledge about the local culture.
You have just contradicted yourself; but let's bite: Even if this looks reasonable to you, it's nowhere near the problem you think it is and most of the times far outweighed by the other reasons you had to choose a non-locally-born-or-raised candidate.
It also decreases diversity, which studies show is an advantage and not just a nicety.
I listed that was a reason, not the only reason. Skill sets being equal, the candidate with a knowledge of the local culture will likely be the better candidate. That's not saying choose the local candidate solely because he is local. I fail to see how it's contradictory. I think we're talking about two subtlety different things. I'm talking about where someone currently resides, not where that person was born or raised.
> It also decreases diversity, which studies show is an advantage and not just a nicety.
I'm pretty sure you meant "increases diversity" because that's the popular trend. I've never comprehended why the "diversity" attribute magically makes a candidate superior. Typically, "diversity" superficially targets ethnic diversity rather than diversity in expertise, experience, or thought. Granted, those aren't mutually exclusive but they're not mutually inclusive either.
Why is it better to know the local culture? E.g. would a local 65 year old be a better or worse culture fit than a 25 year from Canada?
> That's not saying choose the local candidate solely because he is local. I fail to see how it's contradictory. I think we're talking about two subtlety different things. I'm talking about where someone currently resides, not where that person was born or raised.
The problem is you haven't given a pragmatic reason why it's better to hire a local person. Well, in fall fairness that's not fully true, you might have implied less hassle during the hiring process (the remote person has to move locally, find a place, might need more time to settle due to that).
> I'm pretty sure you meant "increases diversity" because that's the popular trend.
I meant decreases, then I've meant that diversity is an advantage as per several studies. I'm sorry it was not clear.
I am the one referencing objective reasons, not sure why would you precisely call me out as a trend follower though.
> I've never comprehended why the "diversity" attribute magically makes a candidate superior. Typically, "diversity" superficially targets ethnic diversity rather than diversity in expertise, experience, or thought. Granted, those aren't mutually exclusive but they're not mutually inclusive either.
It's interesting that I keep seeing this "diversity of thought" mantra more and more often. I am seriously asking: Where did you get it from? I mean, it starts to look like a meme, so I wonder if it's on purpose.
Anyway, back to the point: What do you think diversity brings? And what do you think we refer to with "diversity"? For me it is:
- Different age
- Different gender
- Different socioeconomic background
- And any other thing that would've exposed you to different challenges in life: Your skin colour, your country of origin, your native language, where did you study, your level of studies, etc
Bringing e.g. more women or people from a different ethnic background to the team is a sure way to increase your so-called "diversity of thought". These people have probably faced different challenges than you did. Now if you want to hire someone that looks like you, grew in the same part of town, studied at the same place, had a similar socioeconomic background while growing up... Your chances of getting very similar points of view are very high.
And again, please spend some time researching the different studies, there are several by reputable sources. Apparently it is a fact that diversity is an advantage.
That and language, I have worked with devs and testers who just didn't have a great grasp on the english language which lead to a lot of frustration on both sides as we probably used half our jira comments clarifying/confirming what the other person meant.
Oh wait, but that's communism, nvm then.
But, what we are talking about here is government policy. We have a government and it makes rules. There are other governments and they make rules too. Since that's the system we have, we need to analyze and balance what's right, and what works.
STEM is a broad category. Saying there's a surplus of STEM graduates is a useless metric. Most of these graduates aren't interchangeable, let alone willing to work as cheap IT workers.
The H-1/L-1 visas are abused to screw American IT workers, I get that. Do you know how most developed countries prevent that despite lenient immigration requirements (compared to the US)? Better labor laws, unions, collective bargaining, ...
That may be true, but we're hardly a homogeneous group. There certainly isn't a surplus of skilled and qualified professionals from my subgroup of STEM. And I suspect that's the one where most H-1B visa holders end up in.
Not saying the system isn't abused: oh sweet jesus, it most certainly is. But throwing it out or reducing the caps isn't the answer. Removing all the perverse incentives and the ability of employers to use their employees' visa status as a pair of handcuffs... now that'll help.
> The government of a country should be first and foremost advocates for, and protectors of, the welfare of its own citizens. If a large number of those citizens are being encouraged to accumulate massive debts gaining an education that them leaves them unable to find a job, then that is a social problem that needs a solution.
Why are they unable to find a job?
Are they less skilled and capable than a foreign worker? If so, then the foreign worker should get the job. I care about our country's competitiveness in the science and technology landscape. If we can entice people smarter than us to come here and help make us smarter, that's the right move.
Are foreign workers willing to work for less? Well then perhaps these citizens should suck it up and be willing to work for less as well. Or maybe they shouldn't get into a field with questionable job prospects in the first place. Four years isn't a very long time; the landscape doesn't change that much, and even if it does, changing majors/fields/etc. midway through isn't that hard (and even if it is, we're talking about your job prospects for the rest of your life; that sort of thing is good motivation to take on something hard).
I want the best people here. Period. I don't care where they are from. Protectionism will just make us less competitive globally, and will move cutting-edge research and development to countries with more permissive immigration policies. We're already losing our status as the global superpower, and kicking out qualified immigrants will only hasten that decline.
>Are they less skilled and capable than a foreign worker? If so, then the foreign worker should get the job
Are you under the impression that organizations when hiring are looking to maximize skill and disregard all other factors?
once you reach 'good enough' skill level, its a cost minimization game.
If the American costs twice as much, but the foreign worker is good enough - who should get the job?
If there's a race to the bottom, maybe the solution is for workers to force capital to stop pitting them against each other.
Obviously the H-1 program is flawed, and it allows for some pretty perverse incentives. But we should be focusing on fixing that, not applying some asinine protectionism policy.
And a much better question: is the problem that we're letting too many immigrants in, or that capital has had control of the laws and culture so much that labor can't fight to get their fair share? Immigrants don't write the laws, they don't make the business decisions, all they do is sign up for a space in the H1B lottery.
If your field isn't getting its share, maybe it's not the immigrants who should be getting the blame for this.
The O-1 visas have been growing too, particularly issued to UK nationals: https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/1bc51064/4/
http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2016-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx
There are some companies that underpay, while other pay quite well. Conflating the two is like throwing out the baby with the bath water.
1- https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f0iZ7VZkA7Th2dCE6rgD...
Unless you are living in NYC/SV your cost of living in the US is lower, you tax burden is lower. 86K$ is more than the vast majority of highly paid developers in Europe get.
I don't understand why Amazon/Google paying 50-60K Euros in Germany or even lower than that in other EU countries with a tax burden of nearly 50% of income is fine by some guy from India coming and working for 85K+ in the US is somehow exploitation.
Do companies take advantage of the fact that they relocate people from effectively developing nations and pay them below market rates, sure, that's business but honestly do you think anyone complains? The average indian developer with 5-10 years of experience earns between 350-500K RS a year, with the 350-400K being more common this is about 5500-6000$.
If you think that the cost of living in India is so low that it can offset the discrepancy in income then you clearly haven't spent much time in India.
Some employers might abuse H1B too much, some might even do illegal things with it, but that's the case those things are illegal, just offering a lower than average salary isn't illegal, it's not even amoral.
In contrast in California, one pays as high as 33% tax rate and get a fraction of these services.
I wouldn't be tempted to change my 60K euros Berlin salary with 110K $ San Diego salary. I would have a much better life quality in Berlin.
Nobody says that the fault is with the Visa holder who happily work for less than average wage. The problem is with companies exploiting this law which was designed to attract best talents who wouldn't work for less than average because they know their worth.
As a foreigner, I say this is not fair to local population (including those immigrant after they obtain their permanent residency) whose wages are kept low by companies who abuse these laws.
$86K might might not be competitive for the HN crowd with their inflated egos, but it's quite high for a number that includes other industries and regions.
Tell the average American to guess what underpaid is, they're likely going to guess lower 86K. You got to wonder why these rants don't like to cite any actual numbers.
Normally jobs are a two way relationship, with either party being able to back out if things are working out. With H1B's, the employee is a lot more tied down to the company.
Is this an indian pun?
In any case:
> How can you complain that foreign worker is taking your job?
maybe you can't, but this is a straw-man; you can complain your wages are lower than they should be.
No one in the Techtopus scandal was likely 'low' page, but it was still wage theft.
Just to be clear, immigrants should be welcome to become devs. And dental hygienists, drywall installers, real estate agents, and sandwich shop owners. What I don't welcome is a program that specifically uses the immigration system to increase the number of developers relative to other professions. That should be left to the market and freedom of choice for the individuals who participate in it.
I just see absolutely no reason whatsoever to give tech employers the power to determine who is allowed to come to the US, what jobs they are allowed to work, and the circumstances under which they are allowed to remain in the US. This is immensely harmful, and doesn't have much to do with immigration. It has to do with corporate control over the immigration system.
I haven't seen H1B visa's used like this in my personal experience. At the last company I worked for they were mostly used to fill our testing team with people from India.
Maybe they were all guinness, the problem was all but one of them could speak/write english fluently.
I can also look at my boyfriend's current employer who recently took a trip to india in order to hire a team of indians "on the cheap" only to fire all but 1 within a month after they didn't really get anything productive done.
The comment was in response to a lot of "citizens first, immigrants only if they don't hurt our current citizens at all" arguments here. By proposing that visas may be, or at least could be, a form of foreign policy I believe helps to dispute that point in general, highlighting higher goals than plugging talent shortages that may or may not exist.
Anyway, the point should be you want to get people who are skilled. Maybe/maybe not that means English fluency. But, that's another matter.
It seems most abuse[0] happens due to random Indian body-shops. Since Trump is so carte-blanche maybe he can just blacklist the ones we know to be obvious abusers.
Maybe a better answer is to require all H1-Bs be actual full-time employees of the company, rather than being under contract through a third party?
[0]I define abuse as using H1-Bs primarily for cheap labor vs skilled labor.
Some companies are seeking cheap labor. Others are seeking talent that American engineers don't have (except the ones they do hire).
Also, I was born and raised in America, and I am not responsible for the transgressions of my ancestors. I also don't blame the foreigners that try to come here; I blame the government and corporations that are making a system that only works for the richest of Americans.