In my area, there is a Tae Kwon Do school my kids go to. You can see every year the class picture. For the last 10 years it was almost all white kids then it made a dramatic change to almost 100% Indian. We live near Microsoft. Something very obviously is going on with immigration. To say Microsoft has simply been flooding the area with Indians is shown visually.
A lot of people seem to believe that the path to the next generation of American prosperity is playing a series of zero-sum games through demagoguery. I’m not convinced.
Yeah...look at all the top researchers in AI, and count how many of them came here through H-1B. Gotta be something like 70%-80%.
Nothing against "homegrown" talent, but let's be real - US is getting cream of the crop talent from other countries.
(And that's just AI, not do the same for other fields. Many of these people started as regular engineers and devs., and didn't come to the through the EB-1B/Einstein visa. Just a regular H-1B. And many on student visas.)
Can anyone who is from India or China explain why the type of person who goes to SV and works in tech from these two countries is so wildly different than the type who goes to NYC and is from those two countries?
It’s a massive cultural difference. I’ve much preferred the individuals who chose to live in NYC as they seem to be a much more outgoing, social, welcoming, and open type of person. The type of individuals that go to SV and are from these two countries seem the complete opposite.
Replace the lottery with a compensation auction until it reaches 90th percentile for the area and ban any companies with layoffs in the last three years. Anything else, like making it "skills based" will be gamed.
I think it's important to note that not all H-1B jobs are the same. There are many companies that abuse the system, and this is one of main reasons to revamp it.
But there are also companies that are just looking for talent that they can't easily find in the US. I had an H-1B working in Investment Banking and was paid a high salary after business school. Most of my classmates did not want to go into banking. I was ranked a top performer year after year, put in hundred-hour weeks and provided actual value to the bank, clients, and the US economy.
Economies generally want high-skilled, high-salary immigrants. The H-1B can and should be a program for that. Literally everyone benefits.
It should also enable a path to citizenship. Right now, those high-skilled workers get a lottery with ~30% odds, another try at 40% odds if they have a graduate degree, and then six years working for Uncle Sam before they're kicked out of the country.
There's no path to a green card unless your employer chooses to sponsor you, at which point you are even more at their whims than during your H-1B stint and obviously there's a massive imbalance in that relationship.
And because I believe offering solutions is more valuable than just criticizing, here's my relative non-controversial suggestion for the program:
• Country quotas
• Minimum salary of [$175-200k/year] (pick your number)
• H-1B workers should be allowed to easily switch jobs, so long as the job is still above the minimum salary. (Giving workers flexibility reduces the possibility of abuse. Currently you have 30-days to find a job or you have to leave the country.)
• Spouses of H-1B workers (H-4 visas) should get a work permit with no minimum salary (They're currently not allowed to work at all. They don't need a salary minimum because their visa is tethered to the H-1B already, and it's better (for everyone) to have them work some job rather than no job.)
• H-1B can self-petition a green card after X years working in the US (personally I'd say 3 years, but 5 may be more palatable to the general public)
• H-1B visas should be good for 5 years instead of the current 3. They should also be allowed to extend for another 5 years, so 5+5 instead of 3+3.
Here's a bulletproof working visa policy: automatically approve everyone who will be in income tax (state and federal) more than the median gross income (~$60k). Sort of minimum-income-tax personal guarantee, which all highly-skilled migrants for in-demand occupations will easily match (OTE >$200k). Alternatively, earning 2x of the median income in their profession, with a national floor of $200k pa.
It won't solve all immigration woes, but it will do a great deal to keep the country competitive.
I’m curious what the policy with the highest long-term benefit would be. The country needs external talent, but would skewing H-1B towards high skill be good? The economy seems to need unskilled labor for the jobs Americans are not interested in. Should the government try to curb hi-tech outsourcing instead, to create more jobs in the States, both for the citizens and the skilled immigrant workers? But that would be protectionism, and protectionism rarely play out well economically.
Basically all of the problems with the H1-B system could be fixed overnight by simply banning visa holders from working for consulting companies. 'No visa holder may be employed by a company whose main business is consulting for other firms, or staffing'. We'd keep the highly skilled folks who are going to the FAANGs, and at least letting the midmarket companies bid for everyone else. But there's no compelling national or economic interest in importing a class of Accenture/Cognizant/Wipro/Infosys workers who work on 6 month contracts at Wells Fargo or whatever.
I'd actually support more skilled immigration if we could get rid of the consulting firms
Edit to clarify slightly: if your concern is 'skilled immigration', I would like to gently but firmly state that most of the developers that work for the consulting firms are just not very good. Sorry. If you're in a hiring capacity at a tech company at all, everyone knows that the Wipro guys who work on 6 month contracts doing Java at Fortune 100 companies cannot pass even the simplest tech screen. Yes it makes me sound like a jerk to say this, but they're not 'highly skilled'
In my position I directly deal with the consequences of others design choices.
There is one type of software engineer who creates software to keep running without any maintenance. Or with a very small number of people. They create software that operates logically and is essentially self documenting.
There’s another group of people who create software with no regard to the amount of mindless busy work that is required to maintain it. It seems like their primary goal is to create more work, not to actually solve the problem.
From years of direct observation and experience, people in the first group are those who are not concerned about being deported.
The ones in the second group are people who will do absolutely anything to stay in this country.
lolol yc/hn/sv is in for a wakeup call when all the cheap, extremely competent, highly motivated talent dries up. i'm not saying labor exploitation is to be celebrated but it's also very clear to anyone who works at a FAANG that their success is highly coupled to how many immigrants work very long hours.
> He also proposes that USCIS should replace the random selection of H-1B visas with a system that prioritizes highest wages....
This change is so obvious that's it's incredible that it hasn't been implemented yet. Auction off the H1-B visas based on how much federal income tax the role will pay and let the market sort it out.
H-1B visas have significantly benefited many non-profit science labs, attracting talented researchers who often earn less than those in the technology sector. Therefore, using salary as the sole criterion for H-1B eligibility would be bad idea. A careful approach is needed, as many H-1B talents, though perhaps not immediately impressive on paper by certain metrics, consistently add immense value.
Good riddance. Theres a place for skilled worker visas. This implementation is garbage and deserves to be burned to the ground.
I literally cannot think of a worse system if I tried.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 38.9 ms ] threadI suppose folks from India and China make up the bulk of the applicants, and a high percentage of the people who end up getting the visas.
My life could have been completely different if I did get an H-1B. Oh for the path not taken.
I hope there is someone who received it in my stead, who now is wonderfully happy and successful in the US.
Nothing against "homegrown" talent, but let's be real - US is getting cream of the crop talent from other countries.
(And that's just AI, not do the same for other fields. Many of these people started as regular engineers and devs., and didn't come to the through the EB-1B/Einstein visa. Just a regular H-1B. And many on student visas.)
It’s a massive cultural difference. I’ve much preferred the individuals who chose to live in NYC as they seem to be a much more outgoing, social, welcoming, and open type of person. The type of individuals that go to SV and are from these two countries seem the complete opposite.
But there are also companies that are just looking for talent that they can't easily find in the US. I had an H-1B working in Investment Banking and was paid a high salary after business school. Most of my classmates did not want to go into banking. I was ranked a top performer year after year, put in hundred-hour weeks and provided actual value to the bank, clients, and the US economy.
Economies generally want high-skilled, high-salary immigrants. The H-1B can and should be a program for that. Literally everyone benefits.
It should also enable a path to citizenship. Right now, those high-skilled workers get a lottery with ~30% odds, another try at 40% odds if they have a graduate degree, and then six years working for Uncle Sam before they're kicked out of the country.
There's no path to a green card unless your employer chooses to sponsor you, at which point you are even more at their whims than during your H-1B stint and obviously there's a massive imbalance in that relationship.
And because I believe offering solutions is more valuable than just criticizing, here's my relative non-controversial suggestion for the program:
• Country quotas
• Minimum salary of [$175-200k/year] (pick your number)
• H-1B workers should be allowed to easily switch jobs, so long as the job is still above the minimum salary. (Giving workers flexibility reduces the possibility of abuse. Currently you have 30-days to find a job or you have to leave the country.)
• Spouses of H-1B workers (H-4 visas) should get a work permit with no minimum salary (They're currently not allowed to work at all. They don't need a salary minimum because their visa is tethered to the H-1B already, and it's better (for everyone) to have them work some job rather than no job.)
• H-1B can self-petition a green card after X years working in the US (personally I'd say 3 years, but 5 may be more palatable to the general public)
• H-1B visas should be good for 5 years instead of the current 3. They should also be allowed to extend for another 5 years, so 5+5 instead of 3+3.
It won't solve all immigration woes, but it will do a great deal to keep the country competitive.
I'd actually support more skilled immigration if we could get rid of the consulting firms
Edit to clarify slightly: if your concern is 'skilled immigration', I would like to gently but firmly state that most of the developers that work for the consulting firms are just not very good. Sorry. If you're in a hiring capacity at a tech company at all, everyone knows that the Wipro guys who work on 6 month contracts doing Java at Fortune 100 companies cannot pass even the simplest tech screen. Yes it makes me sound like a jerk to say this, but they're not 'highly skilled'
There is one type of software engineer who creates software to keep running without any maintenance. Or with a very small number of people. They create software that operates logically and is essentially self documenting.
There’s another group of people who create software with no regard to the amount of mindless busy work that is required to maintain it. It seems like their primary goal is to create more work, not to actually solve the problem.
From years of direct observation and experience, people in the first group are those who are not concerned about being deported.
The ones in the second group are people who will do absolutely anything to stay in this country.
This change is so obvious that's it's incredible that it hasn't been implemented yet. Auction off the H1-B visas based on how much federal income tax the role will pay and let the market sort it out.