Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Immigration Uncertainty Threatens America’s Tech Dominance

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 451 posts

Re: How Immigration Uncertainty Threatens America’s Tech Dominance

#61

Post by jordanb »

whatever_dude wrote: post #56
hungrygs wrote: post #28

The general direction of the Trump plan regarding H-1b is the way to go. The lottery needs to be replaced with a demand system where the highest salaries get slots. A floor of $100,000/yr should exist and adjust for inflation. Next, generously expand the green card fast track, as this category of employee, as an immigrant, is a free agent to move among companies or to start their own business. To date, as we all know…

The H1B as it is has many problems, but a big salary floor is not the way to go in my opinion. Remember H1B is not just for tech workers. If you want to hire, say, an interpreter of a specific foreign language to work on a community in rural Alabama temporarily, a $100,000 minimum wage would be absurd. They instead need to go after the companies that learned to game the system. I'm not sure what the solution is here.…

Many nations have special visa categories for native speakers of foreign languages working as teachers. If that's really a problem then having something like that would probably make more sense.

Usually when I here someone critique the salary floor it's in reference to poorly paid scientists or biologists, as if it's a law of nature that these people should be poorly paid.

Re: How Immigration Uncertainty Threatens America’s Tech Dominance

#62

Post by 542458 »

whatever_dude wrote: post #56
hungrygs wrote: post #28

The general direction of the Trump plan regarding H-1b is the way to go. The lottery needs to be replaced with a demand system where the highest salaries get slots. A floor of $100,000/yr should exist and adjust for inflation. Next, generously expand the green card fast track, as this category of employee, as an immigrant, is a free agent to move among companies or to start their own business. To date, as we all know…

The H1B as it is has many problems, but a big salary floor is not the way to go in my opinion. Remember H1B is not just for tech workers. If you want to hire, say, an interpreter of a specific foreign language to work on a community in rural Alabama temporarily, a $100,000 minimum wage would be absurd. They instead need to go after the companies that learned to game the system. I'm not sure what the solution is here.…

> If you want to hire, say, an interpreter of a specific foreign language to work on a community in rural Alabama temporarily, a $100,000 minimum wage would be absurd.

Wow, that's a really important point. I'm so in the tech-news bubble that I'd never heard anybody say that before - thanks for pointing that out!

Re: How Immigration Uncertainty Threatens America’s Tech Dominance

#63

Post by cpursley »

cortuso wrote: post #50
hungrygs wrote: post #28

The general direction of the Trump plan regarding H-1b is the way to go. The lottery needs to be replaced with a demand system where the highest salaries get slots. A floor of $100,000/yr should exist and adjust for inflation. Next, generously expand the green card fast track, as this category of employee, as an immigrant, is a free agent to move among companies or to start their own business. To date, as we all know…

I think it's $130K, which is 2x as much as before. It's senior level salary in IT (and I think for lawyers and MD's it's not starting salary either), in some cases/states Principal level. I would not invite H1B on that position, I would get one from local market for that amount of money. If you follow the line: it simply says do not use H1B more. Plus, what international student will do once he completes the college,…

> I would not invite H1B on that position, I would get one from local market for that amount of money

Are you suggesting that a $130k floor for H1B workers would undermine the practice of undercutting local workers?

Re: How Immigration Uncertainty Threatens America’s Tech Dominance

#64

Post by jordanb »

cortuso wrote: post #50
hungrygs wrote: post #28

The general direction of the Trump plan regarding H-1b is the way to go. The lottery needs to be replaced with a demand system where the highest salaries get slots. A floor of $100,000/yr should exist and adjust for inflation. Next, generously expand the green card fast track, as this category of employee, as an immigrant, is a free agent to move among companies or to start their own business. To date, as we all know…

I think it's $130K, which is 2x as much as before. It's senior level salary in IT (and I think for lawyers and MD's it's not starting salary either), in some cases/states Principal level. I would not invite H1B on that position, I would get one from local market for that amount of money. If you follow the line: it simply says do not use H1B more. Plus, what international student will do once he completes the college,…

> I would not invite H1B on that position, I would get one from local market for that amount of money.

So you're saying the incentives would work as intended..

Re: How Immigration Uncertainty Threatens America’s Tech Dominance

#65

Post by conanbatt »

dublinben wrote: post #52
conanbatt wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably they have been doing well below 100kU$S in benefits, because surely if they cant land a 100k gig and can land a 60k one, they have lower skills. Its reasonable to feel discontent with such companies, but if there were free movement of people working lawfully they would still be compelled to hire immigrants. Its only frowned upon because the government said so. If the government says you can get H1B's with 50…

As long as there is a cap on these visas, they should be distributed in the most efficient manner, i.e. through an auction. Anything else is wasteful.

The question would be why have a cap at all.

Re: How Immigration Uncertainty Threatens America’s Tech Dominance

#67

Post by bdavisx »

whatever_dude wrote: post #56
hungrygs wrote: post #28

The general direction of the Trump plan regarding H-1b is the way to go. The lottery needs to be replaced with a demand system where the highest salaries get slots. A floor of $100,000/yr should exist and adjust for inflation. Next, generously expand the green card fast track, as this category of employee, as an immigrant, is a free agent to move among companies or to start their own business. To date, as we all know…

The H1B as it is has many problems, but a big salary floor is not the way to go in my opinion. Remember H1B is not just for tech workers. If you want to hire, say, an interpreter of a specific foreign language to work on a community in rural Alabama temporarily, a $100,000 minimum wage would be absurd. They instead need to go after the companies that learned to game the system. I'm not sure what the solution is here.…

If the supply of those interpreters is so limited that you have to go outside of the U.S. to find them, then doesn't supply/demand indicate that they should have a high salary?

Re: How Immigration Uncertainty Threatens America’s Tech Dominance

#69

Post by lukeschlather »

jordanb wrote: post #55
hungrygs wrote: post #28

The general direction of the Trump plan regarding H-1b is the way to go. The lottery needs to be replaced with a demand system where the highest salaries get slots. A floor of $100,000/yr should exist and adjust for inflation. Next, generously expand the green card fast track, as this category of employee, as an immigrant, is a free agent to move among companies or to start their own business. To date, as we all know…

I agree H1s should get Green Cards much faster. The visa employee should also have more flexibility in changing jobs, including when his GC is being processed. I don't like the "staple a green card" proposals for anyone who gets a STEM masters degree though. Many US Universities have already turned into masters degree mills for people trying to get visas. If Universities were allowed to sell Green Cards the problem w…

That sounds like a problem (if it is a problem) that should be addressed by limiting the number of student visas, not by allowing people to get a valuable US education and then telling them to go home.

I've worked with many people on H1Bs and student visas. Every single one of them was a valuable person to work with, and they should be citizens. Maybe universities are becoming green card mills, but in my experience everyone who goes to a US university gets exactly what they bargained for. The law may say otherwise, but in spirit they become Americans.

Re: How Immigration Uncertainty Threatens America’s Tech Dominance

#70

Post by yummyfajitas »

ericd wrote: post #60
yummyfajitas wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In practice, it's necessary that it be sufficient for the vast majority of the cases. And in the vast majority of the cases, it is. Immigrants from the 7 countries that Obama designated in the Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015 [1], and authorized suspension of entry for, make up a tiny fraction of visas. [1] https://www.niacaction.org/update-frequently-asked-questions... https://sethfrantzman.com/2017/01/28/oba…

Right, it's still the vast majority, but it's not virtually certain like it was. But I was speaking in the abstract, I wasn't trying to make it seem like a bigger thing than it is. That said, would you agree that the way this is being handled shakes confidence for visitors from other countries that haven't been banned? For green card holders who've moved their lives to the US?

I agree that the massive amount of (often clueless) media attention being given to this does shake confidence.

The actual action, if given "we love Obama" levels of media attention rather than "we hate Trump" levels (c.f. how little attention the Terrorist Travel Prevention Act was given), would have shaken confidence to a much lesser (but still nonzero) extent.

I think this whole thing is pretty dumb. I'm just critiquing misconceptions about how visas work.

Post reply on HN