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New Evidence USCIS Policies Increased Denials Of H-1B Visas

forbes.com

21–30 of 75 posts

Re: New Evidence USCIS Policies Increased Denials Of H-1B Visas

#21
post #9
post #2

India has more applicants than all other countries combined times 2.5 I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them are fraud and legitimately rejected https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/Re...

Having worked with H-1B "principal engineers" who can't write a bash script, I'm thinking yes, this is true.

Is your company hiring?

Edit: Americans, I mean.

Re: New Evidence USCIS Policies Increased Denials Of H-1B Visas

#22
post #11
post #5

From the article a)approximately 80% of full-time graduate students in computer science and electrical engineering at U.S. universities are international students. b)Economists Giovanni Peri, Kevin Shih and Chad Sparber notes “A 1 percentage point increase in the foreign STEM share of a city’s total employment increased the wage growth of native college-educated labor by about 7–8 percentage points and the wage growt…

So in the limit case where 100% of the STEM employment is foreign the average wages of native workers will be 220% higher than they are now? What mechanism will achieve this remarkable result?

STEMs be eating, shopping, getting hair cuts, and what not.

Re: New Evidence USCIS Policies Increased Denials Of H-1B Visas

#23
post #10

Eric Weinstein has some thoughts on this: https://mobile.twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/94208170561... Read the paper he links to there.

The decline in trust in "experts" isn't because people are stupid, it's because even uneducated Americans are actually pretty smart, more than smart enough to know when they're being lied to. This applies to people on both sides of the issues, it's just that the people who prefer the liars' side pretend not to notice the lying since they perceive it as beneficial to their interests.

>even uneducated Americans are actually pretty smart, more than smart enough to know when they're being lied to.

How do you explain the enormous viewership of Fox news?

Re: New Evidence USCIS Policies Increased Denials Of H-1B Visas

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that should be table-stakes for the profession. And too many H1-Bs are just awful. I don't necessarily blame them individually, but it's a perverse suboptimal system. If I ever run my own business, I'm going to put a 300-800% price hike on any work where I have to interface with Tata or Cognizant, or ATT Global Services, or the other kinds of consulting bodyshops that currently employ the vast majority of H1-…

> Because that should be table-stakes for the profession. By your definition, most of the 736 players who played in FIFA 2018 world cup few weeks ago do not posses any special athletic skills - they merely posses skills that are table-stakes for their profession. Yet, most reasonable people would not hesitate to call those players elite athletes. What I am trying to point out is that H-1B is not about finding that ou…

There are 265 million professional soccer players according to FIFA* and 736 were in the world cup. If the US accepted foreign developers at the same rate, that is 0.00027%, then of the 14.6 million that would be 41 individuals rounding up. So yes, they would comfortably fit in a large conference room.

*https://www.fifa.com/mm/document/fifafacts/bcoffsurv/emaga_9...

Re: New Evidence USCIS Policies Increased Denials Of H-1B Visas

#25
post #23
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The decline in trust in "experts" isn't because people are stupid, it's because even uneducated Americans are actually pretty smart, more than smart enough to know when they're being lied to. This applies to people on both sides of the issues, it's just that the people who prefer the liars' side pretend not to notice the lying since they perceive it as beneficial to their interests.

>even uneducated Americans are actually pretty smart, more than smart enough to know when they're being lied to. How do you explain the enormous viewership of Fox news?

Their competition is incompetent.

Re: New Evidence USCIS Policies Increased Denials Of H-1B Visas

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because that should be table-stakes for the profession. By your definition, most of the 736 players who played in FIFA 2018 world cup few weeks ago do not posses any special athletic skills - they merely posses skills that are table-stakes for their profession. Yet, most reasonable people would not hesitate to call those players elite athletes. What I am trying to point out is that H-1B is not about finding that ou…

Personally, I'm of the opinion that educated, competent workers in useful fields are exactly the kind of people you would want to have immigrate and become permanent citizens. So the whole H1-B charade is rather stupid from that perspective- if they are really effective workers that cannot be found domestically, why put them into a shitty indentured servitude? You deal with too many sub-par people that tick a certain…

> Personally, I'm of the opinion that educated, competent workers in useful fields are exactly the kind of people you would want to have immigrate and become permanent citizens. So the whole H1-B charade is rather stupid from that perspective- if they are really effective workers that cannot be found domestically, why put them into a shitty indentured servitude?

I don't disagree with you on these points.

My disagreement was to the unsubstantiated assertion by User23 that the number of engineers who qualify for H-1B in spirit and letter would be a handful.

Re: New Evidence USCIS Policies Increased Denials Of H-1B Visas

#27
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because that should be table-stakes for the profession. By your definition, most of the 736 players who played in FIFA 2018 world cup few weeks ago do not posses any special athletic skills - they merely posses skills that are table-stakes for their profession. Yet, most reasonable people would not hesitate to call those players elite athletes. What I am trying to point out is that H-1B is not about finding that ou…

There are 265 million professional soccer players according to FIFA* and 736 were in the world cup. If the US accepted foreign developers at the same rate, that is 0.00027%, then of the 14.6 million that would be 41 individuals rounding up. So yes, they would comfortably fit in a large conference room. * https://www.fifa.com/mm/document/fifafacts/bcoffsurv/emaga_9...

Let me repeat the question I asked above - why is a good developer not considered to posses "specialized knowledge in a field of human endeavor"?.

Re: New Evidence USCIS Policies Increased Denials Of H-1B Visas

#28
I know a lot of Americans think that most H-1B are cheap labor or incompetent engineers. There is some truth to it but hear the other side out.

The way H-1B is implemented, it does not distinguish a person with PhDin Computer Science from Stanford from someone who did bachelors in Computer Science from Univ of Timbuktoo. This is the only visa for a top student can get to continue to work in the United States.

Over many years, this caused a lot of grief with body shops abusing these visas. The new administration came in and appointed a bunch of racists to head USCIS, who started denying H-1B indiscriminately. Guess who are the guys getting kicked out now?

Yes, the same Stanford graduates (or other top university graduates) that America taught for many years.

The process also discounts non-linearity of life. A student produced by top American universities is likely a good engineer. If they've worked in top Silicon valley companies for many years, they've gained practical knowledge that many other countries would kill to have. These 28-45 year old people are typically startup founders, top engineers, execs and folks willing to take chances. The US unceremoniously chooses to kick them out brashly? Guess which jobs are going with them?

Also, the real mess of H-1B is the green card process of USA. There are so so so many people on periodic H-1B extensions for 10 years, 15 years etc. These guys have been in the US for the best periods of their lives and should be naturalized. But because of the patchwork laws of US immigration, don't have green cards. With the over zealous deportation machine (aka USCIS) in operation now, these folks are being kicked out with their spouses and kids.

The US under current administration has the world completely backward. If they ever genuinely had the intent to fix the immigration process (which I suspect they don't), they've chosen the worst possible way.

Re: New Evidence USCIS Policies Increased Denials Of H-1B Visas

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because that should be table-stakes for the profession. By your definition, most of the 736 players who played in FIFA 2018 world cup few weeks ago do not posses any special athletic skills - they merely posses skills that are table-stakes for their profession. Yet, most reasonable people would not hesitate to call those players elite athletes. What I am trying to point out is that H-1B is not about finding that ou…

Personally, I'm of the opinion that educated, competent workers in useful fields are exactly the kind of people you would want to have immigrate and become permanent citizens. So the whole H1-B charade is rather stupid from that perspective- if they are really effective workers that cannot be found domestically, why put them into a shitty indentured servitude? You deal with too many sub-par people that tick a certain…

The main problem I have with H1-B visa use cases (or at least my perception and understanding, based on the fact that I regularly see 8x2 grids of H1-B visa application stacks that go as deep as 2 novels posted as required by law at my work) is that they're mostly a vehicle to reduce wages or arbitrarily discriminate against otherwise qualified native applicants.

In the former case, H1-B visa holders are basically 100% dependent on their employers for continued employment - if they lose it for whatever reason, they get deported. This leads to flagrant abuses on behalf of the employers - demanding overtime & lower wages that they couldn't demand from those employees' domestic counterparts.

In the latter case, I work at one of the various companies that prides themselves on having an extremely high hiring bar. Of course, this doesn't really mean we hire the absolute best, it just means that we toss a lot of applicants in the bin because they weren't able to put on as good of a dog and pony show as expected - our interview process does not even kind of resemble what people at my company do on a day to day basis, or even measure the skills it takes to really succeed. So, of course, when we exhaust the local talent pool through arbitrary pickiness, we just add in the labor pool from abroad, rather than just... you know, reconsider our hiring standards and maybe give people who are already here, qualified, and looking for a good job one of those good jobs. This in turn dilutes the labor market - people who would have gotten that cushy job through merit are pushed down into positions that don't require as much luck to get, and the people who would have gotten those jobs are pushed into the jobs where you pretty much just have to chat up the interviewer, and so on.

This whole inane process is pretty much the cause of the absurdity of the American tech industry, where you either get super lucky and wind up in a lower-mid 6 figure job with crazy benefits, or you wind up in a mid- to low- 5 figure job where your boss both shits on you constantly and simultaneously doesn't really understand what you're doing day to day anyway. There's a middle ground, but like barely if my last job search is anything to go off of.

Re: New Evidence USCIS Policies Increased Denials Of H-1B Visas

#30
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because that should be table-stakes for the profession. By your definition, most of the 736 players who played in FIFA 2018 world cup few weeks ago do not posses any special athletic skills - they merely posses skills that are table-stakes for their profession. Yet, most reasonable people would not hesitate to call those players elite athletes. What I am trying to point out is that H-1B is not about finding that ou…

There are 265 million professional soccer players according to FIFA* and 736 were in the world cup. If the US accepted foreign developers at the same rate, that is 0.00027%, then of the 14.6 million that would be 41 individuals rounding up. So yes, they would comfortably fit in a large conference room. * https://www.fifa.com/mm/document/fifafacts/bcoffsurv/emaga_9...

265 million professional soccer players?

Are you sure? 5% of the world population plays soccer professionally?

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