Maybe the OP means the modern SV aka FAANG and that is not far from the truth or very hard to disprove. Things turned out the way they did for a lot of reasons and none of them can be really discounted.
Hooray for a few corporations controlling almost everything we see online! It's ok because it's "my side" that has the power! Principles be damned, life is a power grab and I'm on the winning side, yippee! This will never turn out badly for me or anyone else in the future!
The "other side" has been playing these games with school board book standards and redistricting. It's naive to think that one side's restraint will be paid back with restraint from the other side. A better tactic might be to exploit as much as you can, so the other side also calls for reforms.
The same could be said for any loophole. If you don't exploit it, that does not mean that nobody else will exploit it. You should push for the loophole to be fixed while exploiting it to show why.
Certainly. But the risk is incredibly high. If trump gets re-elected he’s going to go after these guys big time. Breaking them up would not be stretching the imagination.
I’m completely unbiased. I voted for Trump in 2016. I think up until the pandemic he was probably going to win. The Democrats were deeply uninspiring except for Andrew Yang, and young people voted even less in 2020 than they did in 2016 which is why Bernie went down.
However after the pandemic and his complete lack of leadership over police brutality incidents and the BLM protests, he has turned off a lot of previous supporters and fired up a lot of unmotivated haters. I think it’s going to be a landslide Blue Wave.
To put in another way, if Trump wins again, the Dems need to dissolve the party and the liberals need to create a new party altogether. This is about as easy home run as it gets for them.
This has gotten very old very fast (beyond the obvious cruelty). I have several friends who keep watching their colleagues just have to up and leave over this and it’s causing a ton of issues for businesses that employ folks on work visas in general. It’s just disruptive to be disruptive/feed the base.
Seems kind of silly to say without evidence that it's just to feed the base when there's a valid reason as to why it's being done (to prioritize Americans out of work)
College graduate unemployment rate is over 8%, up from 2% a few months ago. There are a lot of skilled, educated, unemployed workers right now. I wouldn’t kick out H-1Bs, but no reason take in new ones right now.
You do know that H-1B's are already only in because there was no American that could do it, right?
Plenty of education and skill in the USA that doesn't have a fitting job (right now) to put that to use.
Say there are 100000 MBA's but you need someone who knows how to run a kubernetes cluster with a custom syscall shim for a modified kernel and there is someone in Norway who knows how to do that. Even combining all those college graduates combined with all their business education wouldn't be useful for such a role, but that Norwegian person would be. But you still want to stop H-1B?
The number of recent layoffs make it clear that there are plenty of people perfectly capable of performing even your pretend scenario. See eg http://layoffs.fyi/ and also eng layoffs at Uber, Samsara, etc.
Well, then the government in the USA is wrong, because they wrote that the Immigration and Nationality Act, section 101(a)(15)(H) is for foreign workers in specialty occupations, especially due to the need of skills that are urgently needed by the country.
Also, those mass layoffs you reference are rather recent and doesn't seem to have anything to do with this specific visa system. At the same time, the pool of available people might suddenly exist now, and that means that a company that needs someone with those skills now has a native worker available instead of having to search for people elsewhere. H-1B workers that were laid off have to exit the USA so it's not like they will add to that pool.
That said, it is still possible that those laid off people were selected to let go because their stills aren't as needed as others inside that company (i.e. positions that only exist due to scale). That doesn't mean those people happen to be the ones that you'd need to seek someone else for. Assuming that all tech people have identical skills doesn't help the conversation.
The average H1B doesn't seem to have a PhD or get more than $100,000/yr (indicating that they can't do something that rare or valuable that you likely can't find in the American labor pool). It seems pretty clear to me that the program gets abused and Americans could fill most of those jobs. It does, of course, also fulfill its intended purpose of supplying skilled talent when/where Americans can't.
If this is objection, why not just raise the minimum salary requirements to 100k instead of banning it? Most Silicon Valley companies would easily meet it.
I would support that. The program is supposed to allow for filling positions unfillable in the American labor market with specialized skills, not as a way to undercut American salaries.
My point is that Trump isn’t pushing for that, and instead just suspending it completely, because his goal isn’t to reform H1Bs, so mentioning specific criticism of the program is irrelevant when the primary objection is idealogical.
You don't need a Phd or a lot of money to have a skill that an American doesn't have. Assuming that those things are 'indicators' doesn't seem to be based on anything.
The difference here is that America has a large 'labour' pool, but the roles you need filled aren't as much just clocking in and out doing some random task, but have requirements that are harder to meet and apparently aren't met by the available Americans. Assuming malice isn't very constructive and to do something about it that actually helps anything needs some backing information.
The other way around: most people don't really want to work in the USA and will only go if the money is right. This also means that the company in the USA that is trying to find someone to fill a gap in their needs might have to spend twice as much getting their problem solved. At the same time, the amount of Americans asked to work outside of the USA is rather low as there aren't that many special skilled people that aren't already available. If you check out the sources listed at the WikiPedia page at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_diaspora you'll find that a lot of emigration happens for other reasons, and only a small part is related to special skills needed in emerging markets (which are markets that need a lot of skilled people but are not very attractive to a lot of people due to cultural differences or stability worries).
Silly to say without evidence that preventing some people from doing their jobs somehow creates more jobs for other people. H1-B visa holders aren't competing with workers in the retail services industry!
> there's a valid reason as to why it's being done (to prioritize Americans out of work)
The "Fixed pie fallacy" [1] is probably both one of the most important tenants of modern policy-making, yet it's rarely explicitly discussed or debated.
Cyclone_, your thinking relies on this fallacy, namely that if one person is working a job, that's one less job available. [2]
In reality, there is quite a bit of empirical research that indicates when people work (especially highly skilled jobs like in tech), it does not reduce (and may even increase) the jobs available to others [3].
If globalization and automation are so good at job creation, why did the American manufacturing workforce collapse?
Economies are complex, counter-intuitive feedback machines, but the "supply and demand" model fits the last 40 years of data, while the "floats all boats" model really doesn't.
"Lump of labor is a fallacy, honest!" sure sounds like the kind of opinion I could get a good penny for if I were an enterprising economist, though.
Recent immigrants were responsible for creating tens of thousands of jobs, most of them for Americans.
Software isn't a zero-sum game even on a country level and certainly US benefits enormously because companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix etc. are global giants but employ massive amounts of highly paid people in US.
Immigrants starting businesses aren't doing it on H1-B visas. Those are only for employees of existing companies and don't upgrade to permanent citizenship.
CNBC sure had to stretch that definition pretty darn far to get to "more than half," didn't they.
In any case, immigration is the least upsetting globalization policy IMO: it is exactly what it says on the tin, almost everyone agrees that too little or too much is bad, and the amount can be tuned using quotas. H1B, however, is not that. It pretends to be about scarce skillsets (which enter this calculation one way) when it's actually usually about standard skillsets (which enter the calculation in another). Further, it suppresses the bargaining ability of the people subjected to it, depressing wages for both them those they compete with. Worse still is "regulatory arbitrage" where low tariffs encourage companies to bypass environmental, safety, and labor regulation by shipping manufacturing (or what have you) overseas. I prefer immigration to both H1Bs and regulatory arbitrage, and not by a small margin.
As a more general point, exponential growth is one helluva drug and truly does create a "floats all boats" environment, but different economics apply once an economic sector plateaus. Those economics look much closer to zero-sum. Zero-growth = zero-sum. Low growth is low sum. That's why what happened to American manufacturing over the last 20 years is a good model for what happens to American software over the next 20, if we aren't careful.
We've had it good in software, but we're no longer in the phase where we can pretend the sigmoid is a neverending exponential.
Because it was outdated technology, that’s not even what you are talking about. You’re talking about a fundamental change in technology, not production methods (automation) or market/labor expansion (globalization).
Frankly, I’m not sure what point you’re even trying to make.
Fair enough, replace a disrupted technology with census tabulators who were automated. My point stands: you can't look at job losses in the affected industry to tell the whole story. You have to look at jobs in the economy at large. Automation leads to new demands elsewhere, and so does globalization.
It's just silly... even if you're a nationalist, isn't the prospect of bringing over talented people from foreign countries to work in America and help our companies profit plus deprive their home countries of their skills a really, really good thing?
Is this being greyed down because folks just don’t want to consider the possibility that straight up racism might be just as much a part of this or did it touch a nerve for some parties who saw themselves getting called out?
> Is this being greyed down because folks just don’t want to consider the possibility that straight up racism might be just as much a part of this?
There are folks on HN who are either covertly racist or simply delusional that their thoughts about policies come from some other place besides racism.
There are likewise concerted efforts to get white nationalist taking points on the front page and painted as reasonable in the related threads. You see new accounts and sub-500 accounts that congeal around them almost every time.
There's something to that, it's admittedly not hugely insightful. Is it "reflexive", "flamewar style"? I wouldn't classify it as such, since the option presented is an in my opinion a real possibility. It may be a bit harsh and inciting for a rational discussion however, so maybe vsareto's subtlety is more appropriate here.
Generally I'm happy this place is moderated strictly to keep the discussion civil. That there doesn't seem to be a will (there are no dead comments under mine, as far as I can see) to allow a direct discussion on american racism feels a little weird, but is over all understandable.
Racism in America and related offshoots of the George Floyd story (for example protests, police brutality) have surely been the most-discussed topics on HN in the last month. You're probably running into the paradox that every story, even the most well-represented, feels underrepresented on HN.
Brevity does not need be dismissed as an immediate association or prelude to flame wars, nor does it reflect unsubstantive thinking. While I understand your desire to vanguard the guidelines, and aversion to the messy-nature of the ‘race debate’, dang, I disagree with your conclusion as applied in this case.
Assuming positive intent and being vulnerable enough to ask questions usually will do a lot more to mete out such flame wars than latching on to the first emotional misconstructions of the drafting of ideas.
I don't disagree that much with either you or solarkraft. Moderation is guesswork and not all of these guesses hit the target. FWIW, here is some explanation of the general approach we take.
To be clear, which topic specifically are you alluding to because I think anyone with any cognizance on the issues of race and nationalism have a lot of overlapping features and a lot of cloudy, hard to define nuance, so can you please disambiguate in this instance?
I don't think I was thinking of a specific topic when I wrote that. The OP was about Trump and immigration, which is obviously an inflammatory and divisive topic. The arguments about racism, protests, police brutality are others. It's not hard to recognize these.
I had seen lots of H1B foreigners while myself worked in US, for couple of years. Most of them were brought not even H1B but on B1 Visa or J1, were employed illegally and produced bad code.
“Nationalism” in the US is about using fictive in-groups to inflict pain on others. There’s no rational calculation. It’s just about demonstrating the in-group’s ability exert power over out-groups.
The type of nationalism that is currently a component of the Republican platform can better be described as xenophobic nativism. The nationalist counterargument is going to be that US companies have gotten away with not investing in employee training and instead ship trained workers from overseas to do jobs that could have been held by trained Americans.
As a nationalist, I think it would be better for those other countries to keep their skilled workers and so benefit. I think every nation has a right to its own existence, space, and policies. And they also get to decide what's right for them 'as a people'. Always optimizing for performance of 'the economy' is not in the best interest of the actual citizens of this country.
I think each nation[0] should be entitled to make decisions for themselves and have a right to run their state the way they see fit. I wouldn't presume to move to, say, Japan and then start telling them that they're doing things wrong.
Geopolitics is inevitable: everything's interlinked--trade, laws, defense, research--everything. If a nation wants to persist and prosper, it needs to play the game; being an aloof loner or a blatant bully won't get you far.
Conquest fell out of fashion with the bomb; it's all proxy wars, psyops, and deniable covert/cyber attacks now. Slamming the door on H-1B’s (while it might be nice for my own income) weakens American companies and sends world talent elsewhere, like China. Who's only too happy to fund infrastructure in Greenland/Africa/Europe to extend soft power across the globe while siezing harder power closer to home (Hong Kong, South Sea expansionism, etc). Sitting out the game isn't an option, and going at it alone ain't much better.
What if they moved to Japan because of an opportunity provided by a Japanese organisation that needed their skills, and then they spent enough time there that they had buy in to the community and were a recognised member in it and were valued by that community?
I don't think this is too hard to imagine applying to a person living long term in Japan and definitely not hard to imagine in the US, where there are no true "Americans" in the first place, apart from maybe the indigenous peoples.
If I lived there a long time, I still wouldn't be Japanese. Look, it's definitely an emotionally charged issue the longer someone has been in a place, but that doesn't change the basic facts. We can discuss the merits all day long but not the legitimacy of the government to decide who can and cannot stay.
For the purposes of this debate, "Americans" means citizens and those that can vote, the ones to whom the government answers.
Are you linking to "a politically organized body of people under a single government" or "a race of people, large group of people with common ancestry and language"?
If H-1B visas were being used how they were intended, they would be a good thing, but we often see them used as a way to get cheap labor, or even directly replace American workers. The company I work at has H-1B junior web developers, hardly "very niche, hard to fill" positions that they can't find any qualified Americans to do.
For a while I wasn't sure if this was just some "talking point." Then one day, on a hiking meetup, I met a guy who was ranting about his job that was to write "oddly hyper-specific job descriptions that might seem to make no sense" to bring in cheaper h1b candidates.
Years back I had a college friend who was hired on an OPT visa. When they wanted to convert his visa to H1B (I think) they kept getting suitable candidates so had to rewrite the requirements so its only suited to him. He confided this to me as he felt bad but really needed that job.
There is no “opt” visa it’s “optional Practical training”. It’s for a limited duration after he graduates also the rules are sketchy if he Would be let back into the country if wants to travel home to see family . If the employer wants to continue his employment he has no choice but to go on H1b. And then H1b has its own requirements and problems with it. Try to understand a lot of people “abusing” the system have not other legal recourse to keep their lives going.
A company hires someone out of college, trains them and has them working and integrating into the company for about a year and a half, but then the government, because of a literal lottery, requires them to randomly replace them with someone else.
And you’re surprised a company that has spent all that money and resources on hiring someone and with the known hit or miss nature of hiring wouldn’t want to replace them with a random new candidate?
Edit: And it gets better. They don’t need to replace the person if someone else accepts the job. They need to get rid of that employee who they are happy enough to be spending tens of thousands of dollars on that they wouldn’t need to on their citizen counterpart, even if their possible replacement didn’t accept the job. Merely if the possible replacement’s resume fit the minimum requirements of the job.
That’s why companies rewrite the position to be hyper specific. Because if there is anyone else available eho can meet the bare minimum who applies for the job, even if they aren’t interested in it and will never accept an offer, they are required to get rid of their existing multi year employee who they are happy with.
Indeed, a friend offered to introduce me to a lawyer who would help me hire H-1Bs instead of similarly qualified residents. The gist was you have to figure out the unique qualities of the person you want to hire, and then construct interviews for the required X candidates such that these other candidates would not be as qualified across these trumped up unique qualifications / skills.
There seems to be a mix. Which is part of the problem with the national debate / conversation.
There are companies who found the absolute best in the world that they have to have. So they need that H1-B to get the job done and hire the best person.
Then there are companies who just want to contract out super cheap labor, so they do thousands of H1-B applications hoping a few hundred make it through, then the they charge a local rate, but pay the employee a fraction and reap the profits.
So the second example I’m assuming is the operating model of companies like Accenture, Cognizant, etc.
I’m flooding this thread a bit, but I’ve always been a little confused by the consultancy firms. Is there a clear difference between off shoring and H1B? Or is it mostly the same thing for these companies, with different margins for each.
Truth be said the consultancy companies barely make any or in fact lose money with the H-1Bs and they make way more margin on offshoring. But customers want people near them for various reasons and the offshoring doesn’t generally work well without boots on the ground.
So the H-1Bs are loss leaders with actual money being made in offshoring instead.
Consultancy firms often have an offshore team in a lower cost country (India, Phillipines, Mexico). The consulting firm typically employs a few people in the US on H-1B visas, contracted to the client, for communication with the offshore team, onsite support for the client, and generally managing things.
But the client often has their own employees on H-1B visas as well. This is unrelated to either offshoring/consulting.
Eg. Take a company like Apple. Apple hires employees on H-1B visas and pays them well.
But also Apple uses consulting firms (both US-based and offshored) for specific projects/functions. These workers are not Apple employees. They are employees of the consulting company -- or in some cases, there is a chain of contracts where they are employed by one company, which contracts them out to a consulting firm, which then contracts them out to end client (Apple).
Companies hiring full time H1B employees directly will not save money because there is no incentive to and they have to pay the government additional fees simply for the H1B visa, and they have to almost certainly have an immigration team, or at a bar minimum a lawyer on retainer to keep up with the immigration stuff.
My company applied for an employee I manager’s permanent residency (she is on an H1B visa which has a limit of 6 years unless you apply for a permanent residency). The application process costs the company 30k on a one time basis, including fees to the government, lawyer fees, and associated expenses.
Its not in salary that you see the money. The savings are in training and legal costs.
The average tenure of an HB1 is much longer than a US citizen. Turnover is lower for obvious reasons.
Threats of litigation , etc are much lower too. I havent seen a single HB1 sue their employer. Similarly, i have seen multiple US citizens sue employers, and almost always without merit (often it was to stave off termination, retaliate, etc).
There is alson some risk in a US worker. There is a lot of entitlement even at the high end. I have seen many native engineers and even PMs hit bars every other afternoon...on a 3pm weekday.
These were people close to 200k year.
The HB1 is a shield against that risk (or poor hiring), and thats savings too
The answer here is to actually fix the system with compassion rather than suspend it and harm everyone using it.
I'm not unbiased: I'm a former H1B visa holder and wasn't underpaid at all. I promise you we exist! It's not a fun situation to be in... if you have a pending green card application (up to a certain point in the process) you can't change jobs easily. And if you come from some countries (India, in particular) you have a wait of ten years or more before receiving your green card.
It feels like a collision of a bunch of otherwise unrelated decisions that ultimately harms both immigrant and native workers and only benefits companies. It's all fixable, but like so many things in the US right now, not politically possible.
I guess this is indeed an issue. I’m a manager and I am trying to hire. 100% I’d rather find a person who can start in a couple of weeks than several months for a candidate who needs immigration. But there are rarely any local applicants and even when there are they don’t make in the interview. We pay in excess of 300k for all roles so it’s not like we are trying to find cheap talent.
Maybe your recruiting to get interviewers into your pipeline and the interview process just isn't that good. Or perhaps nobody wants to work at your company. Bad management? Bad glassdoor reviews? Don't engage with the local tech scene?
If it's in excess of $300k for all roles it sounds like a Netflix type company or Netflix itself. I highly doubt nobody wants to work for that company.
Did u miss the part where he said “they don’t make it in the interview “?. It’s not about handing out a job because there is one ...there is a interview process and quite a rigorous one when it comes to FAANG companies. They don’t go out seeking cheap labor.
> But there are rarely any local applicants and even when there are they don’t make in the interview
What exactly does the work involve, if it is so difficult to either find candidates or give a candidate with some missing skills a few weeks to learn something new?
Without more context it's hard to know what the problem is there, but I strongly doubt it's that there is "no" talent locally available to start within a couple of weeks, whether it's a US citizen or foreign national with an existing work visa.
A small list of things that people may consider:
- competitive salary. 300k is one thing in (for example) Kansas City, but completely another in the Bay Area or New York City where it's not uncommon for senior roles to deliver at least a third again, if not more.
- the ethics of the company - does it engage in questionable behaviour? For example spying on users, building weapons, formenting unrest via algorithmic news feeds and so forth?
- the fundamental health of the company from a financial and existential perspective.
- does the company have a local reputation for being a poor place to work? For example, is it a bureaucracy where no-one can get anything done? Does it have a notoriously poor work-life balance, "face time" expectations, a culture where the loudest or most senior voice always prevails in decisions? What does Glassdoor (or levels.fyi) say about it?
- are the technologies you're hiring for overly specific? Are your job ads a buzzword bingo of "nice to have" frameworks, libraries or practices? Do the ads make it clear that experience in them is not required, provided you can learn them quickly thanks to experience of concepts or adjacent technologies?
Something isn't adding up here, even in areas with high COL people are clamoring for jobs like that. I'm not saying it never happens, something just doesn't sound right.
Also, the vast majority of people on H1-Bs that I've worked with are quite... average. It's nothing against them, but I doubt they were blowing people away in the interview. Many of them do have better attitudes, though.
That's not to say that there aren't exceptional examples, or a given candidate was bad, but we absolutely could of hired some kid from university, or a mid-senior level from a US company. They just tend to have more demands.
It's not exactly a secret the main reason for the program, is to lower wages here. ie. keep the wages of nationals in check. Of course, you also get access to a better deal on labor, and people that want the job very badly.
I could be off base, but many of the people I've worked with on H1-Bs simply cause less political problems. It's not necessarily a cultural thing, as I'm including many different countries. They have the threat of deportation hanging over their head.
No you aren't missing anything. "could of" (and its cousins "would of" and "should of") are common mistakes made (interestingly) almost exclusively by English-as-first-language speakers (my observation, so don't ask for citations I don't have any), since they sound similar to "could have", "would have" and "should have" particularly in "native" English accents (I'm thinking North American and UK especially).
I've never seen "could-have" (hyphenated) though. I don't think that's right either.
We have h1b employees at our company. If we were to lose them right now it would be a significant disruption.
Personally, I can't take time out of my job to train employees - which in our case could easily take three months. I can't even imagine us finding and hiring some at this time. These guys are an absolute asset to the company.
Does your company not already grow skills over time? One should already be training (or coaching) individuals regardless of their present skill levels.
That's a very uncharitable reading of what they said. They presumably spent time training these people. They can't afford to train up a bunch of new people because someone decided that they need to be kicked out of the country for no good reason.
I am saying that they should already have a "training time allocation" built into their role and that they could choose to use it for remedial skills. That is, individually having time for training should be a moot point.
Now, if the business can survive in the meantime is a different matter. But the business has no choice in the matter. And the business is not alone in the matter. Which probably makes that a moot point too.
I don't claim that it will be easy. "I can't train people" doesn't compel me as a broadly satisfactory counterargument for the above reasons. That sentiment itself is not charitable making it hard for me to read it charitably.
We grow skills. That's one reason they are so valuable. And we cross train. Everyone is able to take over for another employee at any time. But now is not the time. I just can't stomach losing our H1B members or any dev right now.
We are in the health IT sector and you may not know this (because it surprises most everyone) but there is an absolute revolution happening in healthcare. We're approaching version 5 of FHIR. And I'd guess 99% of the devs on HN are like "what the heck is FHIR". It's a core standard for exchanging healthcare data. And it's literally the tip of an iceberg. And that's my personal dilemma as a lead developer.
Speaking of skill growth, devs attended FHIR Dev Days last week, CCDA Implementation-athon a few weeks before that, and the FHIR Connectathon a week before that.
None of us are in the office and since we have formed personal relationships over the last few years we know how to "get stuff done". AFAIK we treat every employee well enough they have few reasons to leave. Now is not the time for us to lose a dev. Any dev.
I just ask the government to stop being jerks and let us ride out this covid year without too much more upset...
You can always do what companies like yours have already done to residents: Have the H1B visa holders train the residents, and leave the H1B visa holders out of a job.
Does that sound unpleasant to you? Trust me, anyone on the shorter end of any stick isn't going to like it.
My question is, why preference H1B holders over residents?
I'm not sure you're making an argument in good faith here.
Still feel free to see my response just below. That said I'm not management but our devs are smart and knowledgeable and I'm sure are getting offers from other companies. And I like to think they are treated well and I hope I get to work with them for a long time to come.
If that's what we were doing then it would be a good thing. But what companies are mostly doing is bringing over average people so that they can pay them less than Americans.
No, it's just a way to bring in cheap labor, and bring salaries down. That's it. It's very rarely the case that there's genuinely no one here that can do the jobs. It's widely know that companies are making no legitimate attempt to hire a citizen. I'm not saying this is a good move, and I'm not commenting on the morality of it (ie. who says someone from another country shouldn't be competing for your job)
I understand it must be comforting to issue a blanket statement like that, but I it's just simply not universally true. I was hired on an E3, next job transitioned to H1-B and now have a green card. My work has directly enabled the hiring of three Americans. Is the H1-B perfect? Of course not. But on both occasions there were no other candidates, and when I was hired on H1-B I got a mandated higher salary to meet expected pay rates.
If you classify someone as foo and have them do bar you can pay them above the prevailing rate for foo while actually being below the prevailing rate for bar.
It can also serve as a way for third party to earn a sizable chunk of that persons wages which would be a less likely scenario for someone hired stateside.
Why would they agree to be paid under when they are in tech where companies until at least a year ago were fighting for employees? They could literally cross the street in SF and land a better job at a better price. I mean, for a country that prides itself on free markets, it’s remarkable that you believe that free markets simply stop working.
And here’s the kicker. An H1B employee costs a company a lot more than a resident because of government fees and lawyer costs.
So if you have a citizen and an H1B holder drawing the same salary, it actually means the company values the H1B holder far more than they do the citizen.
H1B can't simply cross the street and change companies. If they find themselves between jobs they will shortly find themselves between countries and many companies have been found to have made agreements not to hire each others people.
Having just gone through the H-1B application with my company for myself, causing my small startup to pay pretty large sums of money to the USCIS and spend significant time and resources putting together the paperwork, I think they would definitely prefer to have avoided that if possible.
I'm not saying there aren't Americans who could do my job, but I have been on the hiring side since joining and there is clearly enough demand for labour in the market right now that it is hard for them to hire qualified people at all, let alone qualified Americans. Employees in this field just have so many options that companies have to go to pretty significant lengths to get who they want. And I know Americans coming from my background and working in the same field and I can tell you I am not being underpaid relative to them.
Companies profit but citizens lose out. Those two entities should not be conflated. This is akin to the outsourcing of many industries such as pharmaceuticals and medical supplies to countries that do not have the same worker or health regulations as the US.
The visa workers are second-class citizens and exploited by companies to keep cost low. It undermines all workers and in the long run undermines all nations involved. Take the US's relationship with China manufacturing where China has some of the worst pollution and is one of the largest world polluters as they do not adhere to any of the same regulations that nations of the west adhere to.
Currently there is the narrative that the US has a shortage of talented STEM. This is untrue. The shortage is due to a skewed labor market that suppresses opportunity for US citizens in the same way that a US manufacturer wouldn't be able to compete against a Chinese manufacturer not because we don't have the technology, demand, or resources, but that the difference in regulations makes it more costly.
Profit isn't the only important thing in life. If there are skills lacking in the market, they will eventually be learnt. Filling demand for CRUD app creation engineers instantly, is just another example of our instant-gratification culture manifest in business.
Agreed. H1B is just a front for immigration anyway. US Companies and the government should probably stop lying to themselves. If they want to bring over talented workers, give them rights too.
I'm here on an L1 (intra-company transferee). I was initially supposed to come on an H1b, however, lost the lottery twice.
(Lottery is difficult to win due to rampant abuse by certain Indian-US outsourcing companies)
For H1b, you can at least change jobs. An L1 cannot change jobs at all. So, you are completely at the mercy of your employer. Fortunately my employer is benign, but that is not the case for everyone.
Having a proper points system (not one that is easily gamed) and giving people a greencard to enable them to change jobs would be a much better system. This would prevent low-skilled workers and the suppression of US salaries. And if there is a high demand, the US can just take those with the highest points (as the Australian system does).
There are two very good systems:
1. Australian 189 permanent resident system. Example of points:
There is limited positions, so only those with the highest points are selected.
(Compared to H1b where the bar is low and people are selected via lottery. This incentivises outsourcing companies to have 4 people apply for every one true position).
2. Japan's point-based high skill visa (Technical stream)
A common thing one hears from some Americans is "I'm not opposed to immigration; I'm opposed to illegal immigration". I have come to learn that this is almost always a lie; often these same folks will jump at any chance to hurt legal immigration as well.
Literally everyone who is for "legal immigration" belongs to 2 camps.
One means they want to limit immigration of brown people to as close to zero as possible while allowing white people from Europe with money to move here. Where they can't outright forbid anyone except white Europeans they want to increase the difficulty and bureaucracy to the point where virtually nobody gets through. If it takes 10 years to become a citizen great. If it takes 30 better. Let em die waiting.
Two lives in a fantasy land of law and order where the non criminal types could just queue up and prove that they are the right type of people and follow the law. In this fantasy land type one doesn't exist and the people sneaking in are proven to be bad people by the act of breaking the law. These people live in a world where the law exists to protect and privilege them and anyone not following it is clearly transgressing.
Virtually nobody whom we citizens are descended from waited 10 years, hired a lawyer, and filled out paperwork in triplicate and both types are hypocrites who are themselves a disease on the body politic. If you hear someone talking about how they are for "legal immigration" unfriend them, block them, don't hire them, don't associate. You can't fix them so contain the cancer.
But you don't consider that maybe it's still a net positive that they were able to come to the US to get decent working experience for a number of years? At the same time, an unemployed American worker may now have a chance for the same job. How is this a bad thing?
Not clear from the article what this means. Would it impact existing visa holders already in the US? What about those who got an H-1B in this year's lottery? Is their visa canceled or postponed to a later date not known yet? (normally for a given year October is the earliest people can start working on H-1B)
It hasn’t been issued yet, so no way to know for sure but the rumor is that no one will be able to enter (including re-enter) if they fall under the executive order but those in the country in status will not be immediately impacted.
Not sure I'm following. I know about Oct and that people overseas who got H1-B this year won't be able to enter. But many who got H1-B this year are already in the US (working on OPT, L1, etc) so they don't need to enter the country, they are just changing their visa status.
i don’t know how this suspension would work but the H1B is held in April. I would assume most people have had their visa processed by now but it’s possible i’m just if ignorant.
Regarding suspending H1Bs here is some not so breaking news: people on those visas are targeting jobs where no qualified people exist to fill them. Those people, by coming to the US create real value and increase the economic output of the US. They are also, in general, really smart people that fuel innovation. If you kill innovation the US is done.
Many/most such people are in the US and already working under something called OPT. They have a timeline where they can work under OPT, and they need to get a conversion to H1-B status before their OPT expires.
So if they were approved in April, and the OPT doesn't expire before October, they can keep working and simply switch to H1-B status in October.
Visa holders already in the US still need to renew their Visa. If this order also suspends renewals then people are going to get kicked out of the country.
You don't get kicked out because lack of visa. For people in country in status, effect of this would be the inability to get back into US if one leaves.
You need a Visa one way or the other to stay in the US as an alien. Besides even if you weren't kicked out, how are you going to make a living without a work authorization?
Overstaying your Visa is illegal. I know ICE isn't going to knock on your door right away, but it's going to negatively affect future Visa applications (visiting also requires a Visa).
It’s just nitpicking but visa in US immigration parlance is only a tool for entry to the country.
Work authorization and visa are not technically same. You can stay in the country legally even with expired visa (the one pasted in the passport) but with work authorization approval documents extending the same visa category or another category.
These differences are academic at best, yes there are options open when your Visa expires, but they're all intentionally very bad options. No tech company will want to keep you on their payroll without a Visa for any extended period of time.
You're better off leaving the country because life without a Visa will be difficult and will eventually result in your arrest when your I-94 expires.
Wow. As an outsider, a lot of the immigration/illegal-alien discussion makes a lot more sense now that I am aware of that detail. And I can't say I'm surprised that it's been such a huge, contentious and problematic issue with that kind of grey-area.
No, you do not need a visa to STAY in the country. Legal status and having a visa in your passport is not tied together.
Your legal status is shown in your I-94. You can get into the country in a status, and adjust to another, without having a visa to reflect the new status.
If you leave the country and want to get back in, however, you need to have the right visa.
Again, a visa is only required to have a CBP officer admit you into the country in a specific status. After getting in, it does not have much importance.
What Trump is trying to do is, hack his way into enforcing the policies he thinks it is a good idea. Since SCOTUS gave him a carte blanche with respect to admitting aliens into the country, in order to stop H1B, he is using the same legislation. That lets him only to stop people from getting in; other ways of stopping it either takes time or needs to go through Congress.
Your I-94 still has an expiration date, if you can't renew your Visa then your I-94 will expire eventually. Once the I-94 expires your stay is illegal. Also you're still overstaying your Visa, which is going to affect your future applications.
Also how would you transition to another visa when applications are suspended? You'll have to live in the United States without a job in the hopes the suspension is lifted before your I-94 expires.
You are still conflating legal status and visa in an improper way.
The I94 expiration case can happen in practice. I don't know all possible cases, but at least for H1B done through change of status, you are not required to get a visa as long as you do not leave the country. And no, you r I-94 does not expire for three years, so it is entirely possible to complete a whole H1B period without a visa.
As an H1 all your authorizations are tied to your Visa in some way. They may not expire at the same time, but if you have no way of acquiring a new visa (which under this suspension, you don't) you're in trouble whether you leave the country or not.
> You are still conflating legal status and visa in an improper way.
I am and you should speak to your immigration lawyer if your visa is expiring.
I am going through F1->H1B process. I do not have an H1B visa, and I have a document that tells me I am allowed to stay in the country in the H1B status between a time period, and you are telling me I am in trouble because I do not have a visa. Ok, I suppose.
I don't know how this order affects your current process, definitely talk to you immigration lawyer about that. But we're talking about immigrants who have not yet applied for renewal, they could be in a situation where they have no chance for renewal.
This is incorrect information. H1B "Status" and H1B "Visa" are two separate things.
A common immigration path is F1(Student) -> OPT -> H1B Status. If the person was already in the US(because they're going to a US college) then they would be given H1B status(read: no visa). Getting a H1B visa from the US consulate would be required IFF they: 1) Weren't already in the US, 2) Need to leave and reenter the US.
If the person is _already_ in the US when they receive H1B Status then they don't need to receive a visa. Not having a visa is not illegal or affect work status. A visa simply allows ingress and egress in/out of the country and does not confer work authorization(which is what an H1b "Status" does).
Source: I've gone through this process, and from a family of attorneys.
> You need a Visa one way or the other to stay in the US as an alien
No - you need to maintain status, not visa. For H-1 workers and F-1 students, staying on expired visa is quite common and legal - as long as they do the paperwork to maintain their status.
If they leave the US to visit another country while maintaining a legal status, then they cannot return without applying for the visa.
For H-1 workers and students, a visa is only relevant for border crossings.
Not letting people in status travel and come back is crazy. It just shows the lack of common sense of the US government. It's the same lack of common sense of the US police and why it's such a mess (besides the systematic racism). Those people wouldn't leave the country as a result - all it means is that you prevent them from visiting their family, sometimes even in emergency situations. It has nothing to do with jobs, just pure stupidity.
There is a chance that common sense prevails and they probably will allow some exceptions for those in status. I’m just saying from what I read from immigration news sites and forums so far. We will know soon enough or they might leave it intentionally vague too.
I speculate this is what’s going to happen. When there’s enough backlash, they will clear up the language or ease some restrictions. Meanwhile, people who really need to go out of the country or are re-entering have their lives and careers ruined, probably irreversibly.
> Not letting people in status travel and come back is crazy.
During the initial roll out of Trump's travel ban, it seems like they seriously considered, and perhaps initially intended for it to affect Green Card holders as well. Perhaps the public reaction was what changed their mind. Perhaps public feedback could change it this time too.
I guess you didn't read close enough? It says that it is "not expected to immediately affect anyone already in the United States". If that means existing visa holders currently outside of the US won't be allowed to return, or that those inside the country can't leave then that's a huge effect on their lives.
I'm (worriedly) curious how this will affect people trying to change jobs on a H1-B, as technically you need to file a new petition each time, and I can see them somehow denying those too.
Extremely risky, I’d say. There would be people who have already changed jobs pending H1B transfer authorization (since premium processing was suspending earlier), also called joining “on receipt”. Normal processing takes weeks to months and if their transfer applications end up getting rejected now, they lose visa status.
the entry ban will be for visa issuance at Consulates and entry into the US from abroad.
what you are talking about would require a rule-making process and/or statutory change. they are going to try that, but it will take longer and will be subject to judicial review.
AC21 lets you change employers without waiting for the petition to be approved. that's statutory. much harder to change as it would require Congress.
eventually, your visa label will expire. after that, if you need to travel overseas, you will need a new visa label and under this proposed exec order, if it's still active you will not be able to return. so you will have to avoid overseas travel entirely until the ban is lifted.
All my friends in the US are staying put now, they can’t go see their families after covid because they have no idea if they’ll be allowed back in.
Bad for america, good for the rest of the world though- maybe by restricting American foreign policy we’ll see more competition for SV open up globally.
So highly paid permanent resident tech professionals even more highly paid and a lot of non-permanent residents get even more harmed because of their country of birth....
I personally feel that the H1-B system needs to be rethought to encourage a healthier but not at the expense of bringing hard working immigrants into this country.
Surely this will bring jobs back to America. Surely this will mitigate the unmitigated failure that is the American governments non-response to COVID. Surely Silicon Valley executives sucking up to the whitehouse will make this less damaging and didn’t contribute to it happening in the first place. Surely this will be the thing that takes down Donald trump.
It’s interesting to me that HN doesn’t seem to like my comment. Wonder what that means.
Edit: I can’t reply to these replies but the post is about something the whitehouse is doing. All conversations about this link are implicitly political and if that’s against the rules then either the post should be removed or the rules should be changed.
Erratic government decisions can have severe consequences on businesses.
About time US companies realize that they need to have more fault tolerance to support their employees by open more global offices. This is especially true because the world outside is becoming more competitive and erratic business decisions like this will destroy product competitiveness.
As for foreign companies/entrepreneurs/would be business owners with capital, the US is shut. There is no need to do business here.
Greece https://www.greece-is.com/when-can-i-travel-to-greece-again/.
Also, I'm based in the Netherlands and heard that Amsterdam already sees tourists from Germany etc.
Of course it's nothing like the masses that usually come there, but it's not closed.
And yet everyone and their mother wanna move there no matter the price paid in uncertainty, pressure and mental health. They could try go to a country with a straight forward immigration process like Canada, but money is more important than anything else to some people.
The immigration restrictions to Canada are more strict aren’t they?
Is there a minimum asset requirement? Is there a requirement that to apply have have to have been there for 3-5 years? An English language test? I don’t know for sure; asking.
I don't think Canada is more strict, not at all, but would like to hear from commenters who moved to Canada. Especially draconian is the fact that the spouse of a h1b holder can't work (last I checked). As an immigrant in the Netherlands that's not the case there and it's a huge deal breaker for me to ever think of the U.S.
If you're immigrating for economic opportunity, it would make sense to try to make the most of it.
A lot of people have a plan to make a bunch of money for 10-20 years and then go back and be entreprenerial in their home countries etc. Canada may (or may not) be a better permanent home, but if the goal is to make a bunch of money, that's not the best place to do it.
thank god, I've seen a lot of americans rejected especially POC of varied backgrounds turned down in favor of some H1B nonsense to often it really impacts the ability for folks to rise up and move to new industries
what's to explain? h1bs are widely used to gain access to bodies instead of training/developing local talent it's a joke every interview template i've been given seems like it was made to exclude many people who would otherwise be fine
it's not like immigration is bad or anything but the balance is screwed up and and it's causing long term damage it's bad for immigrants and bad for americans
This is great news for Canada. Once the Covid situation resolves, if Trudeau doesn't give a lot of incentives for tech companies to build offices there Canada will miss out on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Canada has already been benefiting from the recent restrictions on work visas and rejecting visas for no reason, for example by saying a forensic pathologist isn't a specialty occupation.
The TN visa comes from a treaty between the US, Canada and Mexico; it is not part of the immigration law that gives us the H1-B.
I have no specific knowledge of the wording of the treaty, but it seems highly likely that the leader of any of the 3 countries could suspend the visa.
A cousin of mine used to do staffing for highly specialized roles in the auto industry and the TN was very important in the Detroit/Windsor metro area. I don't think it is used in tech anywhere near as much as it is used elsewhere; since it is clear that the current administration is just looking for ways to give the tech industry a hard time, it seems unlikely that TN would be a target.
On the other hand, the method for getting a TN visa is very much different than other visas. A Mexican citizen coming into the US has a fair amount of advanced paperwork required but otherwise has almost no problem. A Canadian citizen just shows up at the border with a job offer, a detailed description of the job and proof of the education requirements. The immigration officer makes the determination on the spot and they either walk through or turn around! The administration could quietly issue guidance to immigration officers about how strict they need to be, and you might end up with very similar effects without all the publicity of an executive order.
TN is for Canadian citizens working in the US. The opportunity for Canada is about (mostly Indian but other nationalities too) offering easy visas to skilled professionals so US tech companies can relocate them (or they can move independently) to Canada and not have to deal with the broken US system.
A lot of immigrants want career opportunities, a reasonable path to permanent residence and/or citizenship, and a good environment for their family.
#1 could change, some tech companies have started to realize they can offer more remote jobs and save money while offering salaries that are still very competitive to anyone not living in the Bay Area. #2 was already problematic before Trump. #3 is often better outside the US.
That makes Canada even more attractive to tech companies because they can save money. Canadian salaries and living standards are still better than many other countries'.
Tech labor has historically cheaper than in the US. It would have been nice to see more Canadian tech success stories at 1/10 the number that have occurred in SV alone. There must be some other variables that explain the difference.
One have to put things in prerspective. It took 40-50 years for the silicon valley to become what is is today. Once there are enough tech presence in Canada, tech situation would improve. There would be ample amount of tech folks, and new innovations would come along. New companies would be founded and things would be at par, or even better. Anyhow I see, US heading towards political turmoil/instability.
Is that my post or my parent's post? Fwiw I'm well aware of Canada's property bubble but I'm sure that has more to do with foreign capital outflows than local talent being pushed out the market.
I hope it does.
But I wonder if a very bad economic crisis (that some say started in 2008 and we never truly recovered from) may cause a similar wave of xenophobia and civil unrest in Canada as we now see happening in the U.S. I know Canada is a very different country than the U.S and much less prone to massive civil unrest, but all and all it's not that much different than countries like UK, Germany, France etc - who are experiencing their own brand of populism and growing xenophobia now.
I don't think same would happen in Canada. What US lawmakers have done, is to put a tap on green card basis on the country of origin. Indians on H1B wouldn't get their green card, in their life time, period. If there were no Indians waiting for green card, it wouldn't have been a big issue. It is by design. Indians are new B
Over 50% of Toronto, at least, is born outside of Canada and even then immigrants were overrepresented in my CS cohort at Waterloo in 2014.
So it seems plausible -- but these aren't people cynically exploiting Canada as a hop on the way to the US, they're people who were born outside Canada but moved to Canada as children and grew up Canadian.
>For the lakhs in India who aspire for an H1B visa, the news is disappointing, but not entirely unexpected. The options of Canada and Australia, which once seemed alternatives to the American dream, are also more distant now, given the dismal global economic scenario. One young couple, on a temporary visa in the US which will expire soon, had invested in acquiring a Permanent Residence (PR) in neighbouring Canada, but they are now unsure of that too.
I think most Canadians working in the US for tech companies would be on a TN visa, which is not being suspended according to the Globe and Mail [0]. Internships would be significantly affected though, since they go on a J1 visa so it could help the new grad pipeline for Canadian tech companies.
I think the implication of OP is not that fewer Canadians would be in the US (though I'd point out that a lot of us Canadians are on H-1Bs too), but that immigrants from other countries could go to Canada and work from a satellite office in the same time zone.
TN allows for no immigration intent and can be rescinded any time you cross at the whims of the border guard. Most US companies will transition a Canadian to an H1-B and then a green card as quickly as feasible.
As a former H1-B: makes sense. H1-B is abused a lot, and importing new entry-level workers when unemployment is at record highs after COVID makes zero sense. Although I'm sure Hawaiian judge will disagree.
Stopping workers coming in from one place isn’t about making sure Americans have jobs tho. It doesn’t magically change the cost of rent. It doesn’t magically educate the uneducated. Nor should it. This is about being able to report to middle class white people that ‘immigration stopped’.
What's also hidden behind the numbers is that a lot (most?) of H1-Bs come from India and China, both of which have insanely long green card backglogs. Because changing jobs while on H1-B is a perilous affair (and employers know it), those folks end up basically in indentured servitude to their original H1-B sponsor employer, especially if they have families and/or property in the US.
Are you telling me that the 85000 jobs this saves will go to the millions of unemployed (low skilled) workers who will learn learn to code and manage the codebase at some company?
Huh, I hadn't thought of that. Maybe they'll hire 3 or 4 of the unemployed folks to replace each h1b so that they can "group code", it might work.
Also, LOVE your logical reasoning that went from "H1-B is abused a lot" => "Ban it".
It's not "banned", the proposal is to temporarily suspend it. When it is resumed, however, I would ask that they put a lower bound on the wages paid. Say, $100K for programmers - the "real" middle class living wage where I live. That will reduce abuse significantly. To reduce it even further, switch to the auction system, where a fixed size quota is allocated, and employers "bid" salaries for workers. I do have skin in this game: I'm paid a lot, and this will create more competition for me, but it will improve the ridiculous situation where people get into debt to get degrees and then can't find jobs. Why anyone in the US be against this is a mystery to me.
Not at all. For most of the universities, grad schools are absolute cash cows. International students come here for grad school largely because of the associated 3 year(2 for non-STEM) OPT period and ease of getting a H1B during it.
H1-B was intended for highly skilled workers that the US had a real shortage of. But now it's just being abused to bring in captive workers that are willing to accept lower wages and worse working conditions than otherwise while crowding out US workers.
What if, instead of bowing to corporate greed which cares not a bit for our country or our people, we actually invested in our own population and trained them to do the jobs H1-B workers currently do.
Scaling back H1-B in this way is the common sense approach. And it benefits other countries too by reducing brain drain.
It's possible (maybe even likely) that title deflation is happening, but based on my experience the salaries are definitely in line with the pay ranges for each job title (I worked at Amazon for 3 and a half years, so I have some first and second hand information on pay.)
If nothing else it's a great resource to see the unfiltered payscale at SV companies.
Thanks for the data. I see comments across threads on HN that say that H1-B hires are common. What is the incentive to hire them then? Are professionals in the US really that ill-equipped? I guess there is a bit of cognitive dissonance with FAANG complaining about no qualified workers but then FAANG only hired people who went to Stanford or Harvard and such.
I worked at two FAANG companies and my degree is from the University of Arizona. I only met a few people there whose degrees were from elite schools. Where do you get the impression that they only hire people from Stanford and Harvard?
> Are professionals in the US really that ill-equipped?
Americans are plenty smart, but they are only 4% of the world population. American companies compete on an international stage and not having access to the other 96% of talent would be a competitive disadvantage.
Many SV companies are in constant need of more skilled engineers.
Since the H1B visa can be transferred, when I arrived in the USA, nothing would have prevented me from going door to door and find a better paying job. Especially in the SV where there are tons of companies hiring.
So companies have a good incentive to give you a fair salary.
This is not true for all visas. In particular there is one visa (sorry can't remember its name off the top of my head) that is an "international transfer visa" : you work for one year for the company in a foreign country and then you can move to the USA while continuing to work for that company. It is pretty easy to get that visa but it is also very hard to transfer it to another company afaik.
Hiring is also a bit broken in our industry. The thing is, it is often pretty hard to distinguish what makes a good or a bad engineer. This being said, there are just not enough skilled engineers in the USA.
It would absolutely be possible to hire more local engineers and train them on the job but that would cost a lot of time for uncertain results. Companies prefer to hire engineers that can already be pretty productive from day 1.
There are plenty of >200k H1B workers in SV, and I do believe these engineers and specialists will wonder how they can do their work elsewhere if they can't reasonably plan a few years into the future:
My anecdotal experience as a hiring manager in tech firms for over a decade: it’s not about money, it’s about quickly finding qualified employees. Unemployment has been (until recently) low. There wasn’t some large supply of unemployed, qualified engineers sitting around. Nearly everyone I hired already had a job. Expanding the search globally just gave me a better chance of finding someone.
I think it's more that they're fairly indentured. Their visa is tied to a specific _kind_ of work, they're legally prevented from making money in any other way other than their current job, and while they can change jobs, my understanding is it is generally viewed as risky (for instance, if the new place doesn't work out, you've got a few short months to find employment or your visa is no good and you have to uproot your life)
It'd be really interesting to see data on how often H1B's change jobs compared to the rest of the population.
That argument is wrong. H1Bs are liked by Silicon Valley because they want to be able to hire the best people from anywhere, and not restrict their talent pool to 5% of the world population.
All reputable Silicon Valley companies pay people exactly the same whether they are on a visa, have a green card, or are a US citizen.
One thing to remember is that in many cases H1-B workers are brought over by sponsoring companies which take a huge cut (I know cases of 40% or more) out of their salaries for the service of securing them the Visa. So those salaries might appear to be a certain number but the workers themselves may actually receive significantly less while some rent seeking company stashes the differences.
I know for a fact that in my industry (not in SV) H1-B wages are lower, going off both public data and conversations I've had with H1-B coworkers, many who I consider my friends.
As a side note, I don't blame H1-B workers at all for coming here. They're generally great developers and great people.
I'm sorry to break it to you, if your company isn't paying prevailing wages, they're doing something illegal. They need to be shut-down, not the whole fucking program.
There’s nothing illegal going on here. I posted earlier that I was at an oil and gas company in Houston, a Fortune 10 company at the time. We had IT contractors from Larsen and Toubro. As an example, one guy who reported to me was paid < $20 an hour after L&TI and another contracting company in the middle took their cut. He wasn’t thrilled with that situation but his other option was to quit and go back to India. The worst part was I couldn’t hire him directly because of his contract. He wasn’t allowed to quit and directly work for us. Kind of live slavery.
> Employers must attest to the Department of Labor that they will pay wages to the H-1B nonimmigrant workers that are at least equal to the actual wage paid by the employer to other workers with similar experience and qualifications for the job in question, or the prevailing wage for the occupation in the area of intended employment – whichever is greater.
According to you, L&T were taking a cut out of the wages. Honestly, you should blow the whistle. L&T or whatever that middleman company is, they need to shutdown their H1-B program.
My company has a clause that we can’t hire people from this company for 9 months. If he waits around 9 months he’ll have to leave the country wayyyy before that.
If some of your best friends are H1-B workers wouldn't the right answer be changing the regulations such that companies must pay market rate (as in for the US labor market, not internationally) for H1-B employees here?
In the companies I've worked at, H1-B workers get compensated in software engineering roles just as well as their peers, I've also seen outliers where it's significantly higher (depending on when they joined, how much in demand they were with competing offers, etc).
I getting seemingly contradictory comments here but one could weave a coherent story out of all of them:
1) H1B's get salaries that are comparable to US engineer salaries.
2) A middleman takes a big bite out of that, the engineer thus takes home less.
3) H1B's are essentially like most immigrants, indentured servants who have no freedom to leave their employers, thus have little leverage asking for promotions or even autonomy as an employee.
4) Companies probably are most aware of 3) but it seems like at least for FAANG the biggest factor is they don't want to invest in training people and rather want people who already are skilled and such. It's probably true if you draw your net very tightly yes anyone can find that there aren't enough qualified workers out there who won't demand I guess near half a mill salaries.
I think it's an astro-turf campaign, it feels like it. Because no one thinking logically is gonna push an agenda that hard without actually thinking through it.
Not astroturfing. Technically underpaying is illegal but there are ways around paying an H1-B worker what a US citizen might receive. Title reduction, etc. Even if the total paid is the same, consulting companies that help sponsor workers get a huge cut of the salary so ultimately we have workers being paid less.
> Technically underpaying is illegal but there are ways around paying an H1-B worker what a US citizen might receive. Title reduction, etc. Even if the total paid is the same, consulting companies that help sponsor workers get a huge cut of the salary so ultimately we have workers being paid less.
Lots of companies such as Mahindra, Wipro etc bring their people on B1, J1, L1 and employ them illegally. They receive INDIAN wages, while working in US, and the poor folks work just for bagging power back in India. For them, having worked in US increases potential wage in their home country.
Exactly, shut them down, American interests will be protected. Most of the folks getting on the H1-B have a masters degree in an American university, if they are in SV, it's usually a top-tier one. I've personally made some of the best hires on-campus.
I’d love to see comprehensive data on this. I worked at a fortune 10 oil and gas company in Houston. We had onshore contractors across a range, but I know a few of them made less than $18 an hour. The rest that we paid went to two different contracting companies.
Salary is not even the issue. The main issue is the employment restrictions. Instead of making H1-B a visa that lets an individual full freedom (like green card), it's tied to an employer and moving jobs is not that easy, and many employers also sponsor for green card, which is another process that can take years and make it harder to move. During this time the employee has little leverage asking for promo or raises. (promo and raises usually appear after the green card..)
Once you let employees freedom, the market will take care of the salary. I also understand that employers invest in the visa application and relocation of people, so it should be fair to them as well. This can solved by having a period (1-year is pretty reasonable) that prohibits new visa holders from moving companies.
Funny how ppl don't like to mention this and just focus on H1Bs getting paid "market rates".
It's almost like the SV's previous gentleman agreement of non-poaching got replaced with "hey, let's use H1Bs, sure we might have to pay near market rates, but at least we can tie them down for at least 3/5 years without any option of leaving".
H-1B holders can change jobs even without a green card. It's more of a hassle (takes 4-6 weeks) and has been made worse by this administration's repeated suspension of premium processing of applications. But visa holders aren't "tied" to their employers or "indentured servants".
I said it's not that easy, not that it's impossible. Also, H1-B transfer cost some money and involves lawyers, so some companies, like many startups, don't want to deal with that. The bottom line is that H1-B employees are at a disadvantage.
SV isn't the only place you find H1B's. Everyone from Toyota, AA, Sabre, etc in the DFW area has hired what seems like 1000's. There is hardly anyone but H1B's at Toyota in Plano from what I understand. I have heard some companies are laying of permanent staff and keeping H1B's because they're less expensive.
Personal experience in my part of the world seems to suggest that it is cost. Permanent employees are expensive and H1B's are so terrified of losing employment they are willing to work around the clock and for less.
I would like to see the whole program gone. I don't believe it is being used as it was intended.
I know of at least a few just from my office that are not on that site. Could it be that they are hidden through a contracting company and not hired directly?
Your presumption is either (if you not a h1 candidate) far away from the fact or don't want to accept the truth.
You are looking at the top 100 companies and their full-time employees but not at the 1000s of vendor-employer ponzi scheme/scams that happen every day in the form of contractors who apply with fake resumes, take proxy interviews and outsource the assigned work to someone in India. Doesn't stop there, the dependents of those do a unlicensed food selling, baby sitting, work in local stores, what not. The hard to digest fact is the student who comes on F1 visa, succumbs to the pressure of 90 days period to get into a job to maintain the visa status joins a consultancy company, which starts the game. These consultancies market the candidate with high experience fake resume, arranges proxy candidate to take interviews, even Falsify the requirement of GC/citizenship candidate requirement - all these to charge the client a 100$/hr and pay a mere 40$/hr to the candidate through their sister companies acting as layers. A honest try from USCIS to do a quick scan in containing these will drop at least 50% of H1B lottery applications, void 30% of the consulting company licenses and also help the right talent to get an opportunity. If you are a gov/USCIS rep, drop me an email I'll be more than happy to provide more details, and possible ways of catching the wrong ones.
I think you have to separate H1Bers into at least 2 categories, {Indian+maybe Chinese, everyone else}. Source: am H1B bro myself.
I'm from a shithole European country full of white people. The experience in the US has been very positive. People treat me nicely, both in SV and in rural Ohio. SV companies pay me equivalently to Americans as far as I can tell by asking around (for reference, depending on bonus/stocks my total comp is 200k+, which is not FAANG but above average for my position). Sometimes more for the same job. If I were kicked off my H1B, I'd just go back to one of the richest countries in the world and be fine. There's a smooth path to the Green Card for me, like for any H1B holder except Indians and Chinese.
That's kind of where the crux is.
As part of my job I've traveled to quite a few large enterprises that were not in SV, and often they have entire buildings full of 90% Indian H1B bros. I think 50%+ of all H1Bs are awarded to Indian citizens. There is a absolute cap on the number of Green Cards that can be awarded to citizens of any one country per year. In addition, India has about 10000 billion times the population of my shithole EU country.
Subsequently, the wait for my Indian H1B bros to get their Green Card is now several decades (it is "none" or "a few months" for most others except I believe Chinese).
So the indentured servitude is not due to H1B per se, but because of its interaction with the Green Card program for my Indian H1B bros and maybe Chinese H1Bers as well.
As a shithole European I can switch jobs pretty easily. At worst, I have to wait a few years to finish the Green Card process, so the "indentured servitude" is limited to 2-3 years. It is up to individual companies to decide if they want to sponsor your Green Card, but all companies I'm familiar with in SV will do so for any of their H1B employees with no exceptions. This might not be the case for other companies. My Indian H1B bro co-workers are paid just as well and treated fairly. Of course, the SV companies can't get around the Green Card cap for them, so that's still problematic. But the companies I've seen do not abuse that fact.
But the SV H1B experience is probably the exception if you look at the statistics. My Indian H1B bros at Certain Major American Companies You Almost Certainly Do Business With All The Time aren't treated nearly as well. They get thrown specs across the wall by managers (often Indians themselves), any response is silenced. They are often in physically different buildings or on different floors from the other workers.
The work I did in SV felt creative, challenging, and I was always empowered to do my job as well as my American co-workers. But those H1B-with-no-path-to-residency farms seemed like authoritarian sweatshops. During one consulting gig with Bank You Most Likely Use Daily, we saw a guy get fired for accidentally pushing a private key to Github. The AC wouldn't get fixed in the H1B-building, so we worked in a sweltering 85 degrees all day. The restrooms were in despicable condition, getting cleaned maybe 2-3 times per week. For a remote call, I was offered a used pair of in-ear headphones with somebody else's ear wax still smeared onto them. I politely declined and bought my own pair. I would've quit this company after a few months. But none of the H1Bers there can do that, because of their legal limbo.
To say that these folks are not empowered is a vast understatement. And I do think some companies are abusing this fact.
It's a hard hole to dig out of now. I've seen estimates that if you were to remove the per-country-cap for Green Cards, the next 5 years worth of Green Cards would go entirely to Indian citizens. Is it "fair" that one country gets 50-70% of all work (not family) based Green Cards? Is it "fair" that an Indian H1B worker has to stay in legal limbo for 25 years just because other people from his country also want to immigrate?...
It's not like the country is paying for said education. And if they were, it's not like the money is "lost" in any way, as it goes back into local businesses which "stimulates" the economy and creates local jobs. I personally wouldn't use this argument.
If by a country we mean states, college is at least partially publicly funded in the US and outside generally. If by a country we mean expenditures by the citizenry, definitely true that college is an investment of time and money by the students.
A doctor leaves college maybe with 500k dollars in debt in the US, doctors in most other countries graduate with little or no debt at all: you could import thousands if not 100's of thousands of doctors willing to work a fraction of the current doctor's rate, thus making it cheaper for patients.
> And if they were, it's not like the money is "lost" in any way, as it goes back into local businesses which "stimulates" the economy and creates local jobs
Which money? I fear this is the broken window fallacy Bastiat liked to talk about.
Foreign students typically pay the "state" part of the support as well. For PhD students, well, all grad students are cheap high skill labor, so the uni is always the big beneficiary.
You can easily achieve this by raising wage requirements, instead of essentially having nothing changed and making the whole US a big open air prison for foreign skilled workers.
Make it easier for H1B's to transfer to another, better-paying job without losing their privilege of staying and working in the country. Then it's a real win-win, for both guest workers and citizens. The only actors who would lose are those seeking to abuse the system in the first place.
> You can easily achieve this by raising wage requirements, instead of essentially having nothing changed and making the whole US a big open air for foreign skilled workers.
Also stronger labor laws instead of gutting them, actually enforcing them instead of shanking the agencies responsible for them, and actually hitting guilty corporations where it hurts instead of handing out "cost of doing business" jokes.
And prosecuting guilty management as well. Middle manager 8374 might be less eager to ask for bullshit job requirements designed to only fit a specific H1B if their n+1 to 6 have just gotten years in the slammer for labor fraud.
Raising wage requirements just means companies will pay whatever the new minimum is for H-1B workers. Once employed, those workers are still locked into their job without freedom to jump to anther with better working conditions or a better salary (which makes them more appealing hires for companies than US workers).
If you want to see a more fair and competitive workforce, give H1-B visa holders more freedom to switch jobs without risk of losing their visa.
Instead of fighting the symptom you can also fight the cause. If you make the abuse not legal, and detect and enforce that, you solve the problem either way. You'll still need to educate the native citizens of course, otherwise nothing really changes. But you'll need to do both.
I don't know what local laws would apply, but I imagine that the same laws that have to do with equal pay can be made generic so that it applies to everyone for a position. In the end you should be paid for your value, not for your gender, color of your skin or the place you were born.
"What if, instead of bowing to corporate greed which cares not a bit for our country or our people, we actually invested in our own population and trained them to do the jobs H1-B workers currently do."
Who's this "our people" you're talking about?
As a US citizen, I consider every person in the world as part of my people, and I don't begrudge any individual coming and working or training in the US.
The more people, from whichever country, have access to good education and good jobs, the better.
Good education and jobs should not be reserved for people who happen to live or be born in a particular place, be descended from particular people, nor just those who managed to get certain bureaucratic paperwork.
Oh you're one of those closed borders people. I don't think we should discriminate against people because of something they were born with. Just as we don't discriminate against people because of their skin color, I don't think we should discriminate because of their ancestry or place of birth either.
There’s plenty of people living in poverty in America, along with the multitude of other major problems right now. I’m not a closed border person, we need immigrants. But we don’t have the resources to help every single person who wants to come here. It’s not discrimination, that’s a terrible argument. It’s a government helping its people.
This the opposite of what I believe has made the us great. Look at all the Elon Musks. High skilled immigration can never harm your country. It can give competition to some people who feel entitled to their high salary, though.
I def agree that highly skilled immigrants are important to America. I disagree wholeheartedly with the concept of open borders though. It’s too idealistic and in practice would cripple America.
All else being equal, I think most people prioritize their own country and countrymen over others', and would not sacrifice their own countrymen to benefit others'. You may not share this view, but I think most people do. Most people consider themselves a part of a national team, and they feel some loyalty to their teammates.
What's the difference between working on the hardware of a computer or the software that it makes sense to have one outside of the US and another one inside?
But we're not talking about your decision or his, we're talking about the decision made by the government whose literal job description is to make rules for this country alone!
You can take the high approach and give up your job for someone else, then. Are you going to welcome strangers into your family and your home as well? Resources are limited, that is a fact. If you've never experienced that, consider yourself very lucky and privileged, and work to deserve that good fortune and privilege.
Pretend you're a politician and go tell some poor US kids or young professionals that.
Ideally we are all together in the human family, but practically a Democratic country's citizens are the ones who set policy with their votes. A country's policies therefore will tend to align with what's best for its people.
1. SV/FAANGs, like elite colleges, only hire some very small percentage of people who apply. Many people who are perfectly well qualified and have successful careers otherwise get denied employment.
2. The market cap of these FAANGs is in the trillions. Between talent and capital, there's literally no problem they can't solve (they can solve problems about cyber bullying, trolling, etc but their business relies on it.. so it's not really a "problem" per se).
3. There are SO MANY underprivileged and/or poor kids in SV, LA, Pittsburgh, all the places where tech companies reside. Saying there aren't enough skilled workers in the US is kind of dishonestly true, as they have tons of applications from many qualified people.. many of whom with some training and support may very well become highly qualified....
4. ...They could literally invest some of those trillions to build a pipeline from these areas, develop talent locally - or at least domestically.
So much of tech is about solving problems with the resources you have. Opening up broadly to a global labor supply removes the constraint on that resource, and therefore don't need to innovate or find clever ways to make it work. Now, they are companies that have only one duty - deliver profit to shareholders - and that's fine and how companies should be run. But public policy needs to exist to serve the interest of the people, and for the most part - not entirely - H1B has been to serve the interest of executives in Big Tech.
Also, finally, Trump is absolutely awful, horrid, all that. A broken clock is right twice a day though, and this is one of the few possibly accidental things he's done that isn't a complete self-shot to the head.
1 - I am the first one to complain about our broken hiring practices, but just because you get a first interview does not mean you are qualified for the job.
2/3/4 -> FAANG have a ton of money but no incentive at all to spend it on philanthropy. I wish it was not the case, but their only job is to make their investors happy.
3 - is it dishonest ? For sure there are some kids in SV, LA,etc that could work in tech if they got the education but the thing is, they didn't. Also, local talent is never going to compare to the global one.
I would love to see laws pushing FAANG and co to invest in philanthropic causes. Heck, I would not even mind if this was based on taxation. But cutting H1B is not going to solve any of these problems.
This is not a correct reading of what I wrote. Investing in local (or at least domestic) employment pipelines at all is not philanthropy. Seeing it as philanthropy is patronizing.
Let's just have a thought experiment (maybe we'll see what happens if the ban continues) - what will Big Tech do if H1B is not a thing anymore?
Second thought experiment - who benefits most from H1B? First of all, the H1B holders themselves. Second, the tech industry itself. Further out from that benefits are less clear and more mixed. We are a nation of immigrants seeking opportunity, immigration is important to this country. Immigrants brings a lot of economic and cultural benefits, and we must always fight bigotry and discrimination towards our immigrants. But there is also much more complexity surrounding immigration policies, and they have their cost, too.
There is an issue with 'diversity in tech' and, among other things, under-representation of African-Americans in STEM.
So why are the big tech corporations that are constantly virtue signalling about Black Lives Matter and social justice not simply training American engineers (not specifically black, but people coming from poor socioeconomic backgrounds, which would definitely include many African-Americans). Why do they bring Indian or Chinese engineers?
America does not lack people, it has good universities. It could certainly train a local workforce. Providing good jobs to those communities would do wonders to reduce criminality, drug abuse and various issues.
>America does not lack people, it has good universities
I am not american so not 100% certain, but from what I can see, the public education system in the USA is not that great and universities are way too costly compared with the rest of the world.
I 100% agree that there is a huge diversity in tech problem.
Not all of that problem is about hiring POCs either, a female friend of mine had to flee a job because none of her colleagues would accept to have a woman as their manager (that's in 2020 in the SV..)
>So why are the big tech corporations that are constantly virtue signalling about Black Lives Matter
You are answering yourself, virtue signaling is cheap. I can talk for my own company. They were happy enough to talk about the importance of BLM, but less interested in taking concrete steps.
I fully believe that companies should encourage their engineers to participate in mentorship programs. I highly doubt that it would magically solve systemic racism but it would be a relatively cheap way to find and hire junior engineers and good PR.
Every time you file an H1B Visa, you pay something called a ACWIA Fee (“American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998”). For employers who have between 1-25 full-time workers, the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act fee is $750. For employers with 26 or more full-time employees, the fee is $1,500. [1] This fee was established to fund training and education programs administered by the Department of Labor.
As of 2018, there were 420K active H1B visas in the USA. These people need to renew their visas every 3 years (most are Indians and they can never become PR in their lifetime). So that means 300-630 million USD is being added to this fund on a recurring basis over a 3 year period.
That’s a very interesting thing, I had no idea. So a sensible thing to do would be to increase that fee substantially and have it go straight to subsidizing degree programs that aren’t creating enough home grown talent.
In other words, the company should expect to pay close to market rate per H1B plus the fee.
We remove the incentives to abuse the program for cost reduction, and straight up use the fees to fund college.
That brings me to some weird job posts that I keep seeing for some large bank. The role was for ‘Specialist’ developer, and I wonder if it really is some specialist role that they can’t fill in a major city (seemed like typical web developer stuff).
Shrugs, say it ain’t so, would hate to know that’s how it’s being gamed.
That's a good idea, but alas I fear such a proposal would be deemed too... umm nationalistic or something... better to have local talent pay through the nose for their qualifications so that they can then compete on the global market with folks that don't have such debt.
> In other words, the company should expect to pay close to market rate per H1B plus the fee.
what's different now? they're legally required to do both as of now.
Are you telling me that the H1-B that is hired doesn't do any work and free-loading off the American economy without paying any taxes (like Social Security, which they don't get to access).
Could you share what that job posting was? I'd love to look at it, if you suspect a violation, you should report it.
I’m not implying anything about the actual workers.
I’m mostly being suspicious of corporations that have over 50% of their staff as h1bs or off shore. I feel that’s probably set up that way for one of the common reasons in business ($$$$).
Just trying to learn how the math works out. I have no doubt Google is hiring the very best worldwide, but I have sincere suspicions that your average enterprise found a way to keep tech costs down by using these loopholes.
Also to your last point, this is something no one can prove. How am I going to prove that a company can hire that talent locally? They’ll just say they met with candidates and they weren’t up to snuff. You can’t prove anything in that situation, all you can really do is look at the numbers from a bird’s eye view and see that hey, over half your staff is world class rare talent apparently.
> Also to your last point, this is something no one can prove. How am I going to prove that a company can hire that talent locally? They’ll just say they met with candidates and they weren’t up to snuff. You can’t prove anything in that situation, all you can really do is look at the numbers from a bird’s eye view and see that hey, over half your staff is world class rare talent apparently.
So, you're telling me that they're gonna pay the same amount they'd pay for a local employee PLUS the H1-B overhead, just to hire a foreign worker?
Put yourself in the shoes of the employer, what are you to gain from this? (hint: it sure isn't monetary)
To me, what you mention seems like veiled xenophobia, I hope I'm wrong.
Posting this again from another thread:
> Employers must attest to the Department of Labor that they will pay wages to the H-1B nonimmigrant workers that are at least equal to the actual wage paid by the employer to other workers with similar experience and qualifications for the job in question, or the prevailing wage for the occupation in the area of intended employment – whichever is greater.
> So, you're telling me that they're gonna pay the same amount they'd pay for a local employee PLUS the H1-B overhead, just to hire a foreign worker?
For the most part, sure, it should be cost prohibitive. I think companies should go out and find the best talent, they should try to do it locally, and if they can’t, paying the little overhead is nothing when you realize you just filled the role with world class talent.
It seems odd to have cost be a factor when you are basically saying you had to search the world to fill the role.
I personally don’t believe most companies need to scour the world to fill most roles. For those that do, they won’t scoff at the price. This will at least eliminate the arbitrage that is rampant in the global economy.
Most of the companies you speak of are multi-national companies providing their services world-wide, why should google, a service that is offered to the whole world ONLY have employees who're born in America, while their service is used across the world?
Lets be honest, a country's wealth is determined by how widespread the customer base is for the goods and services that originate within it. Economies of a majority of countries aren't closed loops, they're built on trade, selling goods and services that the rest of the world would pay a premium for would make it wealthy.
Considering that, it's only fitting that they would want to hire world-class talent.
Nothing is stopping Google from
being an international company headquartered in France. France has a lot of social welfare rules that dictate a safety net for it’s own citizens such that every company in their realm must adhere to if they want to benefit from everything France has to offer.
America has a lot to offer, and part of the tax is you must support American workers first.
If India and China is the better place to work, better salaries, better consumer market, better infrastructure, better freedoms, better everything - feel free to operate from those places and respect the offerings of the people of that country, and please, put them first.
But don’t take advantage of the offerings of a place like Germany, while taking advantage of the lack of worker rights in China, while paying taxes in the Caribbean. This is taking advantage of every loophole imaginable.
> If India and China is the better place to work, better salaries, better consumer market, better infrastructure, better freedoms, better everything - feel free to operate from those places and respect the offerings of the people of that country, and please, put them first.
Believe me, this is precisely what has been happening, and now it's only going to be accelerated. You'll get your wish sooner than you expected.
Those employees pay taxes. They pay into the Social Security which they can't access.
edit: literally, do the math, 420K+ active H1-Bs, they should be at least making upwards of 70K per year, tax revenues should be upwards of a few billion dollars every year.
> What if, instead of bowing to corporate greed which cares not a bit for our country or our people, we actually invested in our own population and trained them to do the jobs H1-B workers currently do.
Wishful thinking under the current administration.
Yes, chop shops out there abuse the system, and have become substantial factor in some industries.
Much of the H1B candidates out there are graduates of american universities that are trying to take the next step to be in America. We should be embracing these people where possible, not villanizing them. Make it so the chop shops can be weeded out, not the good people that are forced to work under them due to a broken system.
Also, many jobs require base salaries that are VERY in line with the market, if not higher, as a financial check to the Employer to make sure they want said (H1B) candidate.
We had trouble finding a JR DevOps person, basically forced to go H1B, and a JR in the midwest was going to cost us 95K with little experience. That was widly out of line for a JR devops candidate
Except for the individuals. US educated students who want to remain in the US, work, and raise a family are now basically being told to go back. Or people who prefer the US for non-monetary reasons (crazy thought, I know).
But what I find interesting is that programs like the diversity visa (DV) lottery with even more relaxed requirements or even illegal immigration don't get scrutinized as much as H1-B. I wonder if it's because H1-B workers primarily compete for well-paying white collar jobs while most DV winners and illegal immigrants go for blue-collar jobs.
I came to USA for education in 2008-09. Payed for my own education thanks to my parents and their sacrifice of lifetime savings. Did not take any govt funds for education. I graduated with a masters degree with Perfect 4.0 gpa . I worked my way up from financial crisis to working SV today. I have family, kids going to public school and also own a home. I don’t remember anytime taking a pay cut to stay in the country. It’s been more than 10years that I was legally here and always followed the law and I am still 5 years out at minimum from getting a green card. I rely on h1b renewals to keep going.... so it’s not exactly easy for me to pickup and go back to my home country where I haven’t stayed for 10+ years now to “fix” this problem.
There huge nuance which is missed when talking about H1bs ... there are body shops which do cut wages and should be stopped. However the immigration system in USA needs significant reform as well. It’s hard already to build a life for your family with a normal 3 year lease ( h1b duration) for this kind of misinformed political rhetoric to have unintended consequences.
Unless your priority date is earlier than 2012, you are a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 30 years away from your green card. The backlog between 2009 and 2012 is around 40k people or 80k green cars so around 15 to 30 years
I think it is a very good idea ... poaching of the best and brightest talent from less developed countries who invested in the education of these people is a form of robbery.
If you need them , then let them work remotely and pay them fair wages as they would have received in the US and let them contribute their tax to their own country.
Robbery? I'm guessing you also feel that the people who escaped across the Berlin Wall were "robbing" the Soviet Union of their labor? I don't suppose the actual humans involved get a say in this, do they?
My dude, the people who came here to work and make their living are individuals, they have desires of their own to trade their services for a good life. Countries don't own their citizens, they are entities organized by people interested in living there.
Of course they do not own their citizen, that is why you can take them to the US or other developed countries. However yes you do rob these countries of skilled workforce, and yes you do create an environment, which stuntnts the growth of these countries and yes you do increase the misery of the other citizen who is left in that countries. You just have to be honest, and say that benefit for US outweighs the loss for say India or Ukraine.
I don't think someone from a collectivist culture will never be able to understand the motivations of someone from an individualistic culture, I believe it's a pretty deep seated blindness. I can't help you, rather, we can't help each other, you just have to be in the right region of the globe that supports your intrinsic culture. [1]
> which stuntnts the growth of these countries and yes you do increase the misery of the other citizen who is left in that countries
So, are you suggesting that each country imprison all their individuals and extract value for itself? Absurd.
What does it have to do with individualism or collectivism? Why are you bringing an opinion of Sapolsky as if he was an important person?
What I am telling that the current H1B system in US does not benefit anyone exception for the employer and probably enslaved employee. The original motivation behind the program is decent - let the really outstanding specialists to develop more (as US provides more opportunities for the top people), but what it become is essentially stripping the countries of intellectual power in bulk, and using back in US for a cheap price, basically enslaving them, by locking them via H1Bs. American workforce suffers, because they are under constant stress for being replaced by cheap H1Bs, the poor countries suffer, because of brain drain, world becomes more unequal, USA becomes more unequal.
I never said nothing about "imprisonment" - most of poor countries are not prisons, and especially not for IT specialists, who can have some decent quality of live with their salaries. And the only hope for "the prisons" as you mentioned before to improve, is to keep their intellectuals in.
> What does it have to do with individualism or collectivism? Why are you bringing an opinion of Sapolsky as if he was an important person?
This proves my point, you think like a collectivist, the individual doesn't matter much to you. Besides, the reason I posted that article is because I wanted to give you some reference to understand the construct I'm talking about (a bit of "meta" so to speak), so that you can orient your thinking and it didn't have anything to do with Sapolsky or his "importance" (seems like this matters to you more than actual facts). It seems like you're a collectivist AND not intellectually curious (they usually go hand in hand though).
Your grammar and "philosophy" sounds very Asian. Most of your thinking revolves around "for the greater good (of the country)". Your determination of the "border" for benefiting from "greater good" seems arbitrary, why not the whole world?
As an individualist, my advice to you is: do whatever feels right to you. If you're truly for the greater good of the country, who are you to decide what the country has to do? and why should I care about your opinion? whats the proof that what you say is actually happening?
I do not need any scolding from a random internet person. My grammar cannot be "Asian" because I am native speaker of an Eastern European language. You do not even know me, and yet are trying to psychoanalyze me remotely. I am neither "individualist" nor "collectivist", I am just a pragmatic - whatever creates more stable world, without concentration of power in one country or group of people (which is exactly what goes against individualism) rubs me wrong way. I, in my turn, would advice to grow beyond Ayn Rand books, and understand that neither "individualism" nor "collectivism" can be ultimate goals, they are just instruments for particular societal issue at hand. Attempt to coerce people to buy into libertarian ideology is very "collectivist" by the way, it is forcing people to be like you, to make you feel that everyone else are like you.
Some of these make no real sense, like L1 and J1 visas, which are so few and uncommon and are often granted to individuals. J1's for example are for researchers coming abroad to collaborate with scientists here, there isn't a real argument that J1's are taking jobs from anyone else that I can tell. Not that anyone should be travelling at all this year but one would have to see if they get extended after covid dies down.
L1s also look like they're geared towards essentially overseas managers moving to the US, particularly in the case of a single international company moving their executives around physically.
J1 visas are what all the tech companies use for interns from Canada. Technically you aren't allowed to work under a J1 visa, but everyone seems to be doing that anyways - tech companies will always say that you are going to be treated just like a full-time employee during the interview, and then say you are only in the US for training when applying for the visa.
So may be I'm showing my ass here but I'm an academic. Our group was planning on collaborating with a French group who regularly performs nature-tier scientific work and we were planning on exchanging a graduate student and having them get their degree here, but if this holds it looks like they won't be able to do that. I don't doubt there are abuses (look up the thread, I see some iffyness around H1B's but the program itself being corrupt I don't think is true) but they're going to hurt everyone to score political hits for right wing xenophobes.
Look, my honest opinion is the abuses are generally bad, especially for immigrants who are being put in bad situations which because yet another thing the companies have as leverage over them, but then the people who should be targeted are the companies who are abusing the system, not the programs themselves which hurts everyone, especially the immigrants.
Well you're not completely truthful here. Yes you can work under J1, its an internship or traineeship visa. J-1 in general is related to learning tho. But there is nothing against doing something for money.
Xenophobia is a bitch. A few years ago I experienced an atrial fibrillation while exercising, so I called an ambulance, as I didn't know what was happening to me and thought that that was the end.
Once in the ambulance the paramedic started asking me where I am from and if I came in on one of "those visas".
I was afraid I was about to die, and this fucker was being xenophobic.
Because somebody's feelings were hurt? That's a useless argument to make against a professional who's basically effective at his job and very useful to society. The US is useless at civil rights these days precisely because it's all between "my feels" and straight out looting. Conditioned knee jerking all over the place.
I agree with you. Unless it can be proven that he provided sub-par care because I was a foreigner, which I am pretty sure that he didn't, then there is absolutely no case for losing his job, or even be warned.
It's good to talk about our feelings and try to be considered to each other, but we should put facts and reason above feelings, which are not objective, otherwise we are doomed as society.
Having said that, if I would see my employee talk to a customer like this, I would definitely ask them to be more professional and discreet. Either here, in US, or back in my home country, where I think xenophobia is worse.
Companies only care about feelings because of profit, not because they actually care about the social issues. Hurting customer feelings = potential loss of customer = loss of profit.
> Unless it can be proven that he provided sub-par care because I was a foreigner,
If the patient has an adverse outcome and it comes out that a question like this was asked, you can bet someone will try to convince a jury that that was the case. You think the ambulance company wants to waste months or years in litigation?
At best, the paramedic was a moron asking a pointless question in an emergency situation. And alienating the patient, potentially worsening their condition. As an employer, I'd put them on a PIP immediately.
At worst they've opened up the company to a multi-million dollar suit.
It seems in this story the only person who had their feelings potentially get in the way of the job is the paramedic, no? There's no reason for them to be asking such questions while doing their job.
So when you're in an ambulance having a medical emergency, you'd be OK with being asked a question like that? And having to worry about whether the answer might affect the quality of care you receive?
Not everything about "my feels" is without consequence. Try and be a human being. Have some empathy.
Thank you. Not everyone is like this however. I can't even begin to tell you how amazing, friendly and compassionate were the staff at the hospital(Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara). They definitely made up for the awful ride there.
I wasn't there, but this sounds more like cluelessness than anything else. I could imagine making small talk like this to keep someone's mind off of their pain or anxieties. Did it really seem like the gal or guy was hating on you?
I get asked where I am from all the time, because of my strange accent. However I've never before been asked about what visa I came in on.
The way he talked about the Visas, gave me the impression of someone who has been conditioned to believe that "those Visas" are evil.
Or maybe I completely misread it, and he was just trying to make conversation as you said, to calm me down. But choosing the Visa subject seemed quite odd. Usually when I mention my home country people chose a subject like history, mythology, holidays or current affairs.
So again, I wasn't there. I will say, having grown up in the sticks, I love hearing the accents of foreign people and sometimes ask them about theirs. I know they might take it wrong, but it's hard to resist doing so.
And indeed, when I see someone in pain or anxiety, I'm often tempted to just make small talk on any subject I can think of, to distract them. I usually don't, to avoid offense. But I think they'd suffer less if I did, no matter how stupid my words.
I never get offended when I am asked. Why would I? It’s natural curiosity IMHO. And actually makes small talk easier as it’s a subject I know and can chat about :)
But I don’t know, if I told you I was from Greece, would my visa be the first think that would pop into your mind for small talk?
Speaking just for myself, I often end up saying rather stupid things when thinking on my feet.
On the other hand, yeah, the could simply have been a jackass. Greeks, though? Who doesn't love the Greeks? The Turks, I guess, but in America, I think they are well-regarded.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 195 ms ] threadThose three companies control a significant amount of what people see online.
The same could be said for any loophole. If you don't exploit it, that does not mean that nobody else will exploit it. You should push for the loophole to be fixed while exploiting it to show why.
Censoring trump is the nuclear option.
However after the pandemic and his complete lack of leadership over police brutality incidents and the BLM protests, he has turned off a lot of previous supporters and fired up a lot of unmotivated haters. I think it’s going to be a landslide Blue Wave.
To put in another way, if Trump wins again, the Dems need to dissolve the party and the liberals need to create a new party altogether. This is about as easy home run as it gets for them.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CGRA2534
Plenty of education and skill in the USA that doesn't have a fitting job (right now) to put that to use.
Say there are 100000 MBA's but you need someone who knows how to run a kubernetes cluster with a custom syscall shim for a modified kernel and there is someone in Norway who knows how to do that. Even combining all those college graduates combined with all their business education wouldn't be useful for such a role, but that Norwegian person would be. But you still want to stop H-1B?
Also, those mass layoffs you reference are rather recent and doesn't seem to have anything to do with this specific visa system. At the same time, the pool of available people might suddenly exist now, and that means that a company that needs someone with those skills now has a native worker available instead of having to search for people elsewhere. H-1B workers that were laid off have to exit the USA so it's not like they will add to that pool.
That said, it is still possible that those laid off people were selected to let go because their stills aren't as needed as others inside that company (i.e. positions that only exist due to scale). That doesn't mean those people happen to be the ones that you'd need to seek someone else for. Assuming that all tech people have identical skills doesn't help the conversation.
That's always true. You don't need to provide particulars.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2020/06/11/unemp...
If this is objection, why not just raise the minimum salary requirements to 100k instead of banning it? Most Silicon Valley companies would easily meet it.
The difference here is that America has a large 'labour' pool, but the roles you need filled aren't as much just clocking in and out doing some random task, but have requirements that are harder to meet and apparently aren't met by the available Americans. Assuming malice isn't very constructive and to do something about it that actually helps anything needs some backing information.
The other way around: most people don't really want to work in the USA and will only go if the money is right. This also means that the company in the USA that is trying to find someone to fill a gap in their needs might have to spend twice as much getting their problem solved. At the same time, the amount of Americans asked to work outside of the USA is rather low as there aren't that many special skilled people that aren't already available. If you check out the sources listed at the WikiPedia page at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_diaspora you'll find that a lot of emigration happens for other reasons, and only a small part is related to special skills needed in emerging markets (which are markets that need a lot of skilled people but are not very attractive to a lot of people due to cultural differences or stability worries).
The "Fixed pie fallacy" [1] is probably both one of the most important tenants of modern policy-making, yet it's rarely explicitly discussed or debated.
Cyclone_, your thinking relies on this fallacy, namely that if one person is working a job, that's one less job available. [2]
In reality, there is quite a bit of empirical research that indicates when people work (especially highly skilled jobs like in tech), it does not reduce (and may even increase) the jobs available to others [3].
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy 2. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/07/opinion/lumps-of-labor.ht... 3. https://siepr.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/...
Economies are complex, counter-intuitive feedback machines, but the "supply and demand" model fits the last 40 years of data, while the "floats all boats" model really doesn't.
"Lump of labor is a fallacy, honest!" sure sounds like the kind of opinion I could get a good penny for if I were an enterprising economist, though.
"More than half of the top American tech companies were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants"
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/30/us-tech-companies-founded-by...
Recent immigrants were responsible for creating tens of thousands of jobs, most of them for Americans.
Software isn't a zero-sum game even on a country level and certainly US benefits enormously because companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix etc. are global giants but employ massive amounts of highly paid people in US.
Because it's very difficult. Even then Zenefits' co-founder (Laks Srini) started on an H-1B.[1]
What's that saying? "Entrepreneurship uh...finds a way."
1. https://www.computerworld.com/article/2852250/silicon-valley...
In any case, immigration is the least upsetting globalization policy IMO: it is exactly what it says on the tin, almost everyone agrees that too little or too much is bad, and the amount can be tuned using quotas. H1B, however, is not that. It pretends to be about scarce skillsets (which enter this calculation one way) when it's actually usually about standard skillsets (which enter the calculation in another). Further, it suppresses the bargaining ability of the people subjected to it, depressing wages for both them those they compete with. Worse still is "regulatory arbitrage" where low tariffs encourage companies to bypass environmental, safety, and labor regulation by shipping manufacturing (or what have you) overseas. I prefer immigration to both H1Bs and regulatory arbitrage, and not by a small margin.
As a more general point, exponential growth is one helluva drug and truly does create a "floats all boats" environment, but different economics apply once an economic sector plateaus. Those economics look much closer to zero-sum. Zero-growth = zero-sum. Low growth is low sum. That's why what happened to American manufacturing over the last 20 years is a good model for what happens to American software over the next 20, if we aren't careful.
We've had it good in software, but we're no longer in the phase where we can pretend the sigmoid is a neverending exponential.
Not if you're a racist, though.
There are folks on HN who are either covertly racist or simply delusional that their thoughts about policies come from some other place besides racism.
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Generally I'm happy this place is moderated strictly to keep the discussion civil. That there doesn't seem to be a will (there are no dead comments under mine, as far as I can see) to allow a direct discussion on american racism feels a little weird, but is over all understandable.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Assuming positive intent and being vulnerable enough to ask questions usually will do a lot more to mete out such flame wars than latching on to the first emotional misconstructions of the drafting of ideas.
Brevity is fine. The issue is the expected value of future subthreads: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
We have to go by effects, not intent: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
When the topic is flamebait to begin with, the burden is on the commenter to disambiguate: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
To be clear, which topic specifically are you alluding to because I think anyone with any cognizance on the issues of race and nationalism have a lot of overlapping features and a lot of cloudy, hard to define nuance, so can you please disambiguate in this instance?
[0]https://www.etymonline.com/word/nation
I don't think this is too hard to imagine applying to a person living long term in Japan and definitely not hard to imagine in the US, where there are no true "Americans" in the first place, apart from maybe the indigenous peoples.
For the purposes of this debate, "Americans" means citizens and those that can vote, the ones to whom the government answers.
Why can't we discuss the legitimacy of the government?
A nationalist is focused on 1 nation.
So yeah, it's a problem.
https://www.uscis.gov/report-fraud
https://www.uscis.gov/report-fraud/uscis-tip-form
That is probably because other countries make it even harder for people to immigrate.
A company hires someone out of college, trains them and has them working and integrating into the company for about a year and a half, but then the government, because of a literal lottery, requires them to randomly replace them with someone else.
And you’re surprised a company that has spent all that money and resources on hiring someone and with the known hit or miss nature of hiring wouldn’t want to replace them with a random new candidate?
Edit: And it gets better. They don’t need to replace the person if someone else accepts the job. They need to get rid of that employee who they are happy enough to be spending tens of thousands of dollars on that they wouldn’t need to on their citizen counterpart, even if their possible replacement didn’t accept the job. Merely if the possible replacement’s resume fit the minimum requirements of the job.
That’s why companies rewrite the position to be hyper specific. Because if there is anyone else available eho can meet the bare minimum who applies for the job, even if they aren’t interested in it and will never accept an offer, they are required to get rid of their existing multi year employee who they are happy with.
There are companies who found the absolute best in the world that they have to have. So they need that H1-B to get the job done and hire the best person.
Then there are companies who just want to contract out super cheap labor, so they do thousands of H1-B applications hoping a few hundred make it through, then the they charge a local rate, but pay the employee a fraction and reap the profits.
I’m flooding this thread a bit, but I’ve always been a little confused by the consultancy firms. Is there a clear difference between off shoring and H1B? Or is it mostly the same thing for these companies, with different margins for each.
So the H-1Bs are loss leaders with actual money being made in offshoring instead.
But the client often has their own employees on H-1B visas as well. This is unrelated to either offshoring/consulting.
Eg. Take a company like Apple. Apple hires employees on H-1B visas and pays them well.
But also Apple uses consulting firms (both US-based and offshored) for specific projects/functions. These workers are not Apple employees. They are employees of the consulting company -- or in some cases, there is a chain of contracts where they are employed by one company, which contracts them out to a consulting firm, which then contracts them out to end client (Apple).
The abuse happens through contractors.
Companies hiring full time H1B employees directly will not save money because there is no incentive to and they have to pay the government additional fees simply for the H1B visa, and they have to almost certainly have an immigration team, or at a bar minimum a lawyer on retainer to keep up with the immigration stuff.
My company applied for an employee I manager’s permanent residency (she is on an H1B visa which has a limit of 6 years unless you apply for a permanent residency). The application process costs the company 30k on a one time basis, including fees to the government, lawyer fees, and associated expenses.
Its not in salary that you see the money. The savings are in training and legal costs.
The average tenure of an HB1 is much longer than a US citizen. Turnover is lower for obvious reasons.
Threats of litigation , etc are much lower too. I havent seen a single HB1 sue their employer. Similarly, i have seen multiple US citizens sue employers, and almost always without merit (often it was to stave off termination, retaliate, etc).
There is alson some risk in a US worker. There is a lot of entitlement even at the high end. I have seen many native engineers and even PMs hit bars every other afternoon...on a 3pm weekday. These were people close to 200k year.
The HB1 is a shield against that risk (or poor hiring), and thats savings too
I'm not unbiased: I'm a former H1B visa holder and wasn't underpaid at all. I promise you we exist! It's not a fun situation to be in... if you have a pending green card application (up to a certain point in the process) you can't change jobs easily. And if you come from some countries (India, in particular) you have a wait of ten years or more before receiving your green card.
It feels like a collision of a bunch of otherwise unrelated decisions that ultimately harms both immigrant and native workers and only benefits companies. It's all fixable, but like so many things in the US right now, not politically possible.
If it's in excess of $300k for all roles it sounds like a Netflix type company or Netflix itself. I highly doubt nobody wants to work for that company.
What exactly does the work involve, if it is so difficult to either find candidates or give a candidate with some missing skills a few weeks to learn something new?
A small list of things that people may consider:
- competitive salary. 300k is one thing in (for example) Kansas City, but completely another in the Bay Area or New York City where it's not uncommon for senior roles to deliver at least a third again, if not more.
- the ethics of the company - does it engage in questionable behaviour? For example spying on users, building weapons, formenting unrest via algorithmic news feeds and so forth?
- the fundamental health of the company from a financial and existential perspective.
- does the company have a local reputation for being a poor place to work? For example, is it a bureaucracy where no-one can get anything done? Does it have a notoriously poor work-life balance, "face time" expectations, a culture where the loudest or most senior voice always prevails in decisions? What does Glassdoor (or levels.fyi) say about it?
- are the technologies you're hiring for overly specific? Are your job ads a buzzword bingo of "nice to have" frameworks, libraries or practices? Do the ads make it clear that experience in them is not required, provided you can learn them quickly thanks to experience of concepts or adjacent technologies?
Also, the vast majority of people on H1-Bs that I've worked with are quite... average. It's nothing against them, but I doubt they were blowing people away in the interview. Many of them do have better attitudes, though.
That's not to say that there aren't exceptional examples, or a given candidate was bad, but we absolutely could of hired some kid from university, or a mid-senior level from a US company. They just tend to have more demands.
It's not exactly a secret the main reason for the program, is to lower wages here. ie. keep the wages of nationals in check. Of course, you also get access to a better deal on labor, and people that want the job very badly.
I could be off base, but many of the people I've worked with on H1-Bs simply cause less political problems. It's not necessarily a cultural thing, as I'm including many different countries. They have the threat of deportation hanging over their head.
I've never seen "could-have" (hyphenated) though. I don't think that's right either.
Personally, I can't take time out of my job to train employees - which in our case could easily take three months. I can't even imagine us finding and hiring some at this time. These guys are an absolute asset to the company.
Now, if the business can survive in the meantime is a different matter. But the business has no choice in the matter. And the business is not alone in the matter. Which probably makes that a moot point too.
I don't claim that it will be easy. "I can't train people" doesn't compel me as a broadly satisfactory counterargument for the above reasons. That sentiment itself is not charitable making it hard for me to read it charitably.
We are in the health IT sector and you may not know this (because it surprises most everyone) but there is an absolute revolution happening in healthcare. We're approaching version 5 of FHIR. And I'd guess 99% of the devs on HN are like "what the heck is FHIR". It's a core standard for exchanging healthcare data. And it's literally the tip of an iceberg. And that's my personal dilemma as a lead developer.
Speaking of skill growth, devs attended FHIR Dev Days last week, CCDA Implementation-athon a few weeks before that, and the FHIR Connectathon a week before that.
None of us are in the office and since we have formed personal relationships over the last few years we know how to "get stuff done". AFAIK we treat every employee well enough they have few reasons to leave. Now is not the time for us to lose a dev. Any dev.
I just ask the government to stop being jerks and let us ride out this covid year without too much more upset...
Still feel free to see my response just below. That said I'm not management but our devs are smart and knowledgeable and I'm sure are getting offers from other companies. And I like to think they are treated well and I hope I get to work with them for a long time to come.
But then they decided they could add a machine learning tag to it, and it was fine.
That's literally one of the requirements for the Visa, the minimum has been repeatedly raised to address this problem.
So? Want to explain that to me?
It can also serve as a way for third party to earn a sizable chunk of that persons wages which would be a less likely scenario for someone hired stateside.
And here’s the kicker. An H1B employee costs a company a lot more than a resident because of government fees and lawyer costs.
So if you have a citizen and an H1B holder drawing the same salary, it actually means the company values the H1B holder far more than they do the citizen.
How is fraud a problem with the visa or the visa holder?
I'm not saying there aren't Americans who could do my job, but I have been on the hiring side since joining and there is clearly enough demand for labour in the market right now that it is hard for them to hire qualified people at all, let alone qualified Americans. Employees in this field just have so many options that companies have to go to pretty significant lengths to get who they want. And I know Americans coming from my background and working in the same field and I can tell you I am not being underpaid relative to them.
The visa workers are second-class citizens and exploited by companies to keep cost low. It undermines all workers and in the long run undermines all nations involved. Take the US's relationship with China manufacturing where China has some of the worst pollution and is one of the largest world polluters as they do not adhere to any of the same regulations that nations of the west adhere to.
Currently there is the narrative that the US has a shortage of talented STEM. This is untrue. The shortage is due to a skewed labor market that suppresses opportunity for US citizens in the same way that a US manufacturer wouldn't be able to compete against a Chinese manufacturer not because we don't have the technology, demand, or resources, but that the difference in regulations makes it more costly.
Oh, and I have to pay taxes to a government that actively torments me with ever changing requirements and absurdity.
And I don't get to vote or own property on my current Visa.
This is why I push for the opening of offices outside the US in every company I work in.
These are the same people who claim that people should immigrate legally, but then close all legal avenues of immigrating.
Eliminate H1B and expand green cards for skilled people who want to live here.
(Lottery is difficult to win due to rampant abuse by certain Indian-US outsourcing companies)
For H1b, you can at least change jobs. An L1 cannot change jobs at all. So, you are completely at the mercy of your employer. Fortunately my employer is benign, but that is not the case for everyone.
Having a proper points system (not one that is easily gamed) and giving people a greencard to enable them to change jobs would be a much better system. This would prevent low-skilled workers and the suppression of US salaries. And if there is a high demand, the US can just take those with the highest points (as the Australian system does).
There are two very good systems: 1. Australian 189 permanent resident system. Example of points:
https://www.am22tech.com/au/australia-points-calculator-for-...
There is limited positions, so only those with the highest points are selected.
(Compared to H1b where the bar is low and people are selected via lottery. This incentivises outsourcing companies to have 4 people apply for every one true position).
2. Japan's point-based high skill visa (Technical stream)
http://www.immi-moj.go.jp/newimmiact_3/en/system/index.html
Processing time for this is 5 days guaranteed and very easy to apply for (I got mine in 4 days).
This is not permanent residence, but you can apply for permanent residence after 1 year.
One means they want to limit immigration of brown people to as close to zero as possible while allowing white people from Europe with money to move here. Where they can't outright forbid anyone except white Europeans they want to increase the difficulty and bureaucracy to the point where virtually nobody gets through. If it takes 10 years to become a citizen great. If it takes 30 better. Let em die waiting.
Two lives in a fantasy land of law and order where the non criminal types could just queue up and prove that they are the right type of people and follow the law. In this fantasy land type one doesn't exist and the people sneaking in are proven to be bad people by the act of breaking the law. These people live in a world where the law exists to protect and privilege them and anyone not following it is clearly transgressing.
Virtually nobody whom we citizens are descended from waited 10 years, hired a lawyer, and filled out paperwork in triplicate and both types are hypocrites who are themselves a disease on the body politic. If you hear someone talking about how they are for "legal immigration" unfriend them, block them, don't hire them, don't associate. You can't fix them so contain the cancer.
https://redbus2us.com/h1b-visa-petition-filing-deadline-is-i....
Regarding suspending H1Bs here is some not so breaking news: people on those visas are targeting jobs where no qualified people exist to fill them. Those people, by coming to the US create real value and increase the economic output of the US. They are also, in general, really smart people that fuel innovation. If you kill innovation the US is done.
So if they were approved in April, and the OPT doesn't expire before October, they can keep working and simply switch to H1-B status in October.
So it most likely prevents every approved visa holder for this year cycle.
The order is not expected to immediately affect anyone already in the United States.
Overstaying your Visa is illegal. I know ICE isn't going to knock on your door right away, but it's going to negatively affect future Visa applications (visiting also requires a Visa).
Work authorization and visa are not technically same. You can stay in the country legally even with expired visa (the one pasted in the passport) but with work authorization approval documents extending the same visa category or another category.
You're better off leaving the country because life without a Visa will be difficult and will eventually result in your arrest when your I-94 expires.
Your legal status is shown in your I-94. You can get into the country in a status, and adjust to another, without having a visa to reflect the new status.
If you leave the country and want to get back in, however, you need to have the right visa.
Again, a visa is only required to have a CBP officer admit you into the country in a specific status. After getting in, it does not have much importance.
What Trump is trying to do is, hack his way into enforcing the policies he thinks it is a good idea. Since SCOTUS gave him a carte blanche with respect to admitting aliens into the country, in order to stop H1B, he is using the same legislation. That lets him only to stop people from getting in; other ways of stopping it either takes time or needs to go through Congress.
Also how would you transition to another visa when applications are suspended? You'll have to live in the United States without a job in the hopes the suspension is lifted before your I-94 expires.
The I94 expiration case can happen in practice. I don't know all possible cases, but at least for H1B done through change of status, you are not required to get a visa as long as you do not leave the country. And no, you r I-94 does not expire for three years, so it is entirely possible to complete a whole H1B period without a visa.
> You are still conflating legal status and visa in an improper way.
I am and you should speak to your immigration lawyer if your visa is expiring.
I am going through F1->H1B process. I do not have an H1B visa, and I have a document that tells me I am allowed to stay in the country in the H1B status between a time period, and you are telling me I am in trouble because I do not have a visa. Ok, I suppose.
A common immigration path is F1(Student) -> OPT -> H1B Status. If the person was already in the US(because they're going to a US college) then they would be given H1B status(read: no visa). Getting a H1B visa from the US consulate would be required IFF they: 1) Weren't already in the US, 2) Need to leave and reenter the US.
If the person is _already_ in the US when they receive H1B Status then they don't need to receive a visa. Not having a visa is not illegal or affect work status. A visa simply allows ingress and egress in/out of the country and does not confer work authorization(which is what an H1b "Status" does).
Source: I've gone through this process, and from a family of attorneys.
No - you need to maintain status, not visa. For H-1 workers and F-1 students, staying on expired visa is quite common and legal - as long as they do the paperwork to maintain their status.
If they leave the US to visit another country while maintaining a legal status, then they cannot return without applying for the visa.
For H-1 workers and students, a visa is only relevant for border crossings.
So it doesn’t affect current visa holders in the country unless they travel outside the country and have to enter back.
Need to see what are the broad exceptions.
I speculate this is what’s going to happen. When there’s enough backlash, they will clear up the language or ease some restrictions. Meanwhile, people who really need to go out of the country or are re-entering have their lives and careers ruined, probably irreversibly.
During the initial roll out of Trump's travel ban, it seems like they seriously considered, and perhaps initially intended for it to affect Green Card holders as well. Perhaps the public reaction was what changed their mind. Perhaps public feedback could change it this time too.
https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/29/politics/donald-trump-travel-...
With this administration, the cruelty is a feature, not a bug.
what you are talking about would require a rule-making process and/or statutory change. they are going to try that, but it will take longer and will be subject to judicial review.
AC21 lets you change employers without waiting for the petition to be approved. that's statutory. much harder to change as it would require Congress.
eventually, your visa label will expire. after that, if you need to travel overseas, you will need a new visa label and under this proposed exec order, if it's still active you will not be able to return. so you will have to avoid overseas travel entirely until the ban is lifted.
Bad for america, good for the rest of the world though- maybe by restricting American foreign policy we’ll see more competition for SV open up globally.
I personally feel that the H1-B system needs to be rethought to encourage a healthier but not at the expense of bringing hard working immigrants into this country.
Edit: I can’t reply to these replies but the post is about something the whitehouse is doing. All conversations about this link are implicitly political and if that’s against the rules then either the post should be removed or the rules should be changed.
About time US companies realize that they need to have more fault tolerance to support their employees by open more global offices. This is especially true because the world outside is becoming more competitive and erratic business decisions like this will destroy product competitiveness.
As for foreign companies/entrepreneurs/would be business owners with capital, the US is shut. There is no need to do business here.
[0]: https://um.dk/da/nyheder-fra-udenrigsministeriet/newsdisplay...
[1]: https://www.regeringen.se/pressmeddelanden/2020/06/ud-avrada...
Feels like this is just going to accelerate the moves we've seen in the Bay Area towards companies going fully remote.
If this happens, the administration could see a lot of that money just leave the country altogether.
No way they're going to make an exception for that
Going by these numbers (WARNING: PDF download): https://immigrationhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/h-...
That shows what a short-sighted move this is on the part of the administration - just re-election theater, I guess.
Is there a minimum asset requirement? Is there a requirement that to apply have have to have been there for 3-5 years? An English language test? I don’t know for sure; asking.
A lot of people have a plan to make a bunch of money for 10-20 years and then go back and be entreprenerial in their home countries etc. Canada may (or may not) be a better permanent home, but if the goal is to make a bunch of money, that's not the best place to do it.
it's not like immigration is bad or anything but the balance is screwed up and and it's causing long term damage it's bad for immigrants and bad for americans
Canada has already been benefiting from the recent restrictions on work visas and rejecting visas for no reason, for example by saying a forensic pathologist isn't a specialty occupation.
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/27/799402801/canada-wins-u-s-los...
https://insights.dice.com/2020/02/11/canada-continues-benefi...
I have no specific knowledge of the wording of the treaty, but it seems highly likely that the leader of any of the 3 countries could suspend the visa.
A cousin of mine used to do staffing for highly specialized roles in the auto industry and the TN was very important in the Detroit/Windsor metro area. I don't think it is used in tech anywhere near as much as it is used elsewhere; since it is clear that the current administration is just looking for ways to give the tech industry a hard time, it seems unlikely that TN would be a target.
On the other hand, the method for getting a TN visa is very much different than other visas. A Mexican citizen coming into the US has a fair amount of advanced paperwork required but otherwise has almost no problem. A Canadian citizen just shows up at the border with a job offer, a detailed description of the job and proof of the education requirements. The immigration officer makes the determination on the spot and they either walk through or turn around! The administration could quietly issue guidance to immigration officers about how strict they need to be, and you might end up with very similar effects without all the publicity of an executive order.
Canada on the other hand gives you PR on entry if you're skilled enough.
Money doesn't matter if it becomes an eternal struggle or impossible to maintain legal status.
#1 could change, some tech companies have started to realize they can offer more remote jobs and save money while offering salaries that are still very competitive to anyone not living in the Bay Area. #2 was already problematic before Trump. #3 is often better outside the US.
Is that my post or my parent's post? Fwiw I'm well aware of Canada's property bubble but I'm sure that has more to do with foreign capital outflows than local talent being pushed out the market.
So it seems plausible -- but these aren't people cynically exploiting Canada as a hop on the way to the US, they're people who were born outside Canada but moved to Canada as children and grew up Canadian.
[1]https://www.theweek.in/news/world/2020/06/22/american-dream-...
[0] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/us-politics/article-tr...
BTW 500k people on the H1B1 visa is a hell lot of "skilled people": https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/12/us/foreign-workers-visas-...
Huh, I hadn't thought of that. Maybe they'll hire 3 or 4 of the unemployed folks to replace each h1b so that they can "group code", it might work.
Also, LOVE your logical reasoning that went from "H1-B is abused a lot" => "Ban it".
It's not "banned", the proposal is to temporarily suspend it. When it is resumed, however, I would ask that they put a lower bound on the wages paid. Say, $100K for programmers - the "real" middle class living wage where I live. That will reduce abuse significantly. To reduce it even further, switch to the auction system, where a fixed size quota is allocated, and employers "bid" salaries for workers. I do have skin in this game: I'm paid a lot, and this will create more competition for me, but it will improve the ridiculous situation where people get into debt to get degrees and then can't find jobs. Why anyone in the US be against this is a mystery to me.
Many people who do end up getting kicked out will probably take their jobs with them back home, especially in tech.
What if, instead of bowing to corporate greed which cares not a bit for our country or our people, we actually invested in our own population and trained them to do the jobs H1-B workers currently do.
Scaling back H1-B in this way is the common sense approach. And it benefits other countries too by reducing brain drain.
It's a win-win.
This doesn't include stock so maybe double that number for TC.
https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=STRATEGIC+STAFFING+IT+INC&...
It's possible (maybe even likely) that title deflation is happening, but based on my experience the salaries are definitely in line with the pay ranges for each job title (I worked at Amazon for 3 and a half years, so I have some first and second hand information on pay.)
If nothing else it's a great resource to see the unfiltered payscale at SV companies.
Americans are plenty smart, but they are only 4% of the world population. American companies compete on an international stage and not having access to the other 96% of talent would be a competitive disadvantage.
Many SV companies are in constant need of more skilled engineers.
Since the H1B visa can be transferred, when I arrived in the USA, nothing would have prevented me from going door to door and find a better paying job. Especially in the SV where there are tons of companies hiring.
So companies have a good incentive to give you a fair salary.
This is not true for all visas. In particular there is one visa (sorry can't remember its name off the top of my head) that is an "international transfer visa" : you work for one year for the company in a foreign country and then you can move to the USA while continuing to work for that company. It is pretty easy to get that visa but it is also very hard to transfer it to another company afaik.
Hiring is also a bit broken in our industry. The thing is, it is often pretty hard to distinguish what makes a good or a bad engineer. This being said, there are just not enough skilled engineers in the USA.
It would absolutely be possible to hire more local engineers and train them on the job but that would cost a lot of time for uncertain results. Companies prefer to hire engineers that can already be pretty productive from day 1.
https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=netflix&year=2020
https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=apple&year=2020
https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=linkedin&year=2020
https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=uber&year=2020
At the price point you wanted. A pool of eager H1Bs reduces the need for companies on the same block to be competitive on wages.
It'd be really interesting to see data on how often H1B's change jobs compared to the rest of the population.
All reputable Silicon Valley companies pay people exactly the same whether they are on a visa, have a green card, or are a US citizen.
I know for a fact that in my industry (not in SV) H1-B wages are lower, going off both public data and conversations I've had with H1-B coworkers, many who I consider my friends.
As a side note, I don't blame H1-B workers at all for coming here. They're generally great developers and great people.
source: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b
According to you, L&T were taking a cut out of the wages. Honestly, you should blow the whistle. L&T or whatever that middleman company is, they need to shutdown their H1-B program.
It is simply illegal otherwise.
(Sorry, not trying to be a jerk, but it is quite nuanced and I don't remember the details).
It’s both obvious and not at the same time, how does that work?
Can you please show me how it's obvious?
your words:
> I'm not referring to a deep secret. This is well documented. Just search the Internet for H1-B "prevailing wage" loophole and you'll find some.
and in the next sentence you seem to imply that it is not obvious, again your words:
> but it is quite nuanced and I don't remember the details
Nowhere did I say it. Definitely not in this statement:
> I'm not referring to a deep secret. This is well documented. Just search the Internet for H1-B "prevailing wage" loophole and you'll find some.
I suggest that if you want to have a fruitful discussion, you not put words into people's mouths.
* A "loophole" is easily searchable on the internet, and that I'll find "some"
* You don't believe that is "obvious"
<scratches head> You ok, my dude?
How so? Presumably he signed his contract in India - how would his company enforce it?
1) H1B's get salaries that are comparable to US engineer salaries.
2) A middleman takes a big bite out of that, the engineer thus takes home less.
3) H1B's are essentially like most immigrants, indentured servants who have no freedom to leave their employers, thus have little leverage asking for promotions or even autonomy as an employee.
4) Companies probably are most aware of 3) but it seems like at least for FAANG the biggest factor is they don't want to invest in training people and rather want people who already are skilled and such. It's probably true if you draw your net very tightly yes anyone can find that there aren't enough qualified workers out there who won't demand I guess near half a mill salaries.
Shut them down. Enforce the law.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b
FYI for the rest: the user-ids in green means that they created their account recently.
Once you let employees freedom, the market will take care of the salary. I also understand that employers invest in the visa application and relocation of people, so it should be fair to them as well. This can solved by having a period (1-year is pretty reasonable) that prohibits new visa holders from moving companies.
It's almost like the SV's previous gentleman agreement of non-poaching got replaced with "hey, let's use H1Bs, sure we might have to pay near market rates, but at least we can tie them down for at least 3/5 years without any option of leaving".
Personal experience in my part of the world seems to suggest that it is cost. Permanent employees are expensive and H1B's are so terrified of losing employment they are willing to work around the clock and for less.
I would like to see the whole program gone. I don't believe it is being used as it was intended.
You are looking at the top 100 companies and their full-time employees but not at the 1000s of vendor-employer ponzi scheme/scams that happen every day in the form of contractors who apply with fake resumes, take proxy interviews and outsource the assigned work to someone in India. Doesn't stop there, the dependents of those do a unlicensed food selling, baby sitting, work in local stores, what not. The hard to digest fact is the student who comes on F1 visa, succumbs to the pressure of 90 days period to get into a job to maintain the visa status joins a consultancy company, which starts the game. These consultancies market the candidate with high experience fake resume, arranges proxy candidate to take interviews, even Falsify the requirement of GC/citizenship candidate requirement - all these to charge the client a 100$/hr and pay a mere 40$/hr to the candidate through their sister companies acting as layers. A honest try from USCIS to do a quick scan in containing these will drop at least 50% of H1B lottery applications, void 30% of the consulting company licenses and also help the right talent to get an opportunity. If you are a gov/USCIS rep, drop me an email I'll be more than happy to provide more details, and possible ways of catching the wrong ones.
I'm from a shithole European country full of white people. The experience in the US has been very positive. People treat me nicely, both in SV and in rural Ohio. SV companies pay me equivalently to Americans as far as I can tell by asking around (for reference, depending on bonus/stocks my total comp is 200k+, which is not FAANG but above average for my position). Sometimes more for the same job. If I were kicked off my H1B, I'd just go back to one of the richest countries in the world and be fine. There's a smooth path to the Green Card for me, like for any H1B holder except Indians and Chinese.
That's kind of where the crux is.
As part of my job I've traveled to quite a few large enterprises that were not in SV, and often they have entire buildings full of 90% Indian H1B bros. I think 50%+ of all H1Bs are awarded to Indian citizens. There is a absolute cap on the number of Green Cards that can be awarded to citizens of any one country per year. In addition, India has about 10000 billion times the population of my shithole EU country.
Subsequently, the wait for my Indian H1B bros to get their Green Card is now several decades (it is "none" or "a few months" for most others except I believe Chinese).
So the indentured servitude is not due to H1B per se, but because of its interaction with the Green Card program for my Indian H1B bros and maybe Chinese H1Bers as well.
As a shithole European I can switch jobs pretty easily. At worst, I have to wait a few years to finish the Green Card process, so the "indentured servitude" is limited to 2-3 years. It is up to individual companies to decide if they want to sponsor your Green Card, but all companies I'm familiar with in SV will do so for any of their H1B employees with no exceptions. This might not be the case for other companies. My Indian H1B bro co-workers are paid just as well and treated fairly. Of course, the SV companies can't get around the Green Card cap for them, so that's still problematic. But the companies I've seen do not abuse that fact.
But the SV H1B experience is probably the exception if you look at the statistics. My Indian H1B bros at Certain Major American Companies You Almost Certainly Do Business With All The Time aren't treated nearly as well. They get thrown specs across the wall by managers (often Indians themselves), any response is silenced. They are often in physically different buildings or on different floors from the other workers.
The work I did in SV felt creative, challenging, and I was always empowered to do my job as well as my American co-workers. But those H1B-with-no-path-to-residency farms seemed like authoritarian sweatshops. During one consulting gig with Bank You Most Likely Use Daily, we saw a guy get fired for accidentally pushing a private key to Github. The AC wouldn't get fixed in the H1B-building, so we worked in a sweltering 85 degrees all day. The restrooms were in despicable condition, getting cleaned maybe 2-3 times per week. For a remote call, I was offered a used pair of in-ear headphones with somebody else's ear wax still smeared onto them. I politely declined and bought my own pair. I would've quit this company after a few months. But none of the H1Bers there can do that, because of their legal limbo.
To say that these folks are not empowered is a vast understatement. And I do think some companies are abusing this fact.
It's a hard hole to dig out of now. I've seen estimates that if you were to remove the per-country-cap for Green Cards, the next 5 years worth of Green Cards would go entirely to Indian citizens. Is it "fair" that one country gets 50-70% of all work (not family) based Green Cards? Is it "fair" that an Indian H1B worker has to stay in legal limbo for 25 years just because other people from his country also want to immigrate?...
Agree that domestic training should be invested.
Edit: sorry, clarified Apple not SV as a whole - and it was a Vice Or Vox article, so I should probably know better.
Who doesn't like free things?
A doctor leaves college maybe with 500k dollars in debt in the US, doctors in most other countries graduate with little or no debt at all: you could import thousands if not 100's of thousands of doctors willing to work a fraction of the current doctor's rate, thus making it cheaper for patients.
> And if they were, it's not like the money is "lost" in any way, as it goes back into local businesses which "stimulates" the economy and creates local jobs
Which money? I fear this is the broken window fallacy Bastiat liked to talk about.
Also stronger labor laws instead of gutting them, actually enforcing them instead of shanking the agencies responsible for them, and actually hitting guilty corporations where it hurts instead of handing out "cost of doing business" jokes.
And prosecuting guilty management as well. Middle manager 8374 might be less eager to ask for bullshit job requirements designed to only fit a specific H1B if their n+1 to 6 have just gotten years in the slammer for labor fraud.
If you want to see a more fair and competitive workforce, give H1-B visa holders more freedom to switch jobs without risk of losing their visa.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2020/06/11/unemp...
These number are said to underestimate the true unemployment numbers.
U.S. should focus on American unemployment numbers.
I don't know what local laws would apply, but I imagine that the same laws that have to do with equal pay can be made generic so that it applies to everyone for a position. In the end you should be paid for your value, not for your gender, color of your skin or the place you were born.
Who's this "our people" you're talking about?
As a US citizen, I consider every person in the world as part of my people, and I don't begrudge any individual coming and working or training in the US.
The more people, from whichever country, have access to good education and good jobs, the better.
Good education and jobs should not be reserved for people who happen to live or be born in a particular place, be descended from particular people, nor just those who managed to get certain bureaucratic paperwork.
Ideally we are all together in the human family, but practically a Democratic country's citizens are the ones who set policy with their votes. A country's policies therefore will tend to align with what's best for its people.
On a high salary and with the promise of being sponsored for a green card.
I got my green card just before covid impacted the USA and still have a pretty high salary (in the same range of my US born colleagues).
I already had a great job in my home country, I was not going to come to the USA to be paid a pittance.
Yeah, there is abuse of the green card system but it is in place because there aren't enough skilled workers in the USA.
1. SV/FAANGs, like elite colleges, only hire some very small percentage of people who apply. Many people who are perfectly well qualified and have successful careers otherwise get denied employment.
2. The market cap of these FAANGs is in the trillions. Between talent and capital, there's literally no problem they can't solve (they can solve problems about cyber bullying, trolling, etc but their business relies on it.. so it's not really a "problem" per se).
3. There are SO MANY underprivileged and/or poor kids in SV, LA, Pittsburgh, all the places where tech companies reside. Saying there aren't enough skilled workers in the US is kind of dishonestly true, as they have tons of applications from many qualified people.. many of whom with some training and support may very well become highly qualified....
4. ...They could literally invest some of those trillions to build a pipeline from these areas, develop talent locally - or at least domestically.
So much of tech is about solving problems with the resources you have. Opening up broadly to a global labor supply removes the constraint on that resource, and therefore don't need to innovate or find clever ways to make it work. Now, they are companies that have only one duty - deliver profit to shareholders - and that's fine and how companies should be run. But public policy needs to exist to serve the interest of the people, and for the most part - not entirely - H1B has been to serve the interest of executives in Big Tech.
Also, finally, Trump is absolutely awful, horrid, all that. A broken clock is right twice a day though, and this is one of the few possibly accidental things he's done that isn't a complete self-shot to the head.
2/3/4 -> FAANG have a ton of money but no incentive at all to spend it on philanthropy. I wish it was not the case, but their only job is to make their investors happy.
3 - is it dishonest ? For sure there are some kids in SV, LA,etc that could work in tech if they got the education but the thing is, they didn't. Also, local talent is never going to compare to the global one.
I would love to see laws pushing FAANG and co to invest in philanthropic causes. Heck, I would not even mind if this was based on taxation. But cutting H1B is not going to solve any of these problems.
Let's just have a thought experiment (maybe we'll see what happens if the ban continues) - what will Big Tech do if H1B is not a thing anymore?
Second thought experiment - who benefits most from H1B? First of all, the H1B holders themselves. Second, the tech industry itself. Further out from that benefits are less clear and more mixed. We are a nation of immigrants seeking opportunity, immigration is important to this country. Immigrants brings a lot of economic and cultural benefits, and we must always fight bigotry and discrimination towards our immigrants. But there is also much more complexity surrounding immigration policies, and they have their cost, too.
So why are the big tech corporations that are constantly virtue signalling about Black Lives Matter and social justice not simply training American engineers (not specifically black, but people coming from poor socioeconomic backgrounds, which would definitely include many African-Americans). Why do they bring Indian or Chinese engineers?
America does not lack people, it has good universities. It could certainly train a local workforce. Providing good jobs to those communities would do wonders to reduce criminality, drug abuse and various issues.
I am not american so not 100% certain, but from what I can see, the public education system in the USA is not that great and universities are way too costly compared with the rest of the world.
I 100% agree that there is a huge diversity in tech problem.
Not all of that problem is about hiring POCs either, a female friend of mine had to flee a job because none of her colleagues would accept to have a woman as their manager (that's in 2020 in the SV..)
>So why are the big tech corporations that are constantly virtue signalling about Black Lives Matter
You are answering yourself, virtue signaling is cheap. I can talk for my own company. They were happy enough to talk about the importance of BLM, but less interested in taking concrete steps.
I fully believe that companies should encourage their engineers to participate in mentorship programs. I highly doubt that it would magically solve systemic racism but it would be a relatively cheap way to find and hire junior engineers and good PR.
Every time you file an H1B Visa, you pay something called a ACWIA Fee (“American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998”). For employers who have between 1-25 full-time workers, the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act fee is $750. For employers with 26 or more full-time employees, the fee is $1,500. [1] This fee was established to fund training and education programs administered by the Department of Labor.
As of 2018, there were 420K active H1B visas in the USA. These people need to renew their visas every 3 years (most are Indians and they can never become PR in their lifetime). So that means 300-630 million USD is being added to this fund on a recurring basis over a 3 year period.
I wonder where all that money went.
[1] https://www.immi-usa.com/h1b-visa-processing-fees-2016/
Oh wait...
That’s a very interesting thing, I had no idea. So a sensible thing to do would be to increase that fee substantially and have it go straight to subsidizing degree programs that aren’t creating enough home grown talent.
In other words, the company should expect to pay close to market rate per H1B plus the fee.
We remove the incentives to abuse the program for cost reduction, and straight up use the fees to fund college.
That brings me to some weird job posts that I keep seeing for some large bank. The role was for ‘Specialist’ developer, and I wonder if it really is some specialist role that they can’t fill in a major city (seemed like typical web developer stuff).
Shrugs, say it ain’t so, would hate to know that’s how it’s being gamed.
I think you meant "socialist".
what's different now? they're legally required to do both as of now.
Are you telling me that the H1-B that is hired doesn't do any work and free-loading off the American economy without paying any taxes (like Social Security, which they don't get to access).
Could you share what that job posting was? I'd love to look at it, if you suspect a violation, you should report it.
I’m mostly being suspicious of corporations that have over 50% of their staff as h1bs or off shore. I feel that’s probably set up that way for one of the common reasons in business ($$$$).
Just trying to learn how the math works out. I have no doubt Google is hiring the very best worldwide, but I have sincere suspicions that your average enterprise found a way to keep tech costs down by using these loopholes.
Also to your last point, this is something no one can prove. How am I going to prove that a company can hire that talent locally? They’ll just say they met with candidates and they weren’t up to snuff. You can’t prove anything in that situation, all you can really do is look at the numbers from a bird’s eye view and see that hey, over half your staff is world class rare talent apparently.
So, you're telling me that they're gonna pay the same amount they'd pay for a local employee PLUS the H1-B overhead, just to hire a foreign worker?
Put yourself in the shoes of the employer, what are you to gain from this? (hint: it sure isn't monetary)
To me, what you mention seems like veiled xenophobia, I hope I'm wrong.
Posting this again from another thread: > Employers must attest to the Department of Labor that they will pay wages to the H-1B nonimmigrant workers that are at least equal to the actual wage paid by the employer to other workers with similar experience and qualifications for the job in question, or the prevailing wage for the occupation in the area of intended employment – whichever is greater.
source: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b
For the most part, sure, it should be cost prohibitive. I think companies should go out and find the best talent, they should try to do it locally, and if they can’t, paying the little overhead is nothing when you realize you just filled the role with world class talent.
It seems odd to have cost be a factor when you are basically saying you had to search the world to fill the role.
I personally don’t believe most companies need to scour the world to fill most roles. For those that do, they won’t scoff at the price. This will at least eliminate the arbitrage that is rampant in the global economy.
Lets be honest, a country's wealth is determined by how widespread the customer base is for the goods and services that originate within it. Economies of a majority of countries aren't closed loops, they're built on trade, selling goods and services that the rest of the world would pay a premium for would make it wealthy.
Considering that, it's only fitting that they would want to hire world-class talent.
America has a lot to offer, and part of the tax is you must support American workers first.
If India and China is the better place to work, better salaries, better consumer market, better infrastructure, better freedoms, better everything - feel free to operate from those places and respect the offerings of the people of that country, and please, put them first.
But don’t take advantage of the offerings of a place like Germany, while taking advantage of the lack of worker rights in China, while paying taxes in the Caribbean. This is taking advantage of every loophole imaginable.
Believe me, this is precisely what has been happening, and now it's only going to be accelerated. You'll get your wish sooner than you expected.
The couch cushions maybe?
edit: literally, do the math, 420K+ active H1-Bs, they should be at least making upwards of 70K per year, tax revenues should be upwards of a few billion dollars every year.
Wishful thinking under the current administration.
Much of the H1B candidates out there are graduates of american universities that are trying to take the next step to be in America. We should be embracing these people where possible, not villanizing them. Make it so the chop shops can be weeded out, not the good people that are forced to work under them due to a broken system.
Also, many jobs require base salaries that are VERY in line with the market, if not higher, as a financial check to the Employer to make sure they want said (H1B) candidate. We had trouble finding a JR DevOps person, basically forced to go H1B, and a JR in the midwest was going to cost us 95K with little experience. That was widly out of line for a JR devops candidate
Except for the individuals. US educated students who want to remain in the US, work, and raise a family are now basically being told to go back. Or people who prefer the US for non-monetary reasons (crazy thought, I know).
But what I find interesting is that programs like the diversity visa (DV) lottery with even more relaxed requirements or even illegal immigration don't get scrutinized as much as H1-B. I wonder if it's because H1-B workers primarily compete for well-paying white collar jobs while most DV winners and illegal immigrants go for blue-collar jobs.
There huge nuance which is missed when talking about H1bs ... there are body shops which do cut wages and should be stopped. However the immigration system in USA needs significant reform as well. It’s hard already to build a life for your family with a normal 3 year lease ( h1b duration) for this kind of misinformed political rhetoric to have unintended consequences.
If you need them , then let them work remotely and pay them fair wages as they would have received in the US and let them contribute their tax to their own country.
Either way it’s a win.
> which stuntnts the growth of these countries and yes you do increase the misery of the other citizen who is left in that countries
So, are you suggesting that each country imprison all their individuals and extract value for itself? Absurd.
[1] https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-sapolsky-culture...
What I am telling that the current H1B system in US does not benefit anyone exception for the employer and probably enslaved employee. The original motivation behind the program is decent - let the really outstanding specialists to develop more (as US provides more opportunities for the top people), but what it become is essentially stripping the countries of intellectual power in bulk, and using back in US for a cheap price, basically enslaving them, by locking them via H1Bs. American workforce suffers, because they are under constant stress for being replaced by cheap H1Bs, the poor countries suffer, because of brain drain, world becomes more unequal, USA becomes more unequal.
I never said nothing about "imprisonment" - most of poor countries are not prisons, and especially not for IT specialists, who can have some decent quality of live with their salaries. And the only hope for "the prisons" as you mentioned before to improve, is to keep their intellectuals in.
This proves my point, you think like a collectivist, the individual doesn't matter much to you. Besides, the reason I posted that article is because I wanted to give you some reference to understand the construct I'm talking about (a bit of "meta" so to speak), so that you can orient your thinking and it didn't have anything to do with Sapolsky or his "importance" (seems like this matters to you more than actual facts). It seems like you're a collectivist AND not intellectually curious (they usually go hand in hand though).
Your grammar and "philosophy" sounds very Asian. Most of your thinking revolves around "for the greater good (of the country)". Your determination of the "border" for benefiting from "greater good" seems arbitrary, why not the whole world?
As an individualist, my advice to you is: do whatever feels right to you. If you're truly for the greater good of the country, who are you to decide what the country has to do? and why should I care about your opinion? whats the proof that what you say is actually happening?
L1s also look like they're geared towards essentially overseas managers moving to the US, particularly in the case of a single international company moving their executives around physically.
Look, my honest opinion is the abuses are generally bad, especially for immigrants who are being put in bad situations which because yet another thing the companies have as leverage over them, but then the people who should be targeted are the companies who are abusing the system, not the programs themselves which hurts everyone, especially the immigrants.
Once in the ambulance the paramedic started asking me where I am from and if I came in on one of "those visas".
I was afraid I was about to die, and this fucker was being xenophobic.
It's good to talk about our feelings and try to be considered to each other, but we should put facts and reason above feelings, which are not objective, otherwise we are doomed as society.
Having said that, if I would see my employee talk to a customer like this, I would definitely ask them to be more professional and discreet. Either here, in US, or back in my home country, where I think xenophobia is worse.
If the patient has an adverse outcome and it comes out that a question like this was asked, you can bet someone will try to convince a jury that that was the case. You think the ambulance company wants to waste months or years in litigation?
At best, the paramedic was a moron asking a pointless question in an emergency situation. And alienating the patient, potentially worsening their condition. As an employer, I'd put them on a PIP immediately.
At worst they've opened up the company to a multi-million dollar suit.
Not everything about "my feels" is without consequence. Try and be a human being. Have some empathy.
The way he talked about the Visas, gave me the impression of someone who has been conditioned to believe that "those Visas" are evil.
Or maybe I completely misread it, and he was just trying to make conversation as you said, to calm me down. But choosing the Visa subject seemed quite odd. Usually when I mention my home country people chose a subject like history, mythology, holidays or current affairs.
And indeed, when I see someone in pain or anxiety, I'm often tempted to just make small talk on any subject I can think of, to distract them. I usually don't, to avoid offense. But I think they'd suffer less if I did, no matter how stupid my words.
But I don’t know, if I told you I was from Greece, would my visa be the first think that would pop into your mind for small talk?
On the other hand, yeah, the could simply have been a jackass. Greeks, though? Who doesn't love the Greeks? The Turks, I guess, but in America, I think they are well-regarded.