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America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

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Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#161

Post by tschellenbach »

ALittleLight wrote: post #100

My intuition is that H1B and similar programs hurt my personal compensation as a domestic provider of skilled labor. My reasoning is that less supply of skilled labor should result in increased cost - which gets paid to me. I understand it's better for the companies and perhaps the economy as a whole to import labor, but it seems worse for me. Is there research on this subject or something I'm missing?

US engineering wages are 4-5x of what they are in other similarly developed countries. The reason for that is a whole ecosystem of succesful startups/tech companies.

High quality talent from abroad improves the competitiveness of the US ecosystem and drains talent from other ecosystems. I'm going to go ahead and guess that US wages actually go up with less restrictive immigration policies.

Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#162

Post by VintageLight »

pc86 wrote: post #135
Goronmon wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is a planned end point necessary? An average of say $100k per year isn't impacted whether you pay that person $50k for 6 months or $200k for two years.

It's to prevent you hiring an H1B for a one-month, $50,000 contract, then hiring them for a separate 11-month, $50,000 contract after. The company will argue the initial hire is a $600k/yr rate.

You could argue that they would get a one-month visa and top priority for that first month. The employer would have to go through the visa process again for the second contract.

Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#163

Post by seshagiric »

Wouldn't this favor large companies? e.g. someone like Google, Amazon may pay the top $ to get talent from abroad but startups or small companies are not able to?

While the pay gap between companies exist even today, the difference is today small & medium companies can afford the foreign labor.

Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#164

Post by ALittleLight »

landryraccoon wrote: post #151
ALittleLight wrote: post #100

My intuition is that H1B and similar programs hurt my personal compensation as a domestic provider of skilled labor. My reasoning is that less supply of skilled labor should result in increased cost - which gets paid to me. I understand it's better for the companies and perhaps the economy as a whole to import labor, but it seems worse for me. Is there research on this subject or something I'm missing?

This intuition only holds as long as you believe there is zero chance of new large competitors arising in other countries. If protectionism causes a rival to Google to be viable in other countries, that could hurt your salary prospects back home quite a bit.

It seems like the current model, which is import large numbers of software related folks to the US, hurts competition. What I mean by this is that Amazon, Google, etc have a few core businesses that are monopolies (search, online retail, etc) and many ancillary endeavors. Most software people don't work in the core business. If so many software people weren't imported to extend US software giants then some of those people would stay home and develop regional competitors. This would be bad for the company I work for, but for customers it would be good, for foreign software developers who could stay home AND work in a successful domestic company it would be good, and for me it would be good - I'd be paid more.

Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#165

Post by seshagiric »

iguy wrote: post #126
ransom1538 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wish it was reciprocated. I would like to work in Spain (no really). If I work in Spain, the US should open a spot for someone from Spain to work in the US. You want to hire someone from Turkey? No problem, find someone in the US to move to Turkey. You could allow companies to even grease the wheels, "Work from Turkey and get a 30k / year extra free bonus stipend!! yay!!"

Not on a 1-for-1 basis, but something like this is the argument for allowing free movement between comparable countries. If the UK, Canada & Australia opened up to each other, there'd be no massive net flow, but many individuals could work for the most suitable company / near their in-laws / in a climate they like. This was I think also what was envisaged when the EU first wrote free movement into law -- general mixi…

EU folks can work any where in the EU right? I wonder how it is working out

Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#166

Post by qaq »

tabtab wrote: post #146

The H-1B topic strikes a personal tone with me. After the dot-com crash in the early 2000's, IT jobs in California were hard to come by. I almost got one job, but the company decided to go with an H-1B worker instead. I had a new young family, but had to go out of state to find work, leaving my family behind. I'm NOT summarily against H-1B's but wish to insist they be used ONLY to fill in true skill shortages instead…

I think it will not change anything to be honest. I work for a relatively large US company we have offices in CA, VA, NC, Ireland, Germany, India. If it becomes harder to higher in US they will just grow teams in other offices.

Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#167

Post by bduerst »

pmalynin wrote: post #104
bduerst wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could argue that the U.S. gains more from allowing 20 lower-paid civil engineers than allowing 1 private sector executive buy their H1B. The point is that switching to an auction with the H1B causes more problems without really solving any, at least within the scope of the program's purpose.

I don't know. If you're paying 20x what a civil engineer gets then you might as well go with E5 Investor Visas. Its true that auctions have issues, but we could go with (for example) second price (aka Vickrey) auctions for salaries.

How you would think the E5 is a substitute for an H1B is beyond me. A business isn't going to pay their executive to found and work at an entirely different business, especially if it jeopardizes the business's ability to sponsor future visas with USCIS.

Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#168

Post by klipt »

michaelt wrote: post #56
KirinDave wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I agree with you (although I bet for different reasons) but, Why? What do you think is actually is the problem if highly compensated employment is used as a fast track to immigration and perhaps even citizenship?

rrggrr is worried companies will say "1 year contract, $10,000 per day first week, $0 per day subsequent 51 weeks" and jump to the top of the stack as they're paying $10,000 per day.

Presumably the salary they bid would have to be maintained throughout the visa validity (e.g. three years for H1-B).

If the salary ever drops the visa is invalidated and becomes available for bidding by other companies.

Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#169

Post by coding123 »

seshagiric wrote: post #165
iguy wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not on a 1-for-1 basis, but something like this is the argument for allowing free movement between comparable countries. If the UK, Canada & Australia opened up to each other, there'd be no massive net flow, but many individuals could work for the most suitable company / near their in-laws / in a climate they like. This was I think also what was envisaged when the EU first wrote free movement into law -- general mixi…

EU folks can work any where in the EU right? I wonder how it is working out

Mostly... brexit is how it worked out.

Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#170

Post by mdpopescu »

El_Flanagan wrote: post #157
ransom1538 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wish it was reciprocated. I would like to work in Spain (no really). If I work in Spain, the US should open a spot for someone from Spain to work in the US. You want to hire someone from Turkey? No problem, find someone in the US to move to Turkey. You could allow companies to even grease the wheels, "Work from Turkey and get a 30k / year extra free bonus stipend!! yay!!"

I dont know about Turkey, but at Spain 30K/year wont be your bonus. Will be you salary. And consider it good salary.

I have no idea why this comment was killed but yes, 30K/year is a pretty good salary in a lot of Europe.
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