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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

#281

Post by totalZero »

guyzero wrote: post #274
totalZero wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you did. You have now edited your comment to remove the part where you expressed your shock at seeing so many "anti-immigrant" commenters on HN. Don't gaslight. EDIT: I made a mistake, you made the comment two posts above, not in the prior post. That's why I didn't see it when I came to reply; I looked at the immediate parent rather than going back a ways. But it's right there two posts above, you're decrying "a…

The only edits I've made are for grammatical changes or typographical errors, done quickly after the initial posting as I am a poor proofreader. I am really not sure what you're talking about. My original comment stands that yes, I am shocked to see so many anti-immigrant comments here. That seems like a pretty blandly accurate description to me. No one has been called a name. Many more comments are non sequiturs abo…

I am an even poorer proofreader. See my edit.

You can't ignore the overall ramifications of the policy just because you believe that the policymaker has a particular nefarious motivation.

And you shouldn't box people out of the debate by accusing them of hatred just because they don't condemn a policy that you see as being hatefully motivated.

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

#282

Post by president »

thomaspaine wrote: post #118

ITT: People criticizing the H1B program for reasons that have nothing to do with why it was suspended, or considering the fate of people/families who are already here on H1Bs. This is a pretty obvious move by the administration to discourage immigration, in any form. Could the H1B system be more equitable to workers, more efficient, less confusing, etc? Absolutely. But suspending H1Bs and green card applications like…

Honest question. Why does nobody consider the fate of US university graduates that are up to their neck in debt and unable to find a job because companies would rather hire an H1B worker with 10 years working experience for cheap? There are large swathes of American workers that have been plunged into homelessness, drugs, or cannot feed their families because they lost their jobs to labor arbitrage. I understand that due to inherent bias, non US citizens couldn't care less about the fate US citizens but I believe it is abhorrent that an American citizen would balk at suspending H1Bs, especially in an economically tough time like this. If you have children or plan on having children, you're essentially selling out their future.

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

#283

Post by rantwasp »

throwawaygh wrote: post #267
rantwasp wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

some of the voters clearly did not understand that obamacare==aca

setting this aside, I don’t think anyone is saying that H1B was a perfect system, but IMHO the benefits from it greatly outweigh the downsides. We’ll see how this unfolds and what the medium and long term impact is (spoiler: people will think twice about coming to work/live in the US)

My favorite example when it comes to what’s going on in the US is the Roman Empire. It lasted for 1000+ years but it did disintegrate when the people in power lost track of what made the Roman Empire great. I am not saying this is going to happen in the next 5, 10 or 15 years, but things are definitely shifting and the world your grand grand kids are going to live in is going to be radically different from what we call normal right now.

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

#284

Post by daotoad »

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…

Frankly, if you qualify for H1B, you really should qualify for a green card (resident alien status).

Do we really want to bring skilled workers to the US, give them work experience and training that raises their skill level even higher, and then kick them out of the country?

That seems like an unimaginably stupid idea. We should be seeking to retain highly skilled immigrants, not flushing them out of the country.

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

#285

Post by guyzero »

totalZero wrote: post #275
guyzero wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is disingenuous and only possible if you ignore the multiple other anti-immigrant changes the Trump administration has made.

As I said in the other thread, please don't hurl epithets at people. If you disagree with me, you don't have to call me deceitful. Do you disagree that there are consequences and externalities to the H1B suspension that go beyond our best guess at the motivations of the White House? That's what I suggest in my comment, but you haven't addressed that at all.

I know the difference between "deceitful" and "disingenuous" and if I wanted to call you deceitful I would have. Besides,"disingenuous" isn't a name or pejorative, like calling you "ugly" or something. It's not an epithet. It literally means pretending to know less than you actually know which is exactly what I feel you are doing here. It does not require mind-reading to determine the intentions of the current executive administration around immigration. We have their previous behaviour with regards to different immigration policies to go on.

I think that regardless of how anyone felt about the H1B program that this change is bad for America and was done for the wrong reasons. If this was about the H1B program then why suspend L1 visas, student visas and green cards? What does suspending au pairs have to do with H1B issues?

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

#286

Post by hogFeast »

dragonwriter wrote: post #128
hogFeast wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is also funny is that settled immigrants often have more right-wing views about immigration than people born into that society. This doesn't appear to happen in the US because of the history and the significant levels of illegal immigration today but, where I am, the group most in favour of controls on migration are settled immigrants. It seems very odd to say limiting immigration is white supremacy. The US has…

> What is also funny is that settled immigrants often have more right-wing views about immigration than people born into that society. > This doesn't appear to happen in the US Yes, it does. It may happen significantly less in communities where the immigrants, their descendants, and others of their ethnicity are targeted, without selectivity by immigration status, for bigotry, including the highly visible Latino/Lati…

So much of this makes no sense. Immigrants are subject to bigotry everywhere. You are hopefully aware that during the WW2 a rather large number of people died because of this...yes, bigotry still exists in Europe (the US is vastly vastly vastly more tolerant than almost everywhere in Europe, the US was founded by people in Europe escaping bigotry and pogroms...most European nations are hostile to immigrants because they are largely homogeneous societies).

Your last comment is worse. The US has a level of illegal immigration that is unlike anything that has occurred in modern societies (i.e. since nation states formed). That is why it is a problem.

That isn't the fault of the US. If people somewhere else choose to break the law, the solution to that is not to change the law. US Law is made by US citizens (again, the only place in the world where someone would have this debate is the US).

Likewise, the "war on drugs" is a function of domestic policy in other countries...how can you blame the US for not intervening in the domestic policy of Central American countries (given the history of this in the 1980s). Again, thankfully saner heads have prevailed recently and we don't have govts invading other countries on a whim.

Also, in Europe we have people escaping a real war. A govt that is armed with chemical weapons and airplanes bombing the shit out of civilians. There is a high bar for refugee status...there is a reason why. Some people actually need help. Being poor and your country being a bad place to live is true in many places. If more people stayed where they are, and tried to make their countries better...maybe that would help?

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

#287

Post by btilly »

throwawaygh wrote: post #196
btilly wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies that import labor when they had a perfectly acceptable local candidate should face severe fines... Who defines acceptable local candidate? Anyone who has interviewed candidates knows that are always a lot of local candidates who think that they are qualified for the job who you don't want for any of a variety of reasons. I don't want the government telling me that I can't hire the sysadmin I want because th…

> Who defines acceptable local candidate?... sysadmin... java I think your question already demonstrates the deviation of the H1B from its original intent. Bringing in a generic sys admin or generic java programmers on an H1B is visa abuse. Sorry, but neither of those is a special skill and neither of those jobs is an appropriate use of the H1B. There are more than enough sys admin and java programmer candidates in t…

Have you ever seen the difference between a top notch sysadmin and the average one? There are lots of sysadmins who are interchangeable cogs, just as there are lots of developers who are just warm bodies.

But there are some that..aren't.

That said, the person that you describe sounds like a better fit for an E2 visa than an H1B. See https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/immigrat... for a description. Have you tried that option?

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

#288

Post by throwawaygh »

rantwasp wrote: post #283
throwawaygh wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

some of the voters clearly did not understand that obamacare==aca setting this aside, I don’t think anyone is saying that H1B was a perfect system, but IMHO the benefits from it greatly outweigh the downsides. We’ll see how this unfolds and what the medium and long term impact is (spoiler: people will think twice about coming to work/live in the US) My favorite example when it comes to what’s going on in the US is th…

Yes, I agree with you on policy. I disagree on political strategy.

I think it's politically disastrous to go on using H1B how it's currently used.

We need to admit that there's a lot of low/midskill immigration happening using H1B and then fix it. If we don't, then we'll lose the H1B entirely. Already you see that the H1B is wildly unpopular because of a few large bad actors. So, we'll lose the baby with the bathwater. As we are now. If H1B were used how it's supposed to be used, then it'd be a lot easier to say "hey why are we kicking out our best scientists, our tippy-top engineers, and our surgeons? It's not like anyone loses by having these people here -- clearly none of us can even quality for those jobs". Right now, that's just not an argument I can use to convince my uncle or grandfather to support H1B visas. That's a problem. Now we're going to lose even skilled immigration because of a few big abusers.

Because of those politics, I would rather restrict H1B to its original intent and then have the debate about low/midskill immigration on its own terms.

My argument is that your political strategy is bad, not that your policy imperatives are wrong :)

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

#289

Post by rantwasp »

throwawaygh wrote: post #288
rantwasp wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

some of the voters clearly did not understand that obamacare==aca setting this aside, I don’t think anyone is saying that H1B was a perfect system, but IMHO the benefits from it greatly outweigh the downsides. We’ll see how this unfolds and what the medium and long term impact is (spoiler: people will think twice about coming to work/live in the US) My favorite example when it comes to what’s going on in the US is th…

Yes, I agree with you on policy. I disagree on political strategy. I think it's politically disastrous to go on using H1B how it's currently used. We need to admit that there's a lot of low/midskill immigration happening using H1B and then fix it. If we don't, then we'll lose the H1B entirely. Already you see that the H1B is wildly unpopular because of a few large bad actors. So, we'll lose the baby with the bathwate…

it bothers me that we are arguing about this when we know that you and I have probably put more though into this than Trump. I don’t believe a crackdown on H1B abuse would have been half as bad as what is going on now and the “strategy” adopted now is just pure failure. Failure that is going to impact everyone in the long term

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

#290

Post by geebee »

fredfoobar wrote: post #220
gbronner wrote: post #5

H1B is terrible for the employees, and for those who work alongside them. Companies try to slow down green cards, and use H1Bs as virtual indentured servants. They also fake looking for Americans- in practice, many of the jobs are earmarked for a specific person, and you are wasting your time applying for it. Losing your job as an h1b requires you to leave almost immediately, which isn't great for anyone. Hopefully t…

> They also fake looking for Americans- in practice, many of the jobs are earmarked for a specific person, and you are wasting your time applying for it. Disagree with this, agree with the rest. I've hired (and fired) folks for teams and this is not true at all. The wages in SV are very competitive. At one point we were desperate to get ANYONE who could pass the interview, including dropping the bar for the interview…

When you were desperate, what compensation package did you offer?
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