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Gaming the H-1B system for good

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Re: Gaming the H-1B system for good

#141

Post by ashwinaj »

ambrood wrote: post #75
shas3 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No country is allowed to get more than 7% of the green cards each year (roughly speaking). This GC-H1B lock-in problem is very unique to Indians (~10 year wait), and to a lesser extent, Chinese (~4 year wait). The 7% quota would be illegal were it applied to US citizenship, according to civil rights legislations of the 1960s (prior to which non-whites were discriminated against in naturalized-citizenships via quotas)…

> I think the notion that after working (and paying taxes) in the US for 6 years, a person has to wait another 10 years to reap the benefits of permanent residency simply because they were born in a particular country is morally indefensible. I came here on a student visa at 17, went on get a CS Masters and now live in SF on a H1B almost 10 years later. America is pretty much the only country I know how to navigate a…

Well you can change jobs if you have an I140 approved. I've been in the US for 10 years and I honestly don't care about getting a gc. The I140 from my previous employer allows me to get 3 year extensions on my H1B. The downside is that your new employer has to restart the gc process again, which is fine since I get to work on things that I'm interested in rather than getting stuck in the same job for years on end.

Re: Gaming the H-1B system for good

#142

Post by xbeta »

FlyingSnake wrote: post #105

I was working on H1-B for 6 years in the USA. The long wait time, and utter unpredictability of the Green Card system was insane. Being Indian didn't help either, as we are subjected to 12+ years of wait (EB3 quota). The stupid H4 laws made my highly qualified wife unable to work. Finally I kicked the plush job and American dreams and moved to Europe. My employer called me ungrateful and selfish for leaving after he…

And Europe life isn't bad either. I'm glad it works out for you. I'm considering similar option, maybe we should chat? :-)

Re: Gaming the H-1B system for good

#143

Post by falsedan »

shas3 wrote: post #51
tosseraccount wrote: post #22

A scholarly take on the guest worker visas from Civil Rights advocate Norm Matloff ... [ http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b10min.html ] ... major attraction for employers, especially in Silicon Valley, is the "handcuffed" status of H-1Bs ... There is no tech labor shortage. No study, other than those sponsored by the industry, has ever shown a shortage.

> There is no tech labor shortage. "Tech labor shortage" is not a clear-cut black-and-white issue. The market is not fully elastic to easily use terms such as 'shortage', etc. Say, you need to build a team of 5 machine learning scientist with specific experience in image recognition, there may be 100 people in the country specializing in this field, and perhaps 10 of them are the job market, and 7 are international c…

Fun fact: the US has sensible immigration laws for AU citizens (getting an E-3 takes about 3 weeks, ~$400 from employee, job offer letter, degree).

Also if you think AU immigration is sensible then, boy howdy! Do I have news for you!

Re: Gaming the H-1B system for good

#144

Post by shas3 »

balls187 wrote: post #139
shas3 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No country is allowed to get more than 7% of the green cards each year (roughly speaking). This GC-H1B lock-in problem is very unique to Indians (~10 year wait), and to a lesser extent, Chinese (~4 year wait). The 7% quota would be illegal were it applied to US citizenship, according to civil rights legislations of the 1960s (prior to which non-whites were discriminated against in naturalized-citizenships via quotas)…

> the US for 6 years, a person has to wait another 10 years to reap the benefits of permanent residency simply because they were born in a particular country is morally indefensible When phrased that way, sure it feels that way. But it's not because you are born in a specific country, it's because your country of origin has a lot of people who are attempting to immigrate to the US, and each country is capped. Imagine…

> Imagine if they lifted that policy, then countries like Mexico, India, China would lock out pretty much any other country from immigrating to the US. Add in the Amnesty program for undocumented workers, and you could imagine that nearest neighbors to the US would lock everyone else out.

You are assuming that they will lock-out without supporting with real data. Already 30% of H1Bs are taken by Indians, and a good percentage of family based immigration is from Mexico.

India and China make up around 35% of the world's population. A uniformly drawn sample of immigrants from across the world would consist of 35% Indians and Chinese. Further, Mexico is America's neighbor, and the two countries share a lot of history.

The number of Indians has grown from 1.7 million in 2000 to 2.8 million in 2010 in spite of the caps. The numbers are not magically going to explode, most of the people who're in the green card queue will likely duke it out and become citizens in due time. Their children will likely stay in the US too. So, I don't see how the caps are limiting or democratizing the process. You don't have caps at H1B, you don't have caps for citizenship. Only the in-between stage of permanent residency, caps exist. That already makes it an ineffective tool in un-biasing the skew.

Re: Gaming the H-1B system for good

#145

Post by Brig303 »

balls187 wrote: post #139
shas3 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No country is allowed to get more than 7% of the green cards each year (roughly speaking). This GC-H1B lock-in problem is very unique to Indians (~10 year wait), and to a lesser extent, Chinese (~4 year wait). The 7% quota would be illegal were it applied to US citizenship, according to civil rights legislations of the 1960s (prior to which non-whites were discriminated against in naturalized-citizenships via quotas)…

> the US for 6 years, a person has to wait another 10 years to reap the benefits of permanent residency simply because they were born in a particular country is morally indefensible When phrased that way, sure it feels that way. But it's not because you are born in a specific country, it's because your country of origin has a lot of people who are attempting to immigrate to the US, and each country is capped. Imagine…

Both India and China have a lot of diversity and are home to 40% of humanity. A fairer immigration system WOULD see a lot more Indians and Chinese.

If this is defensible, then racial quotas in schools (e.g., capping proportion of Jews) are also defensible by using the same logic as "you're now penalizing everyone else."

I'd rather have US as the home of the best and the brightest, not based on whether your parents were born in Mongolia or 100 miles away in Inner Mongolia that happens to be in China.

Sorry, can't really see how the moral argument works.

Re: Gaming the H-1B system for good

#146

Post by s73v3r »

odonnellryan wrote: post #49
outworlder wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if they are paying below market salaries. H-1B households are restricted to a single income. They could be paying below average market salaries, but 66k won't fly in the bay area. I haven't seen to many software engineers living under the bridges. Disclaimer: the single income restriction is why I fought to get a L-1 visa instead.

Can't people commute? I mean, certainly not everyone in the bay area makes > 70K a year.

Why would they want to do that?

Re: Gaming the H-1B system for good

#147

Post by s73v3r »

finance-geek wrote: post #121
djb_hackernews wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why would only 10% of qualified individuals be on the market? Wouldn't all of them be? Unless you are counting retired, infirmed, and imprisoned? Generally skilled engineers are great for training programs.

For one thing...the pay is often too low. Qualified individuals may be on the market, but not on the tech market. Same reason why so many Physics PhDs who can program C++ in their sleep choose to go to Wall St instead of Silicon Valley. Labor sits on the periphery but wont dive in unless they get market pay.

"For one thing...the pay is often too low."

Sounds like something pretty easy to fix.

Re: Gaming the H-1B system for good

#148

Post by xbeta »

xipho wrote: post #125
xbeta wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's BS. TN doesn't help Canadians with family. Also US CBP can always terminate your TN visa on the border if they "think" you are abusing. H-1B is safer for that reason.

Any visa can be terminated for any reason at the border, no difference there b/w TN and H-1B (IANAL).

Well, it's not really a law, but attorney has suggested that CBP normally don't terminate H-1B at border vs TN as H-1B does have a dual intent, so they can't just say you have an "immigration intention" to deny your visa at border.

And that's definitely an advantage over TN.

Re: Gaming the H-1B system for good

#149

Post by rezashirazian »

1024core wrote: post #138

I think it was mentioned before by someone else, but I'll just repeat it because it bears repeating: H-1B visas should not go by lottery, but by descending order of salary. At a high enough price, it's cheaper to hire an American... ;-)

this would be a good idea if it didn't corner the visa for tech companies in the valley that generally pay much higher wages.

All briliant non-tech scientist would have no chance of getting the visa.

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