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Trump’s Next Move on Immigration to Hit Closer to Home for Tech

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Re: Trump’s Next Move on Immigration to Hit Closer to Home for Tech

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's not even remotely the same thing. Trump hating on Iranians for no good reason . Trump hating on Mexicans who are here legally or aren't even in the country (the whole "Mexicans are rapists, but I'm sure there's some good ones" comment). Versus Trump changing immigration policy to balance foreign and domestic workers, where it's heavily tipped to foreign workers right now. He's not building a wall to keep…

It's heavily tipped to foreign workers? For a US worker to find a job, they need to find a willing employer. For a foreign worker, they need to: 0) Find a willing employer. 1) Get lucky. For 2017, there were 236,000 applications for 65,000 H1Bs (about a 25% success rate). 2) Prove that an American worker isn't available to do the job. 3) Wait > 8 months to start the job (applications happen in April 2016 for 2017 emp…

If it wasn't tipped toward foreign workers, you'd hear stories of H1B workers who sadly lost their job to an American. You'd hear stories about companies who hired all American employees, then apologized when they realize it didn't work out and they went back to H1B workers. You'd hear politicians calling for more foreign workers because there are too many jobs for Americans.

The 25% success rate? That's the system working as intended.

But your story of American workers just needing to find a willing employer, your story of proving that an American worker isn't available to do the job, it's just not true. Or at least it's not as true as you want to make it seem.

The minimum for an H1B employee is $60,000 right now. I made more than that at my first tech job right out of college, living in a small city in the Midwest. To get an H1B employee, all you have to do is put up a job posting for $60,000 and wait. The people who will fill that position will be expecting $80,000 and will turn it down. To get an H1B employee, all you need to do is pay far less than market rate (but at or above H1B minimum). Boom, you have highly skilled Americans out of a job and companies getting employees for less than market rate. I've seen it happen at every place I've ever worked.

Part of Trump's idea is to raise the minimum for H1B workers to $100k. The idea of an H1B is that it allows you to hire employees who have such a specialized skillset that you can't find someone in America to do the work. What it's become is finding an entry-level Java coder for less than what an American college-educated entry-level employee would make. If the work you need done is so advanced or so specialized that there is no one in America who can do it, you should be willing to pay whatever it costs to get it done.

It should be extremely difficult to hire a foreign worker. Not impossible, but really, really hard. Yes, it may be a privilege to be an American, but there are a lot of unemployed, skilled, college-educated Americans. The problem isn't not finding enough Americans to fill the positions, it's not wanting to pay what they need to get paid. And that's the wrong sort of behavior to encourage.

H1B visas should drive pay up, not down.

Re: Trump’s Next Move on Immigration to Hit Closer to Home for Tech

#292
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The thing is, tech worker market is global and large companies always have the choice to outsource plain and simple. The tech worker market segment the body shops proliferate within in the US is one-way permeable: from developing to developed world markets. There is nowhere near the kind of market demand for developed world tech workers in developing world markets. Without that equivalency, claiming a "global" mark…

> There is nowhere near the kind of market demand for developed world tech workers in developing world markets. I think the suggestion from the parent was that if you prevent i.e. Google from bringing in H1B workers, they will simply hire them in their India office.

That's what I meant.

The market may not be global from an employee point of view, but that's an oxymoron, that has never been the case ever in any field. ( not saying it is a good thing )

Without any protectionist measure, it just remove one of the many resourcing options for the large US companies. It is unrealistic to think that the job will be automatically reassigned in the US when those companies are already spread all around the world.

All I'm trying to say is that suppressing H-1B is probably good because abuse is never good. However, I don't believe it will magically solve the problems of stagnating salaries without something else.

Re: Trump’s Next Move on Immigration to Hit Closer to Home for Tech

#293
Yes, the current H1B system is broken. People will find loopholes in the future replacement as well. Will the new system be better? I am not sure.

A couple of fixes would help:

(a) Remove the dependency between the visa holder and the company that sponsors H1B. Initially, every h1b holder needs a company to sponsor. But break this indenture after 12 or 18 months.

(b) Check the wages against IRS W2. Here, people complain about wage disparities between midwest and nyc/bay area. If someone says we need to have $80K min in Des Moines, IA., and $130K in Sunnyvale, CA, people will abuse this system through intermediate contracting agencies. Basically, one works in the bay area for $100K, while claiming on the paper that he is working in Iowa.

(c) lets accept that fact that humans are selfish and that we can't get a perfect system (a system that doesn't get abused). Just work with ways to reduce loopholes. For instance, UK is stricter in terms of immigration enforcement; they send the border patrol to train stations, bus stops, apartments, to check on the status of people. I don't see it happening in the states that much.

(d) STEM is abused now with silly universities in America, minting 1000's of MS degrees in STEM.

Re: Trump’s Next Move on Immigration to Hit Closer to Home for Tech

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the quote you gave, "What is going on is he is effectively giving Green Cards to people on H-1B visas who are unable to get Green Cards due to the [annual] quotas… it could be over 100,000." [emphasis added] The article states effectively which means that while they aren't given out in reality, they are accomplishing much the same thing in practice and that 100,000 more people are working here than should be acc…

No it doesn't. India has a massive backlog of green card applicants. Obama's order makes it so taht people who are already here working under H-1B laws can cut ahead of that line and start getting green cards. That's a change in priority. Otherwise these people are stuck here tied to a company for a decade+. That's shitty for everyone but hte company. If you really want H-1B visas to not be abused then you should be…

> " That's shitty for everyone but hte company."

Not true. The limitation in "job liquidity" means less competition for Americans for jobs that immigrants might underbid.

If the law were rigidly enforced so that only jobs allowed under H1-B were a job that no American could do then there would be far, far fewer than 85,000 H1-B Visas granted per year.

In many cases, I'll bet the companies intentionally put the jobs not where people want to live (e.g., NYC, Boston, DC, ...) but in places they don't necessarily want to live.

Re: Trump’s Next Move on Immigration to Hit Closer to Home for Tech

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

feel free to links some of those statistics.

I've done so many times. Here's a good summary. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12381938#12382336

And every time you're refuted as presenting an overly simplistic view, mistaking correlation for causation, and a having a host of other categorical and logical errors.

What you do when you link like that is make a "shotgun bullet-point argument:" you're presenting a set of loose, possibly related facts as though they're all mutually reinforcing studies leading to the same conclusions. There's no "there" there.

Re: Trump’s Next Move on Immigration to Hit Closer to Home for Tech

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it doesn't. India has a massive backlog of green card applicants. Obama's order makes it so taht people who are already here working under H-1B laws can cut ahead of that line and start getting green cards. That's a change in priority. Otherwise these people are stuck here tied to a company for a decade+. That's shitty for everyone but hte company. If you really want H-1B visas to not be abused then you should be…

> " That's shitty for everyone but hte company." Not true. The limitation in "job liquidity" means less competition for Americans for jobs that immigrants might underbid. If the law were rigidly enforced so that only jobs allowed under H1-B were a job that no American could do then there would be far, far fewer than 85,000 H1-B Visas granted per year. In many cases, I'll bet the companies intentionally put the jobs n…

> The limitation in "job liquidity" means less competition for Americans for jobs that immigrants might underbid.

What is stopping the employer from trapping a "job illiquid" immigrant into such a job you want to apply for?

> If the law were rigidly enforced so that only jobs allowed under H1-B were a job that no American could do

I could be wrong, but my understanding is that there is no such law.

Re: Trump’s Next Move on Immigration to Hit Closer to Home for Tech

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

H-1B, the input stream for these skilled immigrants, do not have any such per-country limits. But the green card process does. This brings into existence a large number of skilled immigrants who have their stay in the country tied to their job. This weakens their negotiation power, and contributes significantly to the wage depression you talk about. Even NumbersUSA do not oppose removing this [1] restriction. Yet, yo…

I'm (selfishly) for keeping them because I don't want to get stuck in line with the huge backlog of people from India and China. That's a lousy reason though. I'm not going to spend a decade living a shitty life waiting though. So if the per country caps go I might just give up.

> I'm not going to spend a decade living a shitty life waiting though.

Obama administration estimated that with the per country quotas removed, the backlogs for everyone will be gone in under 5 years. Sure, that is worser than getting your GC in a year.

Re: Trump’s Next Move on Immigration to Hit Closer to Home for Tech

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's heavily tipped to foreign workers? For a US worker to find a job, they need to find a willing employer. For a foreign worker, they need to: 0) Find a willing employer. 1) Get lucky. For 2017, there were 236,000 applications for 65,000 H1Bs (about a 25% success rate). 2) Prove that an American worker isn't available to do the job. 3) Wait > 8 months to start the job (applications happen in April 2016 for 2017 emp…

If it wasn't tipped toward foreign workers, you'd hear stories of H1B workers who sadly lost their job to an American. You'd hear stories about companies who hired all American employees, then apologized when they realize it didn't work out and they went back to H1B workers. You'd hear politicians calling for more foreign workers because there are too many jobs for Americans. The 25% success rate? That's the system w…

> If it wasn't tipped toward foreign workers, you'd hear stories of H1B workers who sadly lost their job to an American.

You don't, because when an H-1B worker loses her job, she has to leave the country or find another job real quick. Either way, she most likely do not have time to get her story across to you.

Re: Trump’s Next Move on Immigration to Hit Closer to Home for Tech

#299
post #245

I love HN. Trump hating on Iranians and Mexicans. HN: "I hate Trump, he's so mean to immigrants. And avocado prices will go up! ::angry face:: Trump hating on Indians who took our jobs! HN: "Protectionism for me too? ::swoons::"

Not hating on Indians per se, but hating on the wage-depressing way they are hired. H1B visas tie you to your employer, so you have no leverage to increase your wages. Now if they could job-hop like the rest of us, their presence wouldn't depress wages so much, and we'll all be better off. In other words, we want more freedom for them, not less, nor the crippleware BS that is the current H1B system. Same goes for und…

Please support H.R.392 [1] which proposes to remove the long green card backlogs which causes the wage depression you mention.

[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/392/...

Re: Trump’s Next Move on Immigration to Hit Closer to Home for Tech

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

H1B visas tie you to your employer, so you have no leverage to increase your wages. Sure you do: you can find a new employer willing to spend a couple of thousand (i.e. a lot less than recruiting costs) on transferring the visa. There is no barrier to a Mexican illegal immigrant changing jobs whatsoever. I'm all in favor of making it easier for people to come to the US and productively work for willing employers (whe…

Except whenever you change employers your green-card application resets. For people born in India, green cards applications are currently being processed from July 2005. That means someone from India who is trying to become a permanent resident is stuck at the same company for over a decade.

> Except whenever you change employers your green-card application resets.

The green card application has to be redone again, but the place in line will be intact in most cases.

Still, you are right that the backlog can take over a decade.

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