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

#411

Post by kiliantics » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 9:21 PM UTC

P_I_Staker wrote: post #252

awillen wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just silly... even if you're a nationalist, isn't the prospect of bringing over talented people from foreign countries to work in America and help our companies profit plus deprive their home countries of their skills a really, really good thing?

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)

Having just gone through the H-1B application with my company for myself, causing my small startup to pay pretty large sums of money to the USCIS and spend significant time and resources putting together the paperwork, I think they would definitely prefer to have avoided that if possible.

I'm not saying there aren't Americans who could do my job, but I have been on the hiring side since joining and there is clearly enough demand for labour in the market right now that it is hard for them to hire qualified people at all, let alone qualified Americans. Employees in this field just have so many options that companies have to go to pretty significant lengths to get who they want. And I know Americans coming from my background and working in the same field and I can tell you I am not being underpaid relative to them.

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

#412

Post by pbhjpbhj » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 9:22 PM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #340

koolba wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I think this is called the single lump of labor fallacy where there is a fixed number of jobs to compete for and by allowing immigrants to come in and take some of them the citizens are collectively poorer for it. In actuality additional workers demand lots of things themselves that create net jobs. If more people within the carrying capacity of the environment/structures decreased economic prosperity every country i…

Counterpoint - [in Western countries] those who have any chance to promote population restriction are "the 1%" and don't care provided the population can be controlled enough to keep working for them.

We've had a massive energy boom in the C20th, and grown fat from it, and now realise that's not sustainable for the planet. We can't continue that growth.

Robotisation will continue the current trend of increasing the wealth gap. And we don't have the energy or resources to just buy our way out of it by making more and more junk to sell (as per C20th).

Yes more immigration, or more pay for immigrants, increases demand from them for "middle class" luxuries (and reduces the ability of the native population in general to pay; but doesn't reduce the desire, and debt fills that gap), but we need to take the limitations of the planet in to account and realise resources aren't as infinite as they seemed - that means it has to be treated as zero sum, and indeed with restrictions on energy/resources that debt won't be there to cover things.

On top of this the ability for the Western nations to control others, and live better off their labour, seems to be finally ending.

IMO if we in the West want to maintain our current standards of living we'll need to entirely curtail population growth. Redistribution is going to hit hard, except for the robot owners who will get richer.

Regular Westerners (the 99%), to my view, will have a taste of living in a World where others have the wealth, and we don't have resources (skilled labour in particular) to bargain with - the elite won't need most of us. Heavy immigration can be a foretaste of that. Skilled immigrants allow the elite to bypass negotiation with their own populations (that might lead to democratisation of roboticisation benefits) whilst simultaneously leaving home countries devoid of skills and ripe for exploitation, not by nations but by the Capitalists.

/rant

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

#413

Post by winter_blue » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 9:23 PM UTC

okapple wrote: post #376

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…

H1B Employee with 100k Salary contributes $12,400 to Social Security and $2,900 Medicare every year. (Total:$15,300 per year). Majority H1B from India and China are stuck in green card backlog; with the current immigration system, they will never get the green card. Option for them is to stay in the USA on H1B in green card waiting queue or return home. (I do not think this is right or wrong people who are stuck in t…

Just wanted to say that Social Security's Old-Age Income program is available to all non-citizens, regardless of immigration status. It is a good thing to be aware of.

The only requirements to meet is 10 years of work in the US (i.e. "40 quarters of coverage (QC's)"). I spoke to someone from India sometime ago, who had come to the US in their late 40s or early 50s. They were planning on going back to India after they had accrued 10 years of tax-paying years in the US, so they could collect on Social Security Old-Age when they retired in India.

With the exception of a few countries,the US government will in fact directly deposit money in your foreign bank account. [a] You don't need to have any ties to the US. The whole thing is actually quite profitable, if you've only worked in the US for 10 years. Per the formula [b], if they earned $130k per year, in 10 years they made $1.3 million (and contributed $198,900 at 15.3% in FICA taxes), which divided by 420 yields $3,095 - the AIME (Average Indexed Monthly Earnings). The benefits payable for it is: 960 x 0.9 + (3095-960) x 0.32 = $1,547. They can get $1,547 from age 67. If they live until 87, that's 20 years. And 20 * 12 * 1547 = $371,280.

All other federal benefits, plus the other programs funded by FICA taxes (ie OADSI / SSI + Medicare taxes) including SSI, the other parts of OADSI, and of course Medicare, are not available to non-resident non-citizens (with a few exceptions).

[a] https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10137.pdf

[b] https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/piaformula.html

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

#414

Post by 2ion » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 9:24 PM UTC

rantwasp wrote: post #104

noncoml wrote: post #79

Xenophobia is a bitch. A few years ago I experienced an atrial fibrillation while exercising, so I called an ambulance, as I didn't know what was happening to me and thought that that was the end. Once in the ambulance the paramedic started asking me where I am from and if I came in on one of "those visas". I was afraid I was about to die, and this fucker was being xenophobic.

this is a textbook example of when someone should lose their job on the spot

Because somebody's feelings were hurt? That's a useless argument to make against a professional who's basically effective at his job and very useful to society. The US is useless at civil rights these days precisely because it's all between "my feels" and straight out looting. Conditioned knee jerking all over the place.

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

#415

Post by ckaygusu » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 9:26 PM UTC

armada651 wrote: post #398

ckaygusu wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man. I am going through F1->H1B process. I do not have an H1B visa, and I have a document that tells me I am allowed to stay in the country in the H1B status between a time period, and you are telling me I am in trouble because I do not have a visa. Ok, I suppose.

I don't know how this order affects your current process, definitely talk to you immigration lawyer about that. But we're talking about immigrants who have not yet applied for renewal, they could be in a situation where they have no chance for renewal.

Nope, we were talking about visas and legal status, and about getting kicked out if lack of visa. But whatever, I think you get the point.

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

#416

Post by michaelmrose » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 9:27 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #412

michaelmrose wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is called the single lump of labor fallacy where there is a fixed number of jobs to compete for and by allowing immigrants to come in and take some of them the citizens are collectively poorer for it. In actuality additional workers demand lots of things themselves that create net jobs. If more people within the carrying capacity of the environment/structures decreased economic prosperity every country i…

Counterpoint - [in Western countries] those who have any chance to promote population restriction are "the 1%" and don't care provided the population can be controlled enough to keep working for them. We've had a massive energy boom in the C20th, and grown fat from it, and now realise that's not sustainable for the planet. We can't continue that growth. Robotisation will continue the current trend of increasing the w…

>the elite won't need most of us

Whereas we don't need ANY of them and can vote away their wealth and their power. If needed we could lop off their heads but we won't need to as its far easier and more defensible to lop off their wealth.

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

#417

Post by weyland108 » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 9:29 PM UTC

akhilcacharya wrote: post #354

hckr_news wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe your recruiting to get interviewers into your pipeline and the interview process just isn't that good. Or perhaps nobody wants to work at your company. Bad management? Bad glassdoor reviews? Don't engage with the local tech scene?

> We pay in excess of 300k for all roles If it's in excess of $300k for all roles it sounds like a Netflix type company or Netflix itself. I highly doubt nobody wants to work for that company.

Did u miss the part where he said “they don’t make it in the interview “?. It’s not about handing out a job because there is one ...there is a interview process and quite a rigorous one when it comes to FAANG companies. They don’t go out seeking cheap labor.

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

#418

Post by pbhjpbhj » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 9:29 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #389

baddox wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does preventing a legal employee from visiting home and returning to the US help anyone who happened to be born in the US? It serves absolutely no purpose except to be cruel and to satisfy people in this country who enjoy cruelty towards immigrants.

>How does preventing a legal employee from visiting home and returning to the US help anyone who happened to be born in the US From a pure economics view: it does because it constrains the supply of labor. Sure, many (most?) people would probably stay and not not go back, but there's always going to be a few who do go back. That constrains the labor supply, which in theory will raise the price of labor for everyone s…

In the UK immigrants, I gather, produce more in tax revenues than they use. That aside from everything else they bring - friendship, culture, knowledge, labour - indicates financially we have a net benefit.

So exclusion of immigrants can reverse this, lowering fulfillment and reducing financial wealth.

Any ideas how those finances look in USA?

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

#419

Post by hooloovoo_zoo » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 9:30 PM UTC

triceratops wrote: post #334

zo1 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or could-have, which I think is more applicable in the sentence you're correcting. Or am I missing some obscure grammar rule?

No you aren't missing anything. "could of" (and its cousins "would of" and "should of") are common mistakes made (interestingly) almost exclusively by English-as-first-language speakers (my observation, so don't ask for citations I don't have any), since they sound similar to "could have", "would have" and "should have" particularly in "native" English accents (I'm thinking North American and UK especially). I've nev…

It's just misspelled. 'Could've' is a standard contraction.

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

#420

Post by 2ion » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 9:33 PM UTC

satya71 wrote: post #390

addicted wrote: post #351

I’m curious. HN has largely agreed that the current pandemic showed that remote work is absolutely doable. At the same time, people are claiming that the H1B visa, which allows immigrants to work in the US at largely American salaries, are taking away American jobs. So the stated solution is to do away with the visa and send those people back to their home countries. So why does anyone believe that when those people…

Yep. This is already happening. As US becomes a less inviting destination for the best talent, the talent will find home elsewhere. This might be beginning of the end of US tech dominance.

That's a long road. Very few tech firms generate the kind of money from tech abroad like many US firms do. You won't be earning 300k in a non-US company in Germany very very likely when looking at similarly-levelled roles (to exclude high-powered roles) compared to the US. You'll be looking at 1/3rd the total comp max in many cases and that'll already be a very good salary in the field. And possibly higher taxes, no effective investment-based retirement schemes, and other disadvantages.

US firms have a very long way to fall before they get even the least unattractive, relatively. A young person emigrating from Germany to the US working in a (now) good tech job there making 150,000 plus benefits will be out-earning their age cohort back in Germany 2-3x at the start of their career. Heck even at 120,000 that's likely 2-3x what a somebody with a Bachelor's here would get. That's a tremendous difference no career-focussed person would shy away from wanting.