Executive order expected to suspend H-1B, other visas until end of year • Hacker News Board

Re: Executive order expected to suspend H-1B, other visas until end of year

#361

Post by MVorlm » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 8:36 PM UTC

armada651 wrote: post #302

ckaygusu wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are still conflating legal status and visa in an improper way. The I94 expiration case can happen in practice. I don't know all possible cases, but at least for H1B done through change of status, you are not required to get a visa as long as you do not leave the country. And no, you r I-94 does not expire for three years, so it is entirely possible to complete a whole H1B period without a visa.

As an H1 all your authorizations are tied to your Visa in some way. They may not expire at the same time, but if you have no way of acquiring a new visa (which under this suspension, you don't) you're in trouble whether you leave the country or not. > You are still conflating legal status and visa in an improper way. I am and you should speak to your immigration lawyer if your visa is expiring.

This is incorrect information. H1B "Status" and H1B "Visa" are two separate things.

A common immigration path is F1(Student) -> OPT -> H1B Status. If the person was already in the US(because they're going to a US college) then they would be given H1B status(read: no visa). Getting a H1B visa from the US consulate would be required IFF they: 1) Weren't already in the US, 2) Need to leave and reenter the US.

If the person is _already_ in the US when they receive H1B Status then they don't need to receive a visa. Not having a visa is not illegal or affect work status. A visa simply allows ingress and egress in/out of the country and does not confer work authorization(which is what an H1b "Status" does).

Source: I've gone through this process, and from a family of attorneys.

Re: Executive order expected to suspend H-1B, other visas until end of year

#362

Post by ghaff » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 8:36 PM UTC

jen20 wrote: post #263

jusonchan81 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this is indeed an issue. I’m a manager and I am trying to hire. 100% I’d rather find a person who can start in a couple of weeks than several months for a candidate who needs immigration. But there are rarely any local applicants and even when there are they don’t make in the interview. We pay in excess of 300k for all roles so it’s not like we are trying to find cheap talent.

Without more context it's hard to know what the problem is there, but I strongly doubt it's that there is "no" talent locally available to start within a couple of weeks, whether it's a US citizen or foreign national with an existing work visa. A small list of things that people may consider: - competitive salary. 300k is one thing in (for example) Kansas City, but completely another in the Bay Area or New York City…

Even in the Bay Area or NYC, $300K is a pretty nice salary unless the requirements are unusual (seniority, special skills, etc.)

Re: Executive order expected to suspend H-1B, other visas until end of year

#363

Post by fzeroracer » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 8:37 PM UTC

koolba wrote: post #315

vishakh82 wrote: post #299

So many people here are celebrating this order due to its supposed abstract benefits but are somehow unaware of the its cruelty. So many visa holders in this country will be unable to leave and enter the country for the foreseeable future. If they have sick parents abroad they will not be able to visit them or, in the most tragic circumstances, say goodbye in person. It won't matter whether someone is a world-class r…

> So many people here are celebrating this order due to its supposed abstract benefits but are somehow unaware of the its cruelty. To be blunt, a nation's citizens and permanent residents' rights to economic prosperity outweigh any temporary worker's right to continued employment. Yes it may be viewed as cruel in the individual case, but the point of these visas are not to provide a vehicle for those workers to come…

Oh come on. Part of the reason why we're facing these job losses and high unemployment rate is because our administration fucked up hard managing the coronavirus and now they're looking for easy wins and scapegoats so people can blame the big bad other rather than the people responsible.

The fact that you're defending their cruelty because of the economy (that they fucked up!) is immensely disappointing.

Re: Executive order expected to suspend H-1B, other visas until end of year

#364

Post by ojbyrne » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 8:37 PM UTC

tracer4201 wrote: post #176

fredfoobar wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry to break it to you, if your company isn't paying prevailing wages, they're doing something illegal. They need to be shut-down, not the whole fucking program.

There’s nothing illegal going on here. I posted earlier that I was at an oil and gas company in Houston, a Fortune 10 company at the time. We had IT contractors from Larsen and Toubro. As an example, one guy who reported to me was paid < $20 an hour after L&TI and another contracting company in the middle took their cut. He wasn’t thrilled with that situation but his other option was to quit and go back to India. The…

The contracting company is acting illegally. I've seen a couple of similar stories in California - when they get caught, the officers go to jail.

Re: Executive order expected to suspend H-1B, other visas until end of year

#365

Post by shuckles » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 8:38 PM UTC

SomeoneFromCA wrote: post #336

codelord wrote: post #313

Disclaimer: I'm an immigrant. There are companies like Cognizant/InfoSys/Tata/... whose business model is based on abusing the H1B system, and that's obviously wrong and I'm quite surprised they get away with it. I'm not defending that. To those who broadly argue against skilled visas, consider this: Most H1B immigrants are between 20-30 age range. The prime age to join the workforce. Think how much investment you ha…

It is very strange that people in this comment section shout "nationalism, BAD" when someone says that skilled people should stay in their own country and potentially help these countries to grow out of poverty, and statements like the one you just made - essentially rob these country of talented people and bring them into US - is somehow not nationalistic and good.

By the very nature of a highly skilled worker, they likely cannot realize the full value of those skills without a certain economic and commercial context. It is definitely not the case that for most H1-B employees the counterfactual is "growing their own countries out of poverty." Most likely, the counterfactual is being another 75th percentile wage worker in a low income country.

In addition, this line of reasoning totally discounts the very real benefit of foreign transfer payments from workers in the United States to their international families, often supporting large extended families.

Re: Executive order expected to suspend H-1B, other visas until end of year

#366

Post by progers7 » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 8:41 PM UTC

x87678r wrote: post #268

Reminder of the top H1B employers. Its not about high tech workers in SV. https://www.h1bdata.org/employers Employer Name Employees Hired (All Years) Infosys Limited 182,945 Tata Consultancy Services Limited 102,722 Deloitte Consulting Llp 65,976 Wipro Limited 63,354 Accenture Llp 51,360 Ibm India Private Limited 47,839 Capgemini America Inc 40,954 Microsoft Corporation 40,828 Ernst Young Us Llp 38,631 Cognizant Tech…

This is for all years, but the numbers for 2019 seem to indicate SV will be affected: https://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2019-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.asp... Google is #8. Amazon, Facebook, Apple are in the top 20. I don't know how accurate this list is, but I am worried for my colleagues.

Re: Executive order expected to suspend H-1B, other visas until end of year

#367

Post by jessaustin » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 8:42 PM UTC

oneplane wrote: post #130

x0x0 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of recent layoffs make it clear that there are plenty of people perfectly capable of performing even your pretend scenario. See eg http://layoffs.fyi/ and also eng layoffs at Uber, Samsara, etc.

Well, then the government in the USA is wrong, because they wrote that the Immigration and Nationality Act, section 101(a)(15)(H) is for foreign workers in specialty occupations, especially due to the need of skills that are urgently needed by the country. Also, those mass layoffs you reference are rather recent and doesn't seem to have anything to do with this specific visa system. At the same time, the pool of avai…

Well, then the government in the USA is wrong, because...

That's always true. You don't need to provide particulars.

Re: Executive order expected to suspend H-1B, other visas until end of year

#368

Post by michaelmrose » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 8:42 PM UTC

bobdole12345 wrote: post #321

P_I_Staker wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's just a way to bring in cheap labor, and bring salaries down. That's it. It's very rarely the case that there's genuinely no one here that can do the jobs. It's widely know that companies are making no legitimate attempt to hire a citizen. I'm not saying this is a good move, and I'm not commenting on the morality of it (ie. who says someone from another country shouldn't be competing for your job)

How is that possible, given that these people are paid above the prevailing wage? That's literally one of the requirements for the Visa, the minimum has been repeatedly raised to address this problem. So? Want to explain that to me?

If you classify someone as foo and have them do bar you can pay them above the prevailing rate for foo while actually being below the prevailing rate for bar.

It can also serve as a way for third party to earn a sizable chunk of that persons wages which would be a less likely scenario for someone hired stateside.

Re: Executive order expected to suspend H-1B, other visas until end of year

#369

Post by NotSammyHagar » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 8:42 PM UTC

austincheney wrote: post #342

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are just too many jobs and not enough qualified devs. Even in the pandemic. It's worse if you block our international people by limiting visas. There's already a shortage of devs of course in he US. Plenty of companies have thousands of openings even in the pandemic - of course there are places that stopped hiring or even shutdown and people lost jobs. If you lower the labor pool size, pay should go up, ease of…

You are replying to something not stated. Why is there such a shortage given the high wages, population size, access to education, and so forth?

I saw it as the underlying issue. It's because CS is hard, people don't think they can do it, they don't know about the opportunities, they don't have the education or the pay is not enough for the intellectual demands. If a job is too stressful or they treat you like shit or demand overtime (ie gaming world for overtime) then just work somewhere else.

Re: Executive order expected to suspend H-1B, other visas until end of year

#370

Post by addicted » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 8:44 PM UTC

pkaye wrote: post #165

alexandercrohde wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a while I wasn't sure if this was just some "talking point." Then one day, on a hiking meetup, I met a guy who was ranting about his job that was to write "oddly hyper-specific job descriptions that might seem to make no sense" to bring in cheaper h1b candidates. So yeah, it's a problem.

Years back I had a college friend who was hired on an OPT visa. When they wanted to convert his visa to H1B (I think) they kept getting suitable candidates so had to rewrite the requirements so its only suited to him. He confided this to me as he felt bad but really needed that job.

Let’s rephrase this story a bit.

A company hires someone out of college, trains them and has them working and integrating into the company for about a year and a half, but then the government, because of a literal lottery, requires them to randomly replace them with someone else.

And you’re surprised a company that has spent all that money and resources on hiring someone and with the known hit or miss nature of hiring wouldn’t want to replace them with a random new candidate?

Edit: And it gets better. They don’t need to replace the person if someone else accepts the job. They need to get rid of that employee who they are happy enough to be spending tens of thousands of dollars on that they wouldn’t need to on their citizen counterpart, even if their possible replacement didn’t accept the job. Merely if the possible replacement’s resume fit the minimum requirements of the job.

That’s why companies rewrite the position to be hyper specific. Because if there is anyone else available eho can meet the bare minimum who applies for the job, even if they aren’t interested in it and will never accept an offer, they are required to get rid of their existing multi year employee who they are happy with.