The bigger problem with the H1B system is family reunification. 65,000 H1B visas a year is not that many. But because H1B is a path to citizenship in practice, just one skilled worker eventually will bring in many more family members who aren’t filtered for skills.
When we came to the U.S. in 1989–on my dad’s H1 visa—there were under 10,000 Bangladeshis in the country. Today, there are 270,000. Those aren’t 270,000 highly skilled and highly motivated workers. They’re here based on chain migration from handful of original skilled workers.
> the H-1B has instead been wielded as a tool by firms to displace American workers and depress wages in the information technology (IT) labor market
This is very hard to square with software professionals being the fastest growing profession both in terms of number of employed workers and earnings in the past 2 decades.
U.S. wages for software professionals are significantly higher than anywhere else in the world and nowhere else has as much software professionals immigration as the U.S.
I’m predicting that the uncertainty and discouragement of H1-Bs will lead to a destruction of jobs in the U.S. and a suppression of salaries as high quality software engineers don’t move to the U.S., allowing the center of gravity of the industry to shift out of the U.S.
Note: This is not to say there aren’t significant issues with the H1B system that need to be addressed. There are. But cutting off the supply of workers in the most remote friendly profession will not lead to an increase in wages. It will lead to an outflow of jobs instead.
> predicting that the uncertainty and discouragement of H1-Bs will lead to a destruction of jobs in the U.S.
Do we have any studies pointing one way or another?
Given AI’s existing effects on junior demand, and the post-Covid normalization of remote work (and thus multi-shore teams), I could see the effect going either way.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 21.1 ms ] threadWhen we came to the U.S. in 1989–on my dad’s H1 visa—there were under 10,000 Bangladeshis in the country. Today, there are 270,000. Those aren’t 270,000 highly skilled and highly motivated workers. They’re here based on chain migration from handful of original skilled workers.
It's demented to think that they are undermining wages when unemployment was basically 0 when Trump and his moronic goons took power.
This idea that we should use borders to keep other people poor is just insane.
This is very hard to square with software professionals being the fastest growing profession both in terms of number of employed workers and earnings in the past 2 decades.
U.S. wages for software professionals are significantly higher than anywhere else in the world and nowhere else has as much software professionals immigration as the U.S.
I’m predicting that the uncertainty and discouragement of H1-Bs will lead to a destruction of jobs in the U.S. and a suppression of salaries as high quality software engineers don’t move to the U.S., allowing the center of gravity of the industry to shift out of the U.S.
Note: This is not to say there aren’t significant issues with the H1B system that need to be addressed. There are. But cutting off the supply of workers in the most remote friendly profession will not lead to an increase in wages. It will lead to an outflow of jobs instead.
Do we have any studies pointing one way or another?
Given AI’s existing effects on junior demand, and the post-Covid normalization of remote work (and thus multi-shore teams), I could see the effect going either way.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42454509