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H-1B: Federal judge backs government’s narrower view of ‘specialty occupation’

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Re: H-1B: Federal judge backs government’s narrower view of ‘specialty occupation’

#181

Post by tbyehl »

tbyehl wrote: post #105
abc_lisper wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

H-1B is dual-intent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_intent

It became dual-intent, which lead to everyone's intent becoming to immigrate, which has lead to incredibly long processing times... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1990

I'm taking downvotes here and up there... but people are missing the point.

H1-B became a trap because of dual-intent.

Someone who always intended to leave the US, as H1-B requires, shouldn't be too bothered that they can't (easily) switch jobs, that a job loss could send them home sooner than anticipated, and they shouldn't have to accept substandard wages or housing or any other body shop abuses we hear about... because they can always just go home, like they'd always intended and should have planned for.

Dual-intent baited people to come here on H1-Bs on the assumption that they'll eventually get permanent residency, bring their family over, attain citizenship. Plenty of people risk their lives to get here with no hope of citizenship; putting up with body shop abuses on a path to citizenship is minor in comparison, a lot like staying at a job you've come to dislike to run out the vesting clock.

And H1-B is such effective bait because the rest of our immigration policy is screwed up and discriminatory.

Re: H-1B: Federal judge backs government’s narrower view of ‘specialty occupation’

#182

Post by unimployed »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #163
president wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I will make an argument for the cynics that believe they should be protected from competition: that immigration restrictions and caps like the H1B curtail the freedom of Americans to buy services from who they want to. American people that run American businesses are prohibited from hiring people they believe to be best suited for the job. This argument makes sense from the point of a business owner but not necessa…

If your model is that there is a fixed number of jobs, then bringing in one immigrant deprives one American of a job. The obvious consequence of this model is that if a country has a 5% unemployment rate, then it should simply expel 5% of its population, and suddenly the number of people will perfectly match the number of jobs. Of course, that's not how things work. It's not true that adding one person to the economy…

I would like to add an additional layer of economic nuance here, beyond Econ 101 and BA Econ. While it is true that an economy is not necessarily a fixed “lump of labour”, you also need to take into consideration many more factors before making another blanket statement about how labour and an economy works.

There are localized crowding effects that take place at all levels of labour (bottom to the top), and various market frictions which you ignore talking about. The economy is not perfect, perfectly efficient, or perfectly distributed. I won’t even get into monopolies and monopsonies, but suffice to say that market forces can be highly skewed. Markets are typically highly constrained in relative size and don’t freely grow independently.

Adding 1000 more H1Bs this year does not mean the tech sector will grow by an additional 1500 U.S. citizens as well. Labour growth is organic and requires training and experience to grow. If most new tech positions are created for visas, citizens will never enter the field, or gain training and experience to compete.

When crowding in a market increases, the market is very slow to react and expand. This is especially true in a more mature system like the USA, where the frontier days have mostly ended, and future growth is slower and more expensive. The U.S. economy has certainly shifted (perhaps especially so around 1970) into growing the pie less, and more growing your slice.

Let’s not be naive either, because we know that visa data is publicly available. We should not rely too much on economic theory from Exon 101 when we can check the theory against what actually happens and is measured (empirics). As an experiment you should compare the annual H1B visa cap against the number of new “tech hires” in the economy. The trend you see is that every year, tech grows by ONLY the number of visas they are granted for that year. You probably think I’m pulling your leg, but please check for yourself.

Now please tell me honestly... From the data, which theory of the labour market do you think best describes the history of the tech sector in the USA? Hint, the lump of labour fallacy is not always a fallacy. Now your follow up question is, if the labour market experiences localized crowding, and citizens may be in direct competition with non-citizens for their jobs, what might happen to citizen wages that are under this competitive environment?

Re: H-1B: Federal judge backs government’s narrower view of ‘specialty occupation’

#183

Post by pandaman »

copperx wrote: post #179
pandaman wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incorrect: you don't need to be in the US at all to apply for any immigrant visa. I believe the Indian body shops perpetuate the fictitious idea that, similarly to naturalization, there is also a required time to be present in the country before being eligible for a GC. While I can see how it fits into their business model, it could not be further from the reality. Not only there is no required time to be in…

Yes, that's true. But what I meant was that if you're in the US, you need to have a dual-intent visa.

This is also incorrect. You can adjust into immigration status from any legal status in general, there might be different complications depending on status (e.g. you might not be able to leave and re-enter the country in some or you need to follow 30/60/90 rule with others) but there is no requirement to be in a dual intent status for AOS. If worse comes to worst you can always do consular processing and only leave the US to stamp your immigration visa in a foreign consulate and re-enter in the new immigrant status.

The "dual intent" concept is for the non-immigrant visa. If you don't want to read the official explanation, posted around here many times already, it means that you don't have to prove strong ties with your country when applying for such a visa. For visas without dual intent you have to prove the lack of immigration intent. For dual intent ones you don't.

Re: H-1B: Federal judge backs government’s narrower view of ‘specialty occupation’

#184

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

unimployed wrote: post #182
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your model is that there is a fixed number of jobs, then bringing in one immigrant deprives one American of a job. The obvious consequence of this model is that if a country has a 5% unemployment rate, then it should simply expel 5% of its population, and suddenly the number of people will perfectly match the number of jobs. Of course, that's not how things work. It's not true that adding one person to the economy…

I would like to add an additional layer of economic nuance here, beyond Econ 101 and BA Econ. While it is true that an economy is not necessarily a fixed “lump of labour”, you also need to take into consideration many more factors before making another blanket statement about how labour and an economy works. There are localized crowding effects that take place at all levels of labour (bottom to the top), and various…

> The trend you see is that every year, tech grows by ONLY the number of visas they are granted.

That very strongly suggests that there's a shortage of tech workers in the United States. What's the unemployment rate for CS majors? [1]

> From the data, which theory of the labour market do you think best describes the history of the tech sector in the USA?

The data appears to describe a tech sector that cannot find enough skilled workers to fill the positions it has available. Virtually all of the CS majors are employed. There is a large pool of skilled labor abroad, however, which US tech companies would like to tap into. They have two ways to do so: getting those workers to come to the US or setting up shop where the workers are.

There seem to be a lot of protectionist-minded tech workers in the US who are convinced that their salaries would increase if there were fewer visas handed out. That's probably true in the short run. If you constrict the labor supply, you force companies to outbid one another to hire the remaining workers. But once that initial shock subsides, companies will wise up and expand their operations overseas, where skilled labor is cheaper.

1. The answer seems to be about 2%, with less than 1% of CS majors being unemployed for longer than 26 weeks: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2018/05/29/unemp...

Re: H-1B: Federal judge backs government’s narrower view of ‘specialty occupation’

#187

Post by booblik »

As someone on work visa myself it is very clear to me that I have the visa to do a specific job at a specific company. I know I may have to leave at anytime. I also know that there is a path to GC, but it is a bonus and not a certainty. Any intelligent person should understand that.

Now I am not from India or China, but it still takes years to get a GC.

And yes in those years I may like it here very much and start building a life.

But if I do, I accept the responsibility that one day it may all be taken away from me, and I will not be pretending to be a victim. So if you started your life here 5, 10, 15 years ago, you knew full well what you were doing, you were a grown adult with at least a bachelors degree. So just stop being a victim.

Is the system broken? Yes. Do we as immigrants understand that? Yes. Can we do anything about it? No, this is America, and Americans will or will not fix it.

Re: H-1B: Federal judge backs government’s narrower view of ‘specialty occupation’

#188

Post by noworld »

booblik wrote: post #187

As someone on work visa myself it is very clear to me that I have the visa to do a specific job at a specific company. I know I may have to leave at anytime. I also know that there is a path to GC, but it is a bonus and not a certainty. Any intelligent person should understand that. Now I am not from India or China, but it still takes years to get a GC. And yes in those years I may like it here very much and start bu…

How is it broken? EDIT: Just wanted to add that I am an American and I would prefer that employers had to raise wages and offer increased benefits to attract domestic workers rather than have the option to import low-wage workers from other countries.

Re: H-1B: Federal judge backs government’s narrower view of ‘specialty occupation’

#189

Post by conanbatt »

HBKXNCUO wrote: post #178
conanbatt wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American employer is an American citizen. The situation where a majority extorts a minority is normally called oppression.

Yes, and one whose bags of money has given him a vastly disproportionate say over the actions of the government. You can call it extortion if you want, I guess. Provided it's in the interests of the American citizen to restrict access to the US labor market, I don't see why they should care what you call it. If you think it's not in their interest, I'd be interested to hear your argument. On the other hand, if you wa…

You would be hard pressed to find economic evidence that immigration has negative results to an economy. It is always better to allow immigration for economic prosperity and the entire science of economics has validated this theoretically and pragmatically since 1776.

Moreover, the importation of labor happens every day every single time you use any manufacture or service produced outside, from software like Google/Facebook (it is partially imported) to manufactures like iphones and macs (it is also imported labor). You could arguably increase the salaries of american citizens by banning by penalty of death any kind of importation: but more dollars do not increase purchasing power.

Americans overpay software, doctors, lawyers, and many other professions because they are unwilling to allow free labor movement from those professions. You can however, import nannies with no limits from anywhere in the world. Talk about regulatory capture!

Re: H-1B: Federal judge backs government’s narrower view of ‘specialty occupation’

#190

Post by booblik »

noworld wrote: post #188
booblik wrote: post #187

As someone on work visa myself it is very clear to me that I have the visa to do a specific job at a specific company. I know I may have to leave at anytime. I also know that there is a path to GC, but it is a bonus and not a certainty. Any intelligent person should understand that. Now I am not from India or China, but it still takes years to get a GC. And yes in those years I may like it here very much and start bu…

How is it broken? EDIT: Just wanted to add that I am an American and I would prefer that employers had to raise wages and offer increased benefits to attract domestic workers rather than have the option to import low-wage workers from other countries.

I came to this country in part because I was offered a very good salary by my employer, that allows me a very comfy life in San Francisco.

They would be cheaper off with a local worker, that would be available for immediate hire, and wouldn’t need an expensive and quite long visa processing. Alas they found none, and not for lack of trying.

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