Live data from Hacker News

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

bloomberg.com

191–200 of 404 posts

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

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Especially in eastern Europe, for example in Romania you could live like a king on $30k per annum

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

#192
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably, the salary (and price in general) is measure of marginal utility. Hence if one job pays 140, 000 over 70, 000 we can argue that the one that pays more provides more marginal utility to society. That is, the United States as a whole gains more value from that job.

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.

Immigration policy has to balance two concerns: letting in unassimilated immigrants too quickly, and missing out on the economic value they bring. Therefore, it should optimize for economic value added per unassimilated immigrant. The harm of adding to the unassimilated population must be justified by the value brought.

Bringing in a lot of foreign civil engineers may be more total economic value brought in, but in a way that doesn't justify the cost in unassimilated people.

An "auction" by how much employers are willing to pay is indeed much closer to what the policy is trying to optimize for.

The lower-paid high-skill jobs should not be using the scarce H1-B spots, but should raise wages to draw more Americans, since the premium is much lower than you'd need to hire an American for the higher-paid jobs.

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

#193
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's amazing to me. Not arguing you're wrong, I'm not interviewing people, just amazes me that anyone with degrees in CS would not be able to solve such a basic problem.

You'd be shocked how many people don't know about the modulus operator.

Even so... try dividing. If it looks like division truncates, check the product. If it looks like floating point division, check if rounding/truncation changes the value.

Or keep two extra counters that you increment every iteration and reset when they hit 3 or 5.

Not knowing modulus or bitwise ops etc isn't a good sign, but it isn't disqualifying. Not being able to get fizzbuzz working should be disqualifying, though, unless you're willing to teach someone to program completely.

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

#194

I do not typically post, but these suggestions seem like genuine improvements to the existing system: "Kerr suggests allocating H-1Bs not by lottery as they are now, but by salary — the more that a company is willing to pay for a foreign worker, the quicker they can get a visa." "A second change would be to allow H-1B workers to apply for permanent residency green cards on their own, without having to be sponsored by…

While the salary thing would help me gravely, not all industries/states pay in a similar way. It would help software companies in CA/NY a lot, but a biological research center in Midwest would be tough out of luck.

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

#195
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe on the west coast but here in the Midwest we often have issues finding candidates that can write fizzbuz. We recently had a candidate who's main language was python but failed to even run his code on the command line. Saddly this isnt overly rare.

Anyone with a CS degree can write a fizzbuz

Anyone with a CS degree can write a fizzbuz

That's not even close to true. I've interviewed people with Ph.D.'s in Computer Science and a documented 10+ years of experience as a "developer" of some sort, who can't write Fizzbuzz.

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

#196
post #149

You want good healthcare, good salary, the real Autobahns, good houses and you are talented, have at least a bachelor in IT and are willing to try something out? Come over to Germany. Honestly, no I other country I know of has such a fast and well thought out way to permanent residence for foreign talent than Germany. If you are interested in working here, drop me a message to eriklistserve at gmail dot com.

Question: how big would the language barrier be? Not only at the workplace, but on mundane, day to day activities, for a family? When I was considering moving to Europe, I thought of Germany, but quickly dismissed, and then came to the conclusion that the Netherlands would be a better fit. But I'm not sure how accurate that assessment was.

It totally depends. If you are working and living in one of the big centers like Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin or Hamburg, chances are good that you find work in a company that accepts English-only speakers and usually you can live day-to-day life in English, too. But of course I have to say that you should try to learn the language if you want to stay in Germany longer than just a year or two, as this will open up even more job opportunities (and potentially higher salaries). I personally work in a 100% English environment in Frankfurt (while being German myself). Working for smaller companies without working knowledge of German is difficult. German is not a dead language, so in smaller, non-international companies, people speak it all day long. On the other hand, the supply of talent is so tight that even smaller companies now adapt and accept non-German-speaking foreigners.

In Berlin, you can certainly work and live a 100% English life. Then again, salaries are lower there as you compete with cheaper workers from Poland and other Eastern European countries.

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

#197
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you set a quota and give to the highest bidder, you're going to see private sector executives, lawyers, and financial roles being filled in cities with high costs of living and competitive wages. Yes, that's the point. Skilled labor immigration is for skilled labor . It should not by a subsidy to companies that cannot afford to pay prevailing wages and/or are unwilling to invest in their workforce. > This will d…

> As for rural America, there's a reason these areas > can't attract companies or talent. Look, I don't want to live in a remote shit-hole either, but... The fact that the concerns of rural communities are summarily dismissed when making policy was one of the big contributing factors to the election victories of both Brexit and Trump. (Possibly more due to resentment rather than as a rational response, but that's irr…

Of all of the reasons for Trump winning the election, rural areas not having enough immigrats is not one of them.

I am sure that many of these places would be very happy to have less H1Bs living there.

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

#198
post #74
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe on the west coast but here in the Midwest we often have issues finding candidates that can write fizzbuz. We recently had a candidate who's main language was python but failed to even run his code on the command line. Saddly this isnt overly rare.

I use to work in the midwest before moving to the west coast. We had a guy come in for a programming interview. He claimed to have 3 years experience with a programming language we commonly use. We gave him a simple challenge (connect to a database using a database connector, read some fields and update another field based on data from the read fields). We told him it's fine to use google, and left him alone for four…

Out of curiosity, what language was it?

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

#199
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll find Americans to do the work if you pay them enough. Why undercut their wage demands with scabs from foreign countries?

Because when they do that Americans on average won't buy the produce, and opt instead for cheaper imports. You can make such a system work of course but you have to convince or force (e.g. via import duties) Americans to accept paying more for food - quite a bit more.

That seems obvious and makes intuitive sense - but it turns out its wrong.

"GIVING THE 3.5 million workers picking produce on American farms a raise to match the $15 an hour many fast food workers are fighting for sounds unaffordable, right?

Not really. According to University of California-Davis agricultural labor economist Philip Martin, the likely additional cost to American shoppers of that wage hike would be about $20 a year."

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/people-and-culture/food/t...

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

#200
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former H1B, I fully support the second change yes. IIRC, an H1B can be renewed once and last a total of 6 years (apologies if regulations changed in the past 6 years, I haven't followed since I got a GC). 6 years is a long time and should allow application for GC without sponsorship. I'm not sure the first change is a good idea. Wouldn't it give a huge advantage to bigger companies? Haven't really thought this o…

I think the first is a great idea. A $450k/year neurosurgeon should get a massive preference over a $45k/year Sharepoint contractor. The highest paid are tautologically in the shortest supply.

Realistically though, a neurosurgeon would probably be able to immigrate on another type of visa. Same goes for most executives, lawyers, partners at VCs or hedge funds...

An auction based allocation would favor ad selling companies that can pay juniors 200k to do A/B testing.

Then sure, it would partially solve the abuse from cheap IT consultancies, and that's better than nothing. But there would definitely be adverse effects.

Post reply on HN