Reading the article, it's not just Mark Zuckerberg who's behind this (there's also our Paul Graham, Marissa Myers, Drew Houston, etc. etc.). But if you really want to find an ulterior motive to go off on them, I suppose you could view the immigration reform as being something sinister. Why siphon all the high talent from all other places? I mean, for example, places like India need their smart people more than we need them, they have their own problems they need to solve. W're depriving them of resources to solve problems much more dire than ones we have. Why not just put all their might into putting their energy on properly educating our youth, our unemployed, giving them an environment in which they can excel (more financial help, grants, etc.). What truly would be a noble change to immigration policies would be heightening acceptance of refugee asylum cases -- let the homosexuals, atheists, etc. flee here from places where they're persecuted. The article says they'll push for 'higher standards and accountability' in schools... but you could view that as just a cover (if you're intent on having a cynical interpretation to all things Mr. Zuckerberg).
I just see this as somehow linking the manufactured labor shortage tech companies have been trying to whine about for years with the very real problem of illegal immigration and the social consequences that brings... consequences which I do not think anyone on that list of people cares about. They would have better luck creating this need out of no where when the country was closer to full employment, but the US is a long, long ways off from that.
How do you figure that the labour shortage in tech is manufactured?
In any case, everyone has been fighting to separate skilled immigration from ilegal immigration- them being combined is what has held back reform. There's broad political agreement that skilled immigration needs reform, but until recently no politician has wanted to touch it for fear of being "soft on illegals".
After the dot-com bubble many people were not hired again. We are not even five years out from the greatest recession in many decades. Many of these people have fundamental technical skills. They might know more perl than most and not have much love for ruby hipsters, but they understand the permanent aspects of programming and related disciplines, like the logic behind it. I think a lot of this comes down to Silicon Valley's ageism problem (you know the one no one here ever talks about). There are many technical workers who people think are outdated, despite being responsible for the first P.C. and later internet revolution. For the record, I am 24, and such things do not affect me. But I think opinion here might be skewed on an age basis.
Illegal immigration is such a hot-button issue in the us that is taints all immigration discussions.
It makes me sad and frustrated, but people cannot seem to understand the numerous important immigration issues which have nothing to do with Mexicans jumping over fences.
Personally I think the legal immigration nonsense is much more important, but the masses and the media disagree.
I'm not sure what ties these people to the USA. They could set up shop in any of a dozen places and import whoever they want.
They have narrow elitist interests and don't seem to care about the American society at large. If they did they wouldn't be so tone deaf on an issue like mass immigration, which an overwhelming majority of the population deeply opposes.
Even if H1B employees are not underpaid, artificially increasing the supply of highly-demanded technical talent prevents tech giants from needing to raise compensation across the board. Artificially seems to be a justifiable characterization for a number of reasons.
1. At least intuitively, raising wages should attract educated/intellectually capable people from other industries domestically. The corporations have already been reprimanded by the DoJ for instituting anti-competitive practices regarding poaching.
2. Attracting technical talent from other countries would seem to decrease the supply of talent in those places, which may have relatively less resources than the U.S. to train and retain technically skilled workers; what would be the consequences in the source countries?
3. Finally, attracting highly educated workers to a specific
industry and specific corporations with hefty resources concentrates a relatively/currently inelastic supply of skilled workers. More explicitly stated, the question might be: how much social good/utility does a company like Facebook or LinkedIn really produce and what would be the result of concentrating highly-educated talent there?
This could become very interesting. I wonder if Zuckerberg will have the strength of character to keep his own corporate interests removed from his politcal group.
In a very brief overview, there are limits to the number of skilled immigrants that can enter the US every year. That number is exhausted extremely quickly, leaving many tech companies (an overwhelming majority of skilled immigrants are tech workers (1)) short-staffed.
It is difficult to say who benefits from this arrangement. At least in theory, it's US workers, because they are more in demand. But at the current time, demand outstrips supply enough that the limit could be raised without significant issues. The reason this hasn't happened is largely that "immigration" has become a politically sensitive topic- skilled immigration and "illegal" immigration from Mexico get bunched up into the same topic. Now that there is an appetite to tackle immigration as a whole, we might see a change.
(1) I had started an overview of US skilled immigration- I currently have no time to finish it, but it does contain an interactive chart breaking down the immigration categories: http://experimenting.alastair.is/immigration/
> But at the current time, demand outstrips supply enough that the limit could be raised without significant issues.
What happens when the tech industry crashes again, like it does every decade or so? Silicon Valley is tremendously cyclical and always has been. It's not a good idea to predicate our immigration policy on the current boom.
http://www.jointventure.org/index.php?option=com_content&... ("Today is not the first time that Silicon Valley has experienced a boom/bust cycle. The Valley experienced significant job growth, followed by job losses, in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s. Each time, from these down cycles emerged the “next” Silicon Valley economy. Economic adversity helped stimulate the Silicon Valley habitat to major innovations, including the commercialization of the integrated circuit (1970s), the development of the microprocessor and personal computer (1980s), and the
application of the Internet (1990s)").
I understood the basic premise that any country wants to be able to limit the number of immigrants, in theory, to ensure that their citizens get jobs, assuming the citizenry is skilled enough.
It appears to me that at the heart of immigration reform is education reform.
Frankly, I think that education in the US is utterly broken.
And I think that at the core of this issue is the difficult balance between socially funded services and for-profit corporate motives:
If we find that developing a basic level of skill and well being in a society is dependent upon a well educated and healthy populous, then the purpose of a civilized society should be providing education and healthcare to the people who create that society.
Then, the ability for the market to build for-profit companies, staffed by well-educated workers seems to be a natural benefit.
The fact that the US is at odds with its own people over education and health - while at the same time upholding policies that would prevent well educated workers from being able to enter the country speaks to a much more dark and sinister character of the US government as a whole.
And it may just be the sad result of many many complex factors and not some conspiracy of the government out to stifle every aspect of healthy growth of society - but the fact that there appears to be so much active resistance to fixing these sorts of issues surely makes one wonder what the fark is really going on the minds of the government to let these issues fester.
Here are a few of the problems (by no means comprehensive):
The H1B Problem
===============
* Foreign high-tech workers need a document called an H-1B visa.
* A limited number of H-1B visas are handed out each year.
* If more people apply than the limit of visas, the recipients are picked by lottery.
* H-1B visas go to two types of workers: (a) low-grade skills, underpaid, working in "consulting" sweatshops in Edison, NJ, and (b) mid- to high-grade skills, paid at or above market, working at reputable companies like FB, Google, etc.
* It's questionable whether people of type (a) are needed or good for the economy. It's pretty clear that people of type (b) are needed and good for the economy. However, the balance doesn't reflect that.
The citizenship problem
=======================
* A foreign student can get a U.S. undergraduate degree, go on to get a Ph.D. at a U.S. university, all the while paying federal, state, and other taxes. They can go on to get a sweet job at Facebook or Google, and get put on a "path to citizenship". If they happen to be from India or China, they then have to wait anywhere from 5-9 years to get their permanent residence ("green card"). For a portion of this time, if they switch employers, they get to start the process all over again, from scratch.
* A pedophile drug dealer puppy strangling wife-beater can arrange a faux wedding with an American citizen and get their permanent residence in less than a year, regardless of where they are from.
The quotas on a per country as opposed to population basis have to do with national security. No country would let a massive portion of its population potentially represents the interests of any one foreign sovereign entity. American exceptionalism only goes so far in this case. Hold the U.S. to the standards it sets for itself, but this is going to be a tricky issue to negotiate. A lot of it comes down to common sense.
This is about permanent residence. The government couldn't give a damn what a permanent resident thinks -- they pay taxes, but cannot vote at any level. So I don't really see your point about foreign interests.
Also, not all green card holders are on a path to citizenship, and I'm sure a lot of H1-B holders would be just fine with permanent residence that is not on a path to citizenship.
Plus, the pedophile drug dealer puppy strangling wife-beater can also walk across the border (north or south, your pick) and probably not get deported, like the 11 million illegal immigrants who are already here.
* A foreign student can get a U.S. undergraduate degree, go on to get a Ph.D. at a U.S. university, all the while paying federal, state, and other taxes.
Not exactly, depending on status these students are going to be tax exempt.
For a portion of this time, if they switch employers, they get to start the process all over again, from scratch.
AC-21 portability allows those that are on an H1-B to transfer jobs even if they've applied for permanent residency with a few minor restrictions. For example, you can't change jobs within 180 days of applying, must be changing to a job within the same or similar type/classification (not well defined), must be paid a similar wage, and a couple of technical eligibility questions must be true in regards to form filings.
> AC-21 portability doesn't come into play until you are almost at the end of the green card process. The long wait is before you get to that stage.
This is not true at all. AC-21 portability allows the transfer of employment to another employer willing to sponsor the visa. Employment with the new employer can begin as soon as a request to transfer has been filed. The confusion is usually surrounding the idea that once permanent residency has been applied for the employee is stuck, which is true for 180 days post application.
From the M-274 Handbook for employers (documentation on Form I-9 but relevant to this case)
Under the American Competitiveness Act in the Twenty First Century (AC-21),
an H-1B employee who is changing employers within the H-1B program may begin
working for you as soon as you file a Form I-129 petition on his or her behalf. To
qualify for AC-21 benefits, the new petition must not be frivolous and must have
been filed prior to the expiration of the individual’s period of authorized stay. You
must complete a new Form I-9 for this newly hired employee. An H-1B employee’s
Form I-94/Form I-94A issued for employment with the previous employer, along with
his or her foreign passport, would qualify as a List A document. You should write
“AC-21” and enter the date you submitted Form I-129 to USCIS in the margin of Form
I-9 next to Section 2. See Completing Form I-9 for Nonimmigrant Categories when
Requesting Extensions of Stay below.
For more information about employing H-1B workers, please visit www.uscis.gov.
There may be exceptions, but almost every single international student I've encountered pay state, federal, and social security/medicare taxes. Nobody has been tax-exempt.
Tech companies are unhappy that technologists are treated like medical doctors: The US limits the supply. This has the side effect of raising wages for both professions.
The AMA is instrumental is keeping the supply of doctors limited. We wouldn't want those unqualified European doctors dispensing aspirin.
There isn't an equivalent strong lobby for tech folks; In short, their salaries are doomed, so make hay while the sun shines.
> Tech companies are unhappy that technologists are treated like medical doctors: The US limits the supply.
The U.S. does not limit the supply of technologists. Industry has pushed for literally a century to flood the market with engineers educated on the public dime (many land-grant public universities were founded with the primary purpose of producing engineers to support the industrial revolution). The public spends huge amounts of money every year subsidizing the training of the engineers who work at these companies.
> The U.S. does not limit the supply of technologists.
It's what the MZ article is about: They can't find enough, they want to change H1B's. You can choose to call that something other than a limitation, but it doesn't change the fact that it limits the supply of technologists.
Tech companies not being able to find enough workers at the wages they are paying does not mean the government is limiting the supply. Indeed, the government has for the last century been propping up the supply of engineers through its support for public universities. That's exactly what University of Washington, Penn State, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, etc, are--attempts by the government to prop up the supply of engineers.
Current policy: U.S. allows more immigration (per capita) than many countries, but not as much as, say, Canada. U.S. has several programs intended to exploit foreign workers, such as the H1B program, without really offering them a path to citizenship. These foreign workers are neither citizen nor permanent residents, but simply temporary workers, here on sufferance, and are subject to being removed from the U.S. at any time. Technology companies in particular benefit from this as it keeps technology salaries down across the board.
Historical parallels - Chinese workers were imported to build the transcontinental railroad. They were paid approximately 2/3 of what white workers made, and charged for room and board. About 1/8th of them died from on-the-job accidents during the 7 years or so it took to construct the railroad.
Amusing connection: the president of Central Pacific Railroad at the time was Leland Stanford. You might say that exploiting foreign workforces is in the blood of Silicon Valley.
> U.S. has several programs intended to exploit foreign workers, such as the H1B program, without really offering them a path to citizenship.
Without comment on your broader thesis, the H-1B is something of a bad example here, in that it is a dual intent visa which provides a path to citizenship, in that one may apply for an immigrant visa (the direct route to citizenship) while on an H-1B, whereas most non-immigrant visas, including other work visas like the H-2B and H-3, do not allow this.
Current immigrations policy is based on quotas. IE, only a certain number of immigrants from each country are allowed. The total number of immigrants allowed each year is 700,000. Not every immigrants counts towards this, though. The biggest exception is family members of current US citizens/greencard holders. There are other exceptions.
It is broken because the US does not allow everyone who want to immigrate to do so. There isn't a perfectly fair way to decide who gets to come and who doesn't. Since there are always more people who want to come, than can actually come, the problem keeps getting worse. However, allowing everyone would also create tons of problems (eg a country could pay to send every poor person in their country to the US). Basically, this is one of those cases where all you can do is choose the least shitty solution.
The system got so broken due to racism. The original immigration policy was anyone not sick was admitted. Yes, even criminals. Prior to the early 1900's, the only people (voluntarily) immigrating to america were western europeans. Even so, racism was a problem. When the Irish and the Germans (both, predominately Catholic) came over in the 1830's and 1840's, the predominately Protestant English country threw a shit-fit (eg "help wanted, but not from paddy, inquire within"). By 1870 (ie one generation) no one cared and the Irish and germans were fully part of america. As an aside, the immigration boom in turn caused an economic boom as well.
In the early 1900's, another immigration boom began, this time by eastern europeans, jews, and italians. This did not sit well with the predominately western european america, especially with the irish and the germans (yes, they really forgot about the shit they went through in just a couple generations). So a law was passed limiting immigration to 3% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States in 1890, [1]. By the way, 1890 just happened to be before the new wave of immigration started. This had the practical effect of allowing just about anyone from western europe who wanted to emmigrate to immigrate, while denying just about everyone else. This stayed in effect until 1965, when a new law was passed, which "replacing [the old law] with a preference system that focused on immigrants' skills and family relationships with citizens or U.S. residents. Numerical restrictions on visas were set at 170,000 per year, with a per-country-of-origin quota, not including immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, nor "special immigrants" (including those born in "independent" nations in the Western Hemisphere, former citizens, ministers, and employees of the U.S. government abroad)," [2]. Basically, the law became slightly less racist. By 1990, the number of immigrants allowed was 700,000.
> Briefly, What is the current immigration policy?
You can't explain it briefly because it is a complicated mess with conflicting goals, which include, but are not limited to:
1. Limiting public costs associated with immigration (including, by not limited to, protecting American workers) by limiting the overall level of immigration,
2. Using family bonds to promote national identity by encouraging family-based immigration,
3. Advancing the interest of firms in America by permitting temporary (both long- and short-term) use of foreign, non-immigrant labor (including encouraging long-term foreign labor by allowing, but not requiring, long-term workers to apply for immigrant status.)
4. Preventing individually-undesirable people (career criminals, terrorists, etc.) from entering the country
5. Encouraging diversity in immigration by limiting (on top of the limits in #1) immigration individually by each country of origin
> Why is it so broken?
Largely, because it has incoherent purposes.
> WHY/HOW did it get the way it is (who benefits from having it the way it is)?
Different people benefit from different pieces of it, and immigration lawyers and people who like to have a permanent mess to use to justify new policies (whether or not they are related to fixing any of the features of the mess that are pointed to to justify them) benefit from the complexity and incoherence.
Yay, tech companies band together to benefit from importing more foreign workers to the U.S. to work for half of the prevailing wage.
I'd support this change to the H1B program: it's now totally unlimited, with this caveat: hiring companies must pay 150% of the prevailing wage to any hired workers.
This should be a win-win - companies like Facebook and Yahoo get to hire as many workers as they want, from anywhere in the world. And with multi-billion dollar profit margins, slightly increased salaries should not be a problem. After all, we know that good tech workers make much more for their companies than their salaries cost.
Any citation of "half the prevailing wage"? I've seen this cited time and time again, but with little evidence to back it up. I am an H1B holder and I know a number of others- we are all paid very well.
Being paid very well is different from being paid the market wages. Could you get a higher paying job with your credentials in your area doing similar work?
A "5-6% drop in wages" isn't "half", though, is it?
And the CIS is an organisation that advocates reducing immigration[1]- excuse me if I take their report with a pinch of salt:
Applications for 47 percent of H-1B computer programming workers were for wages below even the prevailing wage
Note that they switched from "workers" to "applications" on that one. Applications with wages below the prevailing level are usually denied. It's little details like that which ruin any trust I might have in a report that is nearly ten years old.
When you say "half the prevailing wage" where are you getting that figure? I've hired people for Facebook, Google and many startups around SF and I can say with 100% certainty that you aren't even close. I would say that H1-B candidates pay is pretty much exactly the same as American worker pay. Hell, I would strongly object even to "H1-B workers make 95% the wages of American workers" because I believe it is actually closer than that.
Furthermore, if we as a country don't care about investing in education, we can't then throw a tantrum as a country when the countries that DO invest in education are rewarded for it by having their workers hired here.
>>I would say that H1-B candidates pay is pretty much exactly the same as American worker pay.
As an H1B worker, I can attest to this. In order to get an H1B, your company has to first prove to the Department of Labor that it is paying you at least the prevailing wage in your area for your profession. If the pay is less, the application is almost always denied.
On the other hand, there are many expenses associated with hiring H1B workers. Hiring lawyers to deal with documentation costs a lot of money, and the overhead on HR to generate that documentation is immense. So on the whole, H1B workers cost companies more than their American counterparts. Companies just hire them because they cannot find any qualified Americans to fill those positions.
This is the letter of the law but everyone knows it's a joke. There are very successful consulting firms that guide employers through the process of "documenting" that workers are not available at the "prevailing wage." They list jobs in unlikely print publications and devise ways to disqualify or discourage applicants.
Every law has loopholes and can be worked around. But from what I've seen, these types of practices are about as common as "Cadillac Moms." In other words, they do exist, but their prevalence is grossly exaggerated by those who have a vested interest in keeping foreigners from "stealing" their jobs.
As the guy below said, this cautionary tale is as old as Cadillac moms on welfare. I can honestly say that every H1-B candidate I have EVER seen hired was paid at least 95% the salary of the rest of the team, if not more.
A simpler system could just be to have an absolute salary floor rather than fiddling with prevailing wages. For example, a program that allows you to sponsor unlimited visas as long as you offer $100k+ salaries. That would also allocate more visas to areas where the unfilled jobs have the highest demand, as measured by the willingness of companies to pay significant amounts of money to fill the positions. An area of expertise that a company isn't willing to pay more than $100k to get is pretty much by definition of only limited value to the company— or they'd be willing to pay more in trying to fill it.
The prevailing-wage approach somewhat strangely will prefer issuing a visa to a company that's paying $60k in an area with typically $60k salaries, over paying $140k in an area with typically $150k salaries, even though the latter person actually has expertise that is more in demand, measured in absolute terms.
I'm currently in the process of getting permission to work in Japan. Apparently how their government does it is that they require my income to be at least the same as a Japanese national.
150% seems unfair, but a simple 100% or greater rule would probably suffice.
I find it difficult to take at face value any claims of a "shortage of tech people" when huge numbers of engineering majors at top schools are still going into finance and consulting: http://web.mit.edu/facts/alum.html. At MIT there are still about 50% more people going into finance and consulting than computer technologies.[1]
When Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc, start paying comparable salaries to Goldman and Morgan Stanley, and still can't find enough qualified workers, then I'll believe that there really is a shortage. Until then, I'm going to consider this the latest in a long line of anti-competitive moves to depress engineering wages: http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/September/10-at-1076.html.
[1] And it's not because financial firms make more money per worker. Google is at about $1m in revenue per employee, Apple is at about double that. Goldman Sachs is at about $1.25 million.
An engineer is not worth the same everywhere or to everyone. It's a matter of supply and demand. Goldman and Morgan Stanley pay engineers more than Google et al, because they know it's the only way to convince them to work on their shitty legacy systems rather than on cutting edge technology in Silicon Valley.
Most of the people Goldman, etc, hire from MIT are going into banking or programming trading systems, not doing back office infrastructure work. And if you look at revenues per employee, Google makes more money off its engineers, on average, than Morgan Stanley does off its bankers. And Google makes a lot more money per engineer than McKinsey or BCG/Bain do per consultant, and tons of MIT grads go to those companies instead of going into engineering (though for consulting less for the pay and more for the prospect of upward career mobility).
There is certainly a desirability aspect to it--all else being equal an engineer would probably rather be an engineer at Google than a banker at Goldman, but that's besides the point. You can't complain that the supply isn't there when you're paying a lot less money than other organizations with whom you are directly competing for top engineering graduates. If there are a ton of graduates available, but they're just going to do other things, it means you're not paying enough money.
>>If there are a ton of graduates available, but they're just going to do other things, it means you're not paying enough money.
I think you are a bit too hasty with jumping to this conclusion. It can mean you're not paying enough money. It can also mean a thousand other things. Maybe their parents are in banking and finance and they want to walk in their footsteps. Maybe they have friends in banking and finance. Maybe they just enjoy banking and finance. Alternatively, maybe they don't want to move to Silicon Valley. Or maybe they don't like the elite tech culture perpetuated by Google, Facebook, Apple, etc.
I mean really, it seems like you have made up your mind about programmers not getting paid enough, and you are interpreting everything to fit that conclusion.
All of those can be overcome by paying more money. That's almost the definition of "enough money"--getting someone to come work for you instead of choosing one of his other options.
A true skills shortage is something like what you had in the south after the civil war with regards to industrial skills. The south had very little industrial infrastructure and even fewer people with engineering skills. In contrast, in this case we have plenty of people with the relevant skills--they just choose to go work at other companies.
I think you're straining credibility a bit to suggest that finance is outcompeting technology on anything other than compensation. Engineers aren't going to work on clearing systems and tradable product catalog systems (zzzzzzz) because their parents were bankers (if that was the case, they'd be bankers). They're doing it because the pay is reliably much better.
>>Engineers aren't going to work on clearing systems and tradable product catalog systems (zzzzzzz) because their parents were bankers (if that was the case, they'd be bankers).
I think this is a strawman.
Let me give you an example: my parents are doctors. For a long time I thought about being a doctor, but ultimately decided against it. I like healthcare a lot, and I like the types of people in healthcare. I just did not want to become a doctor. I became an engineer instead.
That said, even as an engineer, I have a predisposition towards working in the healthcare industry. I'm familiar with it and I understand how it works. I know people in it, through my parents. As such, it makes sense for me to get a job in healthcare.
It has nothing to do with money. In fact, research clearly shows that after a certain amount (around $75k on average), money stops being a motivator for knowledge workers. At the end of the day, doing what you enjoy and working with people you like is priceless.
People very much want social prestige, about as much as salary. A profession associated with a high percentage of foreigners with strange accents and low cultural integration stinks of low prestige. It powerfully discourages entrants.
This unending elite driven media drumbeat for high skilled immigration creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. The message to a talented young person is clear: to work in tech is to be regarded as a disposable commodity where you'll be lumped together with strange foreigners. If you want to work with people like yourself who you'll have nice dinners and drinks with, better shoot for something people with accents can't easily do, like management consulting.
Once a system is as large as Google, much of the work that needs to be done isn't very interesting. Most of the people I know at Google work on the Google equivalent of "legacy systems." Maybe it's not as shitty as working on a legacy system at a bank, but doesn't sound like a dream job, either.
Just to play devil's advocate here, could you not argue the opposite? The government is artificially limiting supply of employees and inflating the salaries of engineers, at an overall loss of competitiveness globally? After all, what process decided that 65,000 visa cap? What rigorous scientific method was applied to come to the number?
This argument would be valid if USA companies couldn't open offshore offices. Tech employees are earning salary comparable to USA salaries, working for USA-based company, but not paying taxes in USA.
If USA won't adapt their immigration policies it's matter of years until different place with reasonable immigration policies and friendlier government will gain status of Silicon Valley.
Averages miss the point. A top trader at a top firm on wall street will make millions in a few years. There's no chance of making millions by working at Google. The reason someone with a technical background can make millions on wall street has deeper roots in other parts of how our monetary and fiscal systems are setup and reward risk, and we should fix those too.
That's just a financial perspective but there are other costs to consider. As NumbersUSA and others document immigration is harming the environment. Robert Putnam and others have documented how immigration is eroding trust and social capital in American communities.
The United States should just go the route of Canada, and give permanent residency to individuals with in-demand skills who meet a high standard for linguistic ability, educational achievement, and work experience. If a person's got the skills, there's no reason for the country to mess around with a temporary visa.
Once this is done, the United States should bump up the numbers of skilled people it can admit by cutting back on the unskilled people it bizarrely decides to admit every year. The over fifty thousand people given permanent residency each year through the diversity visa lottery have no real qualifications other than being lucky. We could replace each and every one of them with someone with an advanced degree and strong work experience in an in-demand field.
Never going to happen, though - not when the government's primary focus is figuring out how to make citizens out of low-skilled economic migrants who've already shown they don't care about following laws.
"The over fifty thousand people given permanent residency each year through the diversity visa lottery have no real qualifications other than being lucky"
"Her sole qualification was that she was descended from "lucky" ancestors, six generations of whom were born as a result of winning Earth's Birthright Lottery. The Puppeteer saw this as a kind of artificial selection, tending to breed for a psionic power of good luck."
They do; they are called the E1, E2, E3... visa programs. A lot of the positions these companies are looking to fill frankly just don't require the skills or experience this program demands, because they are looking for young workers in a start-up style work environment.
Speaking as someone who is currently in the process of getting L1 visa status to switch to the US HQ of a startup, I applaud this move.
I hear the arguments about well-skilled US workers who could do the same job. (Money is not a factor, I lead a global team, earn normal US wage.)
There's actually only a few people who can do my job without extensive ramp up time. It's the global background and experience that is necessary.
And still I am moving me and my family to the US. My wife will get a L2, will be not be allowed to work immediately (a work permit can later be applied for).
Why?
a) The US is the perfect ground to start a software company. Single currency, single language, single legal system. No other country comes close. Your new business can reach a scale here that is unreachable outside of US for the same effort. Start in Germany and France is your first stumbling block.
b) Hence the US has the highest density of software jobs. My current job profile exists a handful of times in Europe.
c) I am good in my job, my job exists in US, US companies need people like me - why would you step in between? I will pay (high) taxes immediately, won't hop the border fence or form a gang. I won't depress any wages, I am here to make money and live in the Bay Area, which is freaking expensive.
What I don't get anyhow - White Americans are in the minority in IT anyhow. My current employer? More than 50% are of Chinese or Indian decent.
And famous founders? A lot of Eastern Europe, Asia, etc. The world comes to the Bay to build software. Why not make this easier?
I don't have a problem with allowing skilled immigrants into the US. I have a huge problem with the overly favorable terms that employers get with H-1B workers. I think that once a worker has been allowed in they should be allowed to transfer jobs without having to find a new sponsor. If their skills are valuable enough to let them in, the skills should be valuable enough to let them stay.
The L1 works the way it's supposed to and part of the reason there are restrictions on spouses/children working has to do with how the L1 is issued. For example I've got a client that brings L1s (blanket L1) in at a rate of 5-10 a month. These workers are here from anywhere between 10 days and several years. The US government doesn't want to issue an EAD card to the spouse of someone that's not going to be here for very long.
The biggest problem with the immigration system that I have has to do with students going into the H1-B pool after graduation. We should either hand anyone that graduates with a STEM degree from a US university permanent residence upon graduation or make a new class of H visa that doesn't count against the cap. I see companies cheating but following the letter of the law all the time when they have an F1 student intern that is about to graduate and they want to keep on so they sponsor an H1 for them. This has nothing to do with wages, just the technicalities and paper work. We should be trying desperately to keep these people in the US, not making it luck of the draw if they get an H1.
Any wage depression issues could be resolved if H1-B workers had to work for their employers directly and not as consultants for other employers.
edit: removed bit about L1 and permanent residence, the L1 is dual intent.
I'm not sure why there is so much talk about ulterior motives on this one. In this case, I think everyone's incentives are aligned. Successful tech companies like Google and Facebook hold their engineers in the highest esteem and pay very generously for them (far above prevailing wage). The best workers want to work at these companies. Our economy, tax base, and society needs these people for the long term.
Stapling a Green Card to anyone that gets a phd from a top 25 US university, giving an automatic h1b to anyone who can raise $1 million in funding, making companies pay 2x prevailing wage to guarantee an h1b...these are all reasonable ideas. And I think discussing the merits of different proposals and how to make sure top tech talent stays in the US is where our energy should go.
I've read a lot of the comments here and thought I would chime in as a current H1B holder. I have two degrees, and received many concrete offers before moving to the U.S. However, I still found the process incredibly difficult. I have lived in many countries around the world, but this has been the least tolerant of highly skilled migrants.
Am I underpaid? No, I am paid market rate. Is there a demand for my skills? An emphatic yes. Do I feel the visa system is broken? Hell yes.
It is not desirable to live in the U.S on an H1B. My wife, is not allowed to work here, despite being qualified and experienced. This broken rule alone is making us consider leaving. Will the void be filled by a U.S citizen? Unlikely - demand is far exceeding supply here.
Contrast this with competitors to the U.S (European countries, Australia etc), where immigration policy is far more accepting of highly skilled migrants. There, I did not even have to be married for my partner of 7 years to work. I was given tax breaks, as I would likely not see the benefits of a percentage of the tax I contributed.
My advice to any highly skilled foreigner considering moving here with the current immigration policy would be - don't. Move to Europe, Australia, Canada or New Zealand instead (just picking countries I am familiar with there).
One further note: While some companies may abuse the system and bring over workers so that the underpay them, the H1B permits transfer to other companies, so they are free to leave.
83 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 130 ms ] threadThat's true when they don't have the money. Now that they do, increasing the wage makes it harder for startups to hire qualified people.
Weird consulting shops in New Jersey, on the other hand...
In any case, everyone has been fighting to separate skilled immigration from ilegal immigration- them being combined is what has held back reform. There's broad political agreement that skilled immigration needs reform, but until recently no politician has wanted to touch it for fear of being "soft on illegals".
It makes me sad and frustrated, but people cannot seem to understand the numerous important immigration issues which have nothing to do with Mexicans jumping over fences.
Personally I think the legal immigration nonsense is much more important, but the masses and the media disagree.
They have narrow elitist interests and don't seem to care about the American society at large. If they did they wouldn't be so tone deaf on an issue like mass immigration, which an overwhelming majority of the population deeply opposes.
1. At least intuitively, raising wages should attract educated/intellectually capable people from other industries domestically. The corporations have already been reprimanded by the DoJ for instituting anti-competitive practices regarding poaching.
2. Attracting technical talent from other countries would seem to decrease the supply of talent in those places, which may have relatively less resources than the U.S. to train and retain technically skilled workers; what would be the consequences in the source countries?
3. Finally, attracting highly educated workers to a specific industry and specific corporations with hefty resources concentrates a relatively/currently inelastic supply of skilled workers. More explicitly stated, the question might be: how much social good/utility does a company like Facebook or LinkedIn really produce and what would be the result of concentrating highly-educated talent there?
Briefly, What is the current immigration policy?
Why is it so broken?
WHY/HOW did it get the way it is (who benefits from having it the way it is)?
It is difficult to say who benefits from this arrangement. At least in theory, it's US workers, because they are more in demand. But at the current time, demand outstrips supply enough that the limit could be raised without significant issues. The reason this hasn't happened is largely that "immigration" has become a politically sensitive topic- skilled immigration and "illegal" immigration from Mexico get bunched up into the same topic. Now that there is an appetite to tackle immigration as a whole, we might see a change.
(1) I had started an overview of US skilled immigration- I currently have no time to finish it, but it does contain an interactive chart breaking down the immigration categories: http://experimenting.alastair.is/immigration/
What happens when the tech industry crashes again, like it does every decade or so? Silicon Valley is tremendously cyclical and always has been. It's not a good idea to predicate our immigration policy on the current boom.
http://www.jointventure.org/index.php?option=com_content&... ("Today is not the first time that Silicon Valley has experienced a boom/bust cycle. The Valley experienced significant job growth, followed by job losses, in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s. Each time, from these down cycles emerged the “next” Silicon Valley economy. Economic adversity helped stimulate the Silicon Valley habitat to major innovations, including the commercialization of the integrated circuit (1970s), the development of the microprocessor and personal computer (1980s), and the application of the Internet (1990s)").
I understood the basic premise that any country wants to be able to limit the number of immigrants, in theory, to ensure that their citizens get jobs, assuming the citizenry is skilled enough.
It appears to me that at the heart of immigration reform is education reform.
Frankly, I think that education in the US is utterly broken.
And I think that at the core of this issue is the difficult balance between socially funded services and for-profit corporate motives:
If we find that developing a basic level of skill and well being in a society is dependent upon a well educated and healthy populous, then the purpose of a civilized society should be providing education and healthcare to the people who create that society.
Then, the ability for the market to build for-profit companies, staffed by well-educated workers seems to be a natural benefit.
The fact that the US is at odds with its own people over education and health - while at the same time upholding policies that would prevent well educated workers from being able to enter the country speaks to a much more dark and sinister character of the US government as a whole.
And it may just be the sad result of many many complex factors and not some conspiracy of the government out to stifle every aspect of healthy growth of society - but the fact that there appears to be so much active resistance to fixing these sorts of issues surely makes one wonder what the fark is really going on the minds of the government to let these issues fester.
The H1B Problem
===============
* Foreign high-tech workers need a document called an H-1B visa.
* A limited number of H-1B visas are handed out each year.
* If more people apply than the limit of visas, the recipients are picked by lottery.
* H-1B visas go to two types of workers: (a) low-grade skills, underpaid, working in "consulting" sweatshops in Edison, NJ, and (b) mid- to high-grade skills, paid at or above market, working at reputable companies like FB, Google, etc.
* It's questionable whether people of type (a) are needed or good for the economy. It's pretty clear that people of type (b) are needed and good for the economy. However, the balance doesn't reflect that.
The citizenship problem
=======================
* A foreign student can get a U.S. undergraduate degree, go on to get a Ph.D. at a U.S. university, all the while paying federal, state, and other taxes. They can go on to get a sweet job at Facebook or Google, and get put on a "path to citizenship". If they happen to be from India or China, they then have to wait anywhere from 5-9 years to get their permanent residence ("green card"). For a portion of this time, if they switch employers, they get to start the process all over again, from scratch.
* A pedophile drug dealer puppy strangling wife-beater can arrange a faux wedding with an American citizen and get their permanent residence in less than a year, regardless of where they are from.
Also, not all green card holders are on a path to citizenship, and I'm sure a lot of H1-B holders would be just fine with permanent residence that is not on a path to citizenship.
AC-21 portability doesn't come into play until you are almost at the end of the green card process. The long wait is before you get to that stage.
> AC-21 portability doesn't come into play until you are almost at the end of the green card process. The long wait is before you get to that stage.
This is not true at all. AC-21 portability allows the transfer of employment to another employer willing to sponsor the visa. Employment with the new employer can begin as soon as a request to transfer has been filed. The confusion is usually surrounding the idea that once permanent residency has been applied for the employee is stuck, which is true for 180 days post application.
From the M-274 Handbook for employers (documentation on Form I-9 but relevant to this case)
The AMA is instrumental is keeping the supply of doctors limited. We wouldn't want those unqualified European doctors dispensing aspirin.
There isn't an equivalent strong lobby for tech folks; In short, their salaries are doomed, so make hay while the sun shines.
The U.S. does not limit the supply of technologists. Industry has pushed for literally a century to flood the market with engineers educated on the public dime (many land-grant public universities were founded with the primary purpose of producing engineers to support the industrial revolution). The public spends huge amounts of money every year subsidizing the training of the engineers who work at these companies.
It's what the MZ article is about: They can't find enough, they want to change H1B's. You can choose to call that something other than a limitation, but it doesn't change the fact that it limits the supply of technologists.
Historical parallels - Chinese workers were imported to build the transcontinental railroad. They were paid approximately 2/3 of what white workers made, and charged for room and board. About 1/8th of them died from on-the-job accidents during the 7 years or so it took to construct the railroad.
Amusing connection: the president of Central Pacific Railroad at the time was Leland Stanford. You might say that exploiting foreign workforces is in the blood of Silicon Valley.
Without comment on your broader thesis, the H-1B is something of a bad example here, in that it is a dual intent visa which provides a path to citizenship, in that one may apply for an immigrant visa (the direct route to citizenship) while on an H-1B, whereas most non-immigrant visas, including other work visas like the H-2B and H-3, do not allow this.
Current immigrations policy is based on quotas. IE, only a certain number of immigrants from each country are allowed. The total number of immigrants allowed each year is 700,000. Not every immigrants counts towards this, though. The biggest exception is family members of current US citizens/greencard holders. There are other exceptions.
It is broken because the US does not allow everyone who want to immigrate to do so. There isn't a perfectly fair way to decide who gets to come and who doesn't. Since there are always more people who want to come, than can actually come, the problem keeps getting worse. However, allowing everyone would also create tons of problems (eg a country could pay to send every poor person in their country to the US). Basically, this is one of those cases where all you can do is choose the least shitty solution.
The system got so broken due to racism. The original immigration policy was anyone not sick was admitted. Yes, even criminals. Prior to the early 1900's, the only people (voluntarily) immigrating to america were western europeans. Even so, racism was a problem. When the Irish and the Germans (both, predominately Catholic) came over in the 1830's and 1840's, the predominately Protestant English country threw a shit-fit (eg "help wanted, but not from paddy, inquire within"). By 1870 (ie one generation) no one cared and the Irish and germans were fully part of america. As an aside, the immigration boom in turn caused an economic boom as well.
In the early 1900's, another immigration boom began, this time by eastern europeans, jews, and italians. This did not sit well with the predominately western european america, especially with the irish and the germans (yes, they really forgot about the shit they went through in just a couple generations). So a law was passed limiting immigration to 3% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States in 1890, [1]. By the way, 1890 just happened to be before the new wave of immigration started. This had the practical effect of allowing just about anyone from western europe who wanted to emmigrate to immigrate, while denying just about everyone else. This stayed in effect until 1965, when a new law was passed, which "replacing [the old law] with a preference system that focused on immigrants' skills and family relationships with citizens or U.S. residents. Numerical restrictions on visas were set at 170,000 per year, with a per-country-of-origin quota, not including immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, nor "special immigrants" (including those born in "independent" nations in the Western Hemisphere, former citizens, ministers, and employees of the U.S. government abroad)," [2]. Basically, the law became slightly less racist. By 1990, the number of immigrants allowed was 700,000.
Here's some more links related to immigration law in the US: http://www.umass.edu/complit/aclanet/USMigrat.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1990
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Quota_Act [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1965
You can't explain it briefly because it is a complicated mess with conflicting goals, which include, but are not limited to:
1. Limiting public costs associated with immigration (including, by not limited to, protecting American workers) by limiting the overall level of immigration, 2. Using family bonds to promote national identity by encouraging family-based immigration, 3. Advancing the interest of firms in America by permitting temporary (both long- and short-term) use of foreign, non-immigrant labor (including encouraging long-term foreign labor by allowing, but not requiring, long-term workers to apply for immigrant status.) 4. Preventing individually-undesirable people (career criminals, terrorists, etc.) from entering the country 5. Encouraging diversity in immigration by limiting (on top of the limits in #1) immigration individually by each country of origin
> Why is it so broken?
Largely, because it has incoherent purposes.
> WHY/HOW did it get the way it is (who benefits from having it the way it is)?
Different people benefit from different pieces of it, and immigration lawyers and people who like to have a permanent mess to use to justify new policies (whether or not they are related to fixing any of the features of the mess that are pointed to to justify them) benefit from the complexity and incoherence.
I'd support this change to the H1B program: it's now totally unlimited, with this caveat: hiring companies must pay 150% of the prevailing wage to any hired workers.
This should be a win-win - companies like Facebook and Yahoo get to hire as many workers as they want, from anywhere in the world. And with multi-billion dollar profit margins, slightly increased salaries should not be a problem. After all, we know that good tech workers make much more for their companies than their salaries cost.
Any takers? No? Huh.
/former H1B
http://hothardware.com/News/Study-H1B-Visas-Lower-US-Program...
And the CIS is an organisation that advocates reducing immigration[1]- excuse me if I take their report with a pinch of salt:
Applications for 47 percent of H-1B computer programming workers were for wages below even the prevailing wage
Note that they switched from "workers" to "applications" on that one. Applications with wages below the prevailing level are usually denied. It's little details like that which ruin any trust I might have in a report that is nearly ten years old.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Immigration_Studies
Of course, we don't know the distribution, but at a glance that means that more applications were for above the prevailing wage.
Furthermore, if we as a country don't care about investing in education, we can't then throw a tantrum as a country when the countries that DO invest in education are rewarded for it by having their workers hired here.
As an H1B worker, I can attest to this. In order to get an H1B, your company has to first prove to the Department of Labor that it is paying you at least the prevailing wage in your area for your profession. If the pay is less, the application is almost always denied.
On the other hand, there are many expenses associated with hiring H1B workers. Hiring lawyers to deal with documentation costs a lot of money, and the overhead on HR to generate that documentation is immense. So on the whole, H1B workers cost companies more than their American counterparts. Companies just hire them because they cannot find any qualified Americans to fill those positions.
The prevailing-wage approach somewhat strangely will prefer issuing a visa to a company that's paying $60k in an area with typically $60k salaries, over paying $140k in an area with typically $150k salaries, even though the latter person actually has expertise that is more in demand, measured in absolute terms.
150% seems unfair, but a simple 100% or greater rule would probably suffice.
When Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc, start paying comparable salaries to Goldman and Morgan Stanley, and still can't find enough qualified workers, then I'll believe that there really is a shortage. Until then, I'm going to consider this the latest in a long line of anti-competitive moves to depress engineering wages: http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/September/10-at-1076.html.
[1] And it's not because financial firms make more money per worker. Google is at about $1m in revenue per employee, Apple is at about double that. Goldman Sachs is at about $1.25 million.
There is certainly a desirability aspect to it--all else being equal an engineer would probably rather be an engineer at Google than a banker at Goldman, but that's besides the point. You can't complain that the supply isn't there when you're paying a lot less money than other organizations with whom you are directly competing for top engineering graduates. If there are a ton of graduates available, but they're just going to do other things, it means you're not paying enough money.
I think you are a bit too hasty with jumping to this conclusion. It can mean you're not paying enough money. It can also mean a thousand other things. Maybe their parents are in banking and finance and they want to walk in their footsteps. Maybe they have friends in banking and finance. Maybe they just enjoy banking and finance. Alternatively, maybe they don't want to move to Silicon Valley. Or maybe they don't like the elite tech culture perpetuated by Google, Facebook, Apple, etc.
I mean really, it seems like you have made up your mind about programmers not getting paid enough, and you are interpreting everything to fit that conclusion.
A true skills shortage is something like what you had in the south after the civil war with regards to industrial skills. The south had very little industrial infrastructure and even fewer people with engineering skills. In contrast, in this case we have plenty of people with the relevant skills--they just choose to go work at other companies.
I think this is a strawman.
Let me give you an example: my parents are doctors. For a long time I thought about being a doctor, but ultimately decided against it. I like healthcare a lot, and I like the types of people in healthcare. I just did not want to become a doctor. I became an engineer instead.
That said, even as an engineer, I have a predisposition towards working in the healthcare industry. I'm familiar with it and I understand how it works. I know people in it, through my parents. As such, it makes sense for me to get a job in healthcare.
It has nothing to do with money. In fact, research clearly shows that after a certain amount (around $75k on average), money stops being a motivator for knowledge workers. At the end of the day, doing what you enjoy and working with people you like is priceless.
This unending elite driven media drumbeat for high skilled immigration creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. The message to a talented young person is clear: to work in tech is to be regarded as a disposable commodity where you'll be lumped together with strange foreigners. If you want to work with people like yourself who you'll have nice dinners and drinks with, better shoot for something people with accents can't easily do, like management consulting.
If USA won't adapt their immigration policies it's matter of years until different place with reasonable immigration policies and friendlier government will gain status of Silicon Valley.
If you want to work in the US being a foreigner you've got to find a job more than 6 months in advance and only at one time every year.
That's just a financial perspective but there are other costs to consider. As NumbersUSA and others document immigration is harming the environment. Robert Putnam and others have documented how immigration is eroding trust and social capital in American communities.
Once this is done, the United States should bump up the numbers of skilled people it can admit by cutting back on the unskilled people it bizarrely decides to admit every year. The over fifty thousand people given permanent residency each year through the diversity visa lottery have no real qualifications other than being lucky. We could replace each and every one of them with someone with an advanced degree and strong work experience in an in-demand field.
Never going to happen, though - not when the government's primary focus is figuring out how to make citizens out of low-skilled economic migrants who've already shown they don't care about following laws.
Maybe someone read too much Ringworld ! :) :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teela_Brown
"Her sole qualification was that she was descended from "lucky" ancestors, six generations of whom were born as a result of winning Earth's Birthright Lottery. The Puppeteer saw this as a kind of artificial selection, tending to breed for a psionic power of good luck."
I hear the arguments about well-skilled US workers who could do the same job. (Money is not a factor, I lead a global team, earn normal US wage.)
There's actually only a few people who can do my job without extensive ramp up time. It's the global background and experience that is necessary.
And still I am moving me and my family to the US. My wife will get a L2, will be not be allowed to work immediately (a work permit can later be applied for).
Why?
a) The US is the perfect ground to start a software company. Single currency, single language, single legal system. No other country comes close. Your new business can reach a scale here that is unreachable outside of US for the same effort. Start in Germany and France is your first stumbling block.
b) Hence the US has the highest density of software jobs. My current job profile exists a handful of times in Europe.
c) I am good in my job, my job exists in US, US companies need people like me - why would you step in between? I will pay (high) taxes immediately, won't hop the border fence or form a gang. I won't depress any wages, I am here to make money and live in the Bay Area, which is freaking expensive.
What I don't get anyhow - White Americans are in the minority in IT anyhow. My current employer? More than 50% are of Chinese or Indian decent.
And famous founders? A lot of Eastern Europe, Asia, etc. The world comes to the Bay to build software. Why not make this easier?
The biggest problem with the immigration system that I have has to do with students going into the H1-B pool after graduation. We should either hand anyone that graduates with a STEM degree from a US university permanent residence upon graduation or make a new class of H visa that doesn't count against the cap. I see companies cheating but following the letter of the law all the time when they have an F1 student intern that is about to graduate and they want to keep on so they sponsor an H1 for them. This has nothing to do with wages, just the technicalities and paper work. We should be trying desperately to keep these people in the US, not making it luck of the draw if they get an H1.
Any wage depression issues could be resolved if H1-B workers had to work for their employers directly and not as consultants for other employers.
edit: removed bit about L1 and permanent residence, the L1 is dual intent.
Stapling a Green Card to anyone that gets a phd from a top 25 US university, giving an automatic h1b to anyone who can raise $1 million in funding, making companies pay 2x prevailing wage to guarantee an h1b...these are all reasonable ideas. And I think discussing the merits of different proposals and how to make sure top tech talent stays in the US is where our energy should go.
Am I underpaid? No, I am paid market rate. Is there a demand for my skills? An emphatic yes. Do I feel the visa system is broken? Hell yes.
It is not desirable to live in the U.S on an H1B. My wife, is not allowed to work here, despite being qualified and experienced. This broken rule alone is making us consider leaving. Will the void be filled by a U.S citizen? Unlikely - demand is far exceeding supply here.
Contrast this with competitors to the U.S (European countries, Australia etc), where immigration policy is far more accepting of highly skilled migrants. There, I did not even have to be married for my partner of 7 years to work. I was given tax breaks, as I would likely not see the benefits of a percentage of the tax I contributed.
My advice to any highly skilled foreigner considering moving here with the current immigration policy would be - don't. Move to Europe, Australia, Canada or New Zealand instead (just picking countries I am familiar with there).
One further note: While some companies may abuse the system and bring over workers so that the underpay them, the H1B permits transfer to other companies, so they are free to leave.