America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by tabtab » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 7:24 PM UTC

qaq wrote: post #166

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.

But not every organization is internationally distributed like that. If physical location of employee really didn't matter, then your org would have most of its IT staff in India, because the labor rates are lower and that's the largest pool of English-speaking IT talent.

I agree there is some fluidity to IT labor, but there is a limit to it also.

Besides, the stated on-paper purpose of H-1B visas is to fill (alleged) skills shortages. After the dot-com crash there was a big surplus of labor in the area, yet us citizens were competing with H-1B's still. The stated goal was missing the target during that time.

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

#212

Post by gdilla » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 7:25 PM UTC

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…

Don't mean to sound harsh but anyone who can't compete with an H1B to the extent they can't find a job in the entire state of CA should take a hard look at their skills and expectations and change one or both.

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

#213

Post by iguy » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 7:26 PM UTC

ivl wrote: post #77

zjaffee wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> skilled labor does not want to live in rural and middle America. I'm unsure about this, and think it's kind of a chicken and the egg problem. I know tons of people who are from the midwest that would prefer to be there, but tend to flock to the coast simply because it's hard to find as rigorous of a professional environment back home.

It's not a chicken and egg problem. Cities are much more efficient for labor and companies. You have a larger pool of talent, a larger pool of freshly educated replacements for those who retire or leave, and often more services available for said talent. Edit: Now that I'm thinking about it a little more I can maybe sympathize a little bit. I prefer to live in rural areas in some ways due to my hobbies, but I'm never…

Another factor is the 2-body problem. If most of the workers are looking for a city with enough jobs for two different careers, then that's where employers will need to be to hire them.

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

#214

Post by duxup » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 7:31 PM UTC

shade_zzz wrote: post #207

duxup wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought H1B should simply be $100k or $120k+ plus jobs only. I was looking through online records and found folks being brought in for sub 50k jobs that looked like low level ... customer service roles.

That seems fishy, the minimum required salary to apply for h1b was 60k/year till the beginning of the year, and there was a bill that was introduced which proposed raising it to 90k/year.

Straight up it was sub 50k listed in the database...

I'll see if I can find it later.

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

#215

Post by tabtab » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 7:33 PM UTC

gdilla wrote: post #212

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…

Don't mean to sound harsh but anyone who can't compete with an H1B to the extent they can't find a job in the entire state of CA should take a hard look at their skills and expectations and change one or both.

Please elaborate. The time-period was after the dot-com crash. Companies were laying off IT employees left and right, often because the companies died. CA was flooded with excess IT workers. I even put an ad on Craigslist around 2002 that I'd do development for minimum wage. No takers. What else do you want? I nearly left IT. Okay, I'm not the cream of the crop I admit, but are you saying average developers should get out?

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

#216

Post by pkaye » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 7:33 PM UTC

mohaine wrote: post #27

Kephael wrote: post #7

The supply of technical workers is artificially limited by Leetcode style interviews. There doesn't seem to be an actual supply side limitation, especially not at the entry level.

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.

Actually even in the west coast we have a hard time finding candidates that can write even fizzbuzz level of code. Its not even a recent problem.

The worst I've hard was a person with 20+ years of consulting experience for top companies in firmware could not code 3 lines of C code to traverse a linked list. Literally didn't know the syntax to dereference pointers!

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

#217

Post by let_var » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 7:33 PM UTC

I support a point-based H1B and Green Card system allowing individuals to apply for their own green card. Salary should take precedence over lottery any day. Someone mentioned about making it industry specific, but that's just opening a loophole. Something like this might improve domestic salaries across sectors.

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

#218

Post by bduerst » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 7:37 PM UTC

pmalynin wrote: post #190

bduerst wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

EB-5 has nothing to do with founding and working at a different business. USCIS allows applicants to invest into EB-5 Regional Centers, which are essentially funds that would not require you to work there or start any new business. If an investment is made into a TEA, the capital requirements drop to $500, 000. Its effectively a for sale green card. If you are a sufficiently important executive, $500, 000 is chump ch…

The business then needs to cover the executive salary on top of EB investments into other businesses - that is not a substitute for H1B. This fact along with addressing the tone makes it seem like you're fishing for a red herring.

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

#219

Post by gdilla » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 7:37 PM UTC

tabtab wrote: post #215

gdilla wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't mean to sound harsh but anyone who can't compete with an H1B to the extent they can't find a job in the entire state of CA should take a hard look at their skills and expectations and change one or both.

Please elaborate. The time-period was after the dot-com crash. Companies were laying off IT employees left and right, often because the companies died. CA was flooded with excess IT workers. I even put an ad on Craigslist around 2002 that I'd do development for minimum wage. No takers. What else do you want? I nearly left IT. Okay, I'm not the cream of the crop I admit, but are you saying average developers should ge…

But companies in CA were still hiring, as you mentioned. If the labor pool was flooded with laid off workers, then it's a buyers market. You would think the companies can just hire from that pool for whatever they wanted to pay (cuz in such a climate, they would have takers), without bothering with the H1B search and paperwork hassle.

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

#220

Post by skksjsnaahs » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 7:39 PM UTC

dudul wrote: post #71

dkhenry wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can get the same effect on salary by making it easier for a H1B recipient to leave the company that brought them over. Right now its very hard for a visa recipient to move companies so they can be given sub market rate salaries, if you make it so once they show up they can move to get a market rate salary then the companies who make a pratice of hiring foreign talent and paying them below market rates will end. T…

In theory it is not very complicated for a H1B to change employer. It simply requires the employer to file a petition to sponsor the H1B. It doesn't count towards the "seats" available yearly, and it's almost guaranteed to be granted. There is a small cost, maybe a few grands. If you think about it, it's way cheaper than paying recruiter fee fo example. In practice you're right though. Most companies have limited exp…

Word on the street from hiring managers is that it now takes > 6 mo to process such a visa transfer and you can’t get premium processing to speed it up.

People are making offers to candidates with undefined start dates many months in the future. The candidate has to commit to switching jobs when the transfer is submitted. If current job gives them a promotion in the interim and they decide to stay, they can’t just cancel the transfer. Their current employer (who didn’t know a transfer was happening) has to file a reverse transfer with the same delay that puts them in some kind of limbo.

It’s a complete clusterfuck and is making it really hard to hire for some positions.