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Andrew Ng: The suspension of H1B is bad for the US and bad for innovation

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Re: Andrew Ng: The suspension of H1B is bad for the US and bad for innovation

#261

Post by [deleted] »

ip26 wrote: post #209
deegles wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to convey to a citizen how demoralizing being on an H1B is. If you get laid off, you have at best 30 days to find a new job and transfer your visa (from what I remember), otherwise you have to leave the country . H1B does not allow moonlighting. You can't start a startup by yourself. You can't take significant time off between jobs unless you transfer your visa and negotiate it. Your spouse likely won't be…

if you live in a city for several years and settle in, form friendships, hobbies, and maybe relationships I suddenly find myself wondering if the path to reform for H1B could be short duration combine with some kind of fast-track naturalization. Does it even make sense for the transactional H1B to be so long term? If the H1B led to rapid naturalization, it would naturally curtail use of H1B over time, as the US popul…

[deleted]

Re: Andrew Ng: The suspension of H1B is bad for the US and bad for innovation

#263

Post by mighty_mighty »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #199
mighty_mighty wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is over the board racist comment! Re-read your comment by replacing "Indian" with "Black" and see how you feel about it.

I don't think that's an equivalent substitution. Indian Americans are by a huge margin the richest demographic group in the country, and black Americans are by a significant margin the poorest.

so being racist against Indians is right because they are a rich demography ? I applaud your logic here.

Re: Andrew Ng: The suspension of H1B is bad for the US and bad for innovation

#264

Post by pluto9 »

rantwasp wrote: post #202
pluto9 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The H1B worker isn't competing with the average Joe, he's competing with the Joe who's qualified to do the job, but didn't get it because the employer preferred someone with no leverage who can be easily controlled and underpaid.

do you know how expensive is to bring someone on an H1B? the relocation itself is >50k. The salary has to be in the same range as the other workers in the same position. It’s literally more expensive to hire someone on an H1b. why would big tech so this if average Joe is qualified and could do the Job?

50K seems incredibly high for a relocation. Do you have a source on that? What are the expenses that add up to that amount?

All that aside, that's a one-time cost. H1B workers can be kept in limbo for years, since employers can apply for their green cards (or not) at their discretion.

> The salary has to be in the same range as the other workers in the same position

What constitutes "the same position"? Call the H1B a "systems analyst" instead of a "software engineer", and voila, you've got a much lower paid position, even if the job duties are the same in practice.

> why would big tech so this if average Joe is qualified and could do the Job?

I'm not a fan of arguments of the form "why did X do Y if Z?" because answering them requires knowing unknowable motives and other factors that your opponent couldn't possibly be privy to. But since we're using those arguments, I've got one for you: If H1Bs are more expensive, why did Disney famously lay off huge numbers of IT workers and make them train their H1B replacements in the process? Kind of hard to argue that they couldn't find suitable American workers when they were already working there.

Re: Andrew Ng: The suspension of H1B is bad for the US and bad for innovation

#265

Post by fredfoobar »

throwaway987897 wrote: post #257
fredfoobar wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get what you're saying, but the "fake job search" never yields any qualified hits, I haven't had to "fake reject" anyone so far. I'm being totally honest with you. I'm sure I could wait a year and finally find an American born candidate who will pass the interview, but that would mean my projects and timelines are hosed. We've tried to go the intern route and hire American undergrads as interns and then convert the…

The goal of the fake job search is to avoid qualified hits, not to get them. If, in the fake search, we had found an American candidate with similar qualifications who would accept a similar salary it would have been worse than useless. Honestly reporting that would have sunk our employee's green card application, and we had no ability to hire a new person at all. The problem in a real search is finding talent; the p…

That must have been super unlucky then. I don't think the likelihood of that happening is very high though. If there were so many candidates who get snagged in the "fake job search", we'd not have to do the "real search" for so long anyway.

Re: Andrew Ng: The suspension of H1B is bad for the US and bad for innovation

#266

Post by rantwasp »

pluto9 wrote: post #264
rantwasp wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you know how expensive is to bring someone on an H1B? the relocation itself is >50k. The salary has to be in the same range as the other workers in the same position. It’s literally more expensive to hire someone on an H1b. why would big tech so this if average Joe is qualified and could do the Job?

50K seems incredibly high for a relocation. Do you have a source on that? What are the expenses that add up to that amount? All that aside, that's a one-time cost. H1B workers can be kept in limbo for years, since employers can apply for their green cards (or not) at their discretion. > The salary has to be in the same range as the other workers in the same position What constitutes "the same position"? Call the H1B…

that’s how much the relocation cost for me 15 years ago. it’s basically bringing in all your stuff + paperwork + housing etc. i remember it because it was reported come tax time.

to be fair, this was Microsoft but still it was 50% of what my yearly base salary was at that time.

Re: Andrew Ng: The suspension of H1B is bad for the US and bad for innovation

#267

Post by throwawaygh »

rantwasp wrote: post #143
jsnenl52882hehd wrote: post #115

I see a lot of comments that miss the point. H1B visas have their problems and the system could be greatly improved by reforms. But that is not the issue. We are talking about suspension of ALL H1Bs and J visas! Whatever you feel about the problems with the current system, it is a net positive for the US. It has some pernicious negative effects, but ultimately our economy benefits more by being able to draw and integ…

yeah. this is not about reform. it’s about having another bullet point on some stupid list to please the voters. some of the same voters that were so disoriented to understand that obamacare is aca.

> this is not about reform.

Agreed.

> it’s about having another bullet point on some stupid list to please the voters

Agreed.

> some of the same voters that were so disoriented to understand that obamacare is aca.

Disagreed.

The H1B system as it exists is not easily defensible, so Trump is basically unconstrained. It's easier to defend a system against executive abuse when the system is working as intended. There are things that Trump would like to kill by XO but which he will not kill because their popularity constrains his political capital. The less popular/functional a program is, the easier it is to justify screwing with it.

You're saying that other commenters don't realize this is a political issue. I think it's exactly the other way around: you don't realize how much political support for skilled immigration H1B abuse has burned in the past 10ish years.

Re: Andrew Ng: The suspension of H1B is bad for the US and bad for innovation

#268

Post by nine_ones »

y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #205
czatt wrote: post #4

As an intended MBA applicant for the class of 2021, the recent uncertainty around H1B visas makes me very uneasy and disappointed. I was forced to leave the U.S. back in 2016 despite having an investment banking job and paying meaningful taxes, which was incredibly frustrating. I was hoping for another shot at living and working in the US after completing an MBA, and now it looks like there either won't be a chance o…

> I am now seriously considering avoiding U.S. schools altogether and applying for top business schools in Europe such as LBS and INSEAD. Why did you not do that in the first place? I'm legitimately asking because I want to leave the US for Europe or Australia / New Zealand. I'm a US citizen having immigrated here at an early age. I've dreamed of leaving the US for years now, so I like to understand what draws so man…

Up until as recently as 4 years ago, America was fine. America was chugging along well into recovery, we maybe even had peak awesome life.

That changed in 4 years. There are people on visas who came before that but still didn't get citizenship because of bureuacracy.

There are people who came after that who thought America could never behave like a corrupt developing country.

Beyond that, the number of people (immigrants, tourists and businesses) has actually been going down for 3 years.

Add covid, recession and racism to the mix, US economy will lose a lot of young blood going forward.

And yes, immigration to other countries has increased simultaneously.

Re: Andrew Ng: The suspension of H1B is bad for the US and bad for innovation

#269

Post by sjg007 »

ip26 wrote: post #209
deegles wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to convey to a citizen how demoralizing being on an H1B is. If you get laid off, you have at best 30 days to find a new job and transfer your visa (from what I remember), otherwise you have to leave the country . H1B does not allow moonlighting. You can't start a startup by yourself. You can't take significant time off between jobs unless you transfer your visa and negotiate it. Your spouse likely won't be…

if you live in a city for several years and settle in, form friendships, hobbies, and maybe relationships I suddenly find myself wondering if the path to reform for H1B could be short duration combine with some kind of fast-track naturalization. Does it even make sense for the transactional H1B to be so long term? If the H1B led to rapid naturalization, it would naturally curtail use of H1B over time, as the US popul…

H1B, then green card, then citizenship. Different countries have different wait times.

Re: Andrew Ng: The suspension of H1B is bad for the US and bad for innovation

#270

Post by president »

fzeroracer wrote: post #190
president wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, in a vacuum. It ignores the fact that at a given point of time, there are only a limited number of jobs in the market.

No, you've managed to completely misinterpret how the lump of labor fallacy works and fell for the fallacy again. Job demand is elastic. If tomorrow X of all immigrants who held a job in the US left, that doesn't mean X jobs open up. You're losing X customers and Y investors where Y is a subset of X. Jobs are not a zero-sum game and H1B does not exist just to take away jobs because inevitably some of those people wil…

You're straying away from the point and overcomplicating things. When a company has an open position and it is filled by an H1B worker, an American worker has lost that opportunity. That's zero sum. Whether or not H1B workers are going to go on to create more jobs has no bearing. You could say the same thing about the American worker that lost that job opportunity.

You realize that just because something is named a "fallacy" doesn't mean it is one. Economists have bias too and are often employed/used by lobbyists to sway analysis.

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