H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms • Hacker News Board

Re: H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

#251

Post by cscurmudgeon » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 5:09 AM UTC

cbanek wrote: post #215

gragas wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's not true. The American Universities don't choose to admit foreign students just because. The good schools always try to balance the mix of students admitted into the program. Then why do Indians make up more than 30% of my school's CS program, despite them making up less than 1% of the US population?

One thing to remember is that colleges do take a lot of international students, specifically because they pay a lot more in tuition generally than in-state tuition. http://www.businessinsider.com/foreign-students-pay-up-to-th...

Almost no student pays for PhD or MS programs in the top universities.

If you look at the post graduate programs of top universities, it is still dominated by non US students.

Why do you think that is the case?

Re: H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

#252

Post by johnnyb9 » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 5:09 AM UTC

an_account wrote: post #238

hiram112 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Guess who benefits then? Not the US. If demand at US universities goes down, they might just have to reduce prices. Yeah that would certainly suck for the millions of recent college grads working gig jobs, indebted with tens of thousands of dollars.

Actually the opposite at many public universities. "Out of state" and international students subsidize in state students because they pay far greater tuition.

I have trouble believing students are paying less tuition because there is a greater demand from international students. If anything, the tuition would be higher. That international students are more profitable doesn't change the value of the degree or what everyone else is willing to pay for it.

Re: H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

#253

Post by flukus » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 5:12 AM UTC

jeevand wrote: post #236

gragas wrote: post #200

>I assure you, most american-born students get a free pass in stanford/berkeley/CMU if you pit them against a foreign-born. You have no idea what you're talking about. I have first hand experience with this and Americans don't "get a free pass" by any means. Also, what about black people and hispanic people? Are they the lowest earners in America by far because they "don't want to make $$"? According to common consen…

It is not a miracle. Indians immigrating to US are more educated than the general US population [1] (40.6% have graduate degree, 32.3% have bachelor's). Have you also thought about why Indian American kids win spelling bee's or Jews win Nobel Prize disproportionately when compared to their population? Comparing Indians or Asians to blacks is not fair. They are mostly recent immigrants (except few brought in as labour…

> Have you also thought about why Indian American kids win spelling bee's

Because their parents and education system still focus on rote learning, we moved on from that waste of time decades ago.

Re: H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

#254

Post by cscurmudgeon » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 5:12 AM UTC

gragas wrote: post #245

jeevand wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not a miracle. Indians immigrating to US are more educated than the general US population [1] (40.6% have graduate degree, 32.3% have bachelor's). Have you also thought about why Indian American kids win spelling bee's or Jews win Nobel Prize disproportionately when compared to their population? Comparing Indians or Asians to blacks is not fair. They are mostly recent immigrants (except few brought in as labour…

>Have you also thought about why Indian American kids win spelling bee's or Jews win Nobel Prize disproportionately when compared to their population? You make me laugh. Indians are nowhere close to Jews. Sure, Indians make up 1% of the US population, but they also make up almost one fifth of Earth's population as a whole . There are more than one billion Indians on Earth. If you want to play the "maybe they're just…

Is it cronyism or is it "you will see a generally smart group of people when you specifically only let in the top 0.0001% of the Indian population to begin with"?

Or is it both? Or maybe Indians are lizard people that eat babies.

Re: H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

#255

Post by oh_sigh » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 5:13 AM UTC

Dang, why does the title lack the 'do' that the article title has? The do is an important word.

Re: H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

#256

Post by FooBarJmp » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 5:13 AM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #145

nullnilvoid wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. The current system has been abused by Indian out-sourcing companies such as TCS, Infosys. The vast majority of highly skilled workers cannot get H-1B visas at all.

As abhorrent as the situation is, the body shops are only taking advantage of a legal windfall that American corporate greed has lobbied for. The system has been rigged. You can't completely blame the actors taking advantage of it.

Right, so you are driving along in the middle of now where and come to a red light. You know that the likelihood of a police officer being around is very slim. Do you wait for the light to turn green or do you just go through the red light?

These companies are going through the red light. They are intentional manipulating, gaming, and deceiving in order to make huge profits off their own country people by engaging in nothing more than 21st slavery.

The companies that hire these body shops have the old bait and switch pulled on them. The first initial consultation the A team developers are doing the work. These are ones that are paid on par or higher than their native counterparts. Then the company pulls out team A and sends in the 21st slaves. And you don't think the company that thought they were going to get the A Team developers for the duration of their project instead of just the first month, is because of their greed? That "greedy American corporation" is still paying the 5 million dollar contract. But the body shop, they just walked away with 4.5 million dollars. Who is greedy here?

Re: H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

#257

Post by kartickv » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 5:16 AM UTC

Thought experiment: suppose the US decided to ban people who aren't permanent residents from working in jobs with minimal potential for creativity, and which are rote in nature: taxi and bus drivers, delivery people, gardeners, waiters, security guards, cashiers, barbers, people running a restaurant or a barbershop, etc.

Simultaneously, jobs with a potential for creativity — tech, artists, entrepreneurs, lawyers, and so on — would have unlimited open borders, perhaps with a minimum salary requirement of $100K, say. If you have a job offer that meets these requirements, a visa can be denied only if the government can provide a reason, like a criminal record or terrorist links or having committed fraud. Otherwise, the US govt would be required to let you in.

This will have the effect of safeguarding local jobs where it's hard to imagine creativity or skills making a difference to the outcome, while having an open market in areas where creativity and skills make all the difference.

I'm using the US as an example, but the principle would apply to all rich countries, or even all countries, if you consider Bangladeshis moving to India, for example.

Re: H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

#258

Post by an_cap » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 5:18 AM UTC

Suppose we lived in an America in which if a black person wanted to work in the tech industry they had to get a special license from the federal government called the H-1Black license. Nobody here on HN would then be discussing if companies were abusing the H-1Black system or whether H-1Black workers were being paid less than the going market rate.

A minimally decent person would notice that the obviously correct thing to do would be to remove the requirement that blacks get an H-1Black license before being allowed to work. The ethical intuition that leads to this conclusion, I think, is that one shouldn't be discriminated against based on one's circumstances at birth. Everybody (at least on HN) seems to agree that if an employer is willing to hire me, third parties (i.e. other people who also wanted the same job) shouldn't be allowed to prevent the employer from hiring me just because I was born the wrong race or the wrong gender. But people seem to think that if I were born on the wrong side of the border then its totally fine for third parties to demand preferential treatment.

Can someone explain the logic to me? Why is it not okay to discriminate on the basis of race or gender but okay to discriminate on the basis of citizenship/country of birth? Would it be okay if NYC started requiring people outside New York to obtain a highly scarce license to be able to work in NYC? Could whites start requiring non-whites to obtain a license?

Re: H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

#259

Post by godzilla82 » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 5:20 AM UTC

whitenoice wrote: post #213

hiram112 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Guess who benefits then? Not the US. If demand at US universities goes down, they might just have to reduce prices. Yeah that would certainly suck for the millions of recent college grads working gig jobs, indebted with tens of thousands of dollars.

More than students it would suck for universities, less funding, less infrastructure growth, it would cause a domino effect. If not US then somewhere else, students will figure it out, they are young but it will have a long lasting effect on US. If talented students don't have options out side their home country they will improve the conditions of their home country and cause less brain drain. Especially China and In…

I think students want to study in US (or are willing to pay to study in US) is because after completing education there, they are eligible to find work there. I dont think students want to spend great sums of money studying overseas, because they dont have options in their own country.

Re: H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

#260

Post by FooBarJmp » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 5:21 AM UTC

wsxcde wrote: post #247

Although Infosys and the like apply for a lot of H1Bs, they make very very few (we're talking double-digit numbers) successful applications for green cards. This means most of these people on H1Bs for the consulting companies are actually going back home. Which means that Infosys, TCS and the like are contributing a rotating pool of about ~30k-40k "migrant" software labor consisting of individuals who live in the US…

Let's examine your math. So this year there were 86,000 visas for 2017 that last for 3 years. So that means by 2020, if the visa limit stays at 86,000, there will be 258,000 H1Bs, of course this assumes that H1Bs were created in 2017, we are ignoring all those that came before. Let's NOT ignore those and look at the below link -

http://insights.dice.com/2013/05/14/how-nearly-800000-h-1b-w...

Yes, in 2013, it was 775,957. So by now, let's say it's closer to 1.2 million. That's a third of all software developers in the USA.

So Yes! This is exactly the reason that American wages are depressed in the job markets that H1Bs work in.