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Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

wsj.com

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Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#61

Post by amadeuspagel »

arcticbull wrote: post #10

It's pretty amazing to me how anti-immigrant America is, for a country built on immigration, but I suppose it's always been that way. Benjamin Franklin hated the Germans in the 1750s [1]. For perspective, Canada, a country 1/10th the size of the US, brings in 30,000 refugees each year. The US brings in 18,000. This means Canada brings in 25X the number of refugees per capita than the US does. Canada, a country 1/10th…

> Canada, a country 1/10th the size of the US, brings in 300,000 new immigrants each year. The US brings in 140,000. This means Canada brings in 20X the number of new immigrants per capita than the US does.

Actually, "more than 1 million immigrants arrive in the U.S. each year. In 2018, the top country of origin for new immigrants coming into the U.S. was China, with 149,000 people, followed by India (129,000), Mexico (120,000) and the Philippines (46,000)."

Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/20/key-finding...

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#63

Post by [deleted] »

arcticbull wrote: post #10

It's pretty amazing to me how anti-immigrant America is, for a country built on immigration, but I suppose it's always been that way. Benjamin Franklin hated the Germans in the 1750s [1]. For perspective, Canada, a country 1/10th the size of the US, brings in 30,000 refugees each year. The US brings in 18,000. This means Canada brings in 25X the number of refugees per capita than the US does. Canada, a country 1/10th…

[deleted]

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#64

Post by newfriend »

arcticbull wrote: post #10

It's pretty amazing to me how anti-immigrant America is, for a country built on immigration, but I suppose it's always been that way. Benjamin Franklin hated the Germans in the 1750s [1]. For perspective, Canada, a country 1/10th the size of the US, brings in 30,000 refugees each year. The US brings in 18,000. This means Canada brings in 25X the number of refugees per capita than the US does. Canada, a country 1/10th…

Your numbers are wrong [1].

> The United States has more immigrants than any other country in the world. Today, more than 40 million people living in the U.S. were born in another country, accounting for about one-fifth of the world’s migrants.

> The U.S. foreign-born population reached a record 44.8 million in 2018.

> More than 1 million immigrants arrive in the U.S. each year.

What amazes me is how much hate the US gets for being one of the most generous countries on Earth.

The US has changed since the 19th century, when we needed endless amounts of unskilled labor. Things are much different today, and the H1-B Visa has been abused for decades.

> The process of bringing in H-1Bs is already so expensive, arduous and wasteful that companies aren't going to be bringing in huge quantities of "US replacement" labor. I certainly wouldn't if I were in charge of hiring.

Good. It sounds like it's somewhat serving it's purpose. Hopefully these changes will improve it more.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/20/key-finding...

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#65

Post by mastazi »

paxys wrote: post #34

While I'm in favor of the move, wages are just a band-aid fix. The core of the problem is that the premise of the H1B visa itself – extraordinary skill that cannot be found in the US – is complete bullshit. Everyone participating in the program (including the government) knows this, and yet they have to do the entire song and dance of years long approval processes, fake job listings, RFEs and whatnot. Fix the real pr…

It's not "extraordinary skill that cannot be found in the US" though, it's for skills for which there is a shortage in your market, similar to the subclass 189 visa here in Australia.

When you say "extraordinary skill" you are probably thinking about the O-1 visa (which is similar to the Australian subclass 124).

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#66

Post by oh_sigh »

arcticbull wrote: post #10

It's pretty amazing to me how anti-immigrant America is, for a country built on immigration, but I suppose it's always been that way. Benjamin Franklin hated the Germans in the 1750s [1]. For perspective, Canada, a country 1/10th the size of the US, brings in 30,000 refugees each year. The US brings in 18,000. This means Canada brings in 25X the number of refugees per capita than the US does. Canada, a country 1/10th…

Where are you getting the 140k new immigrants each year number from? Wikipedia says: "According to the 2016 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, the United States admitted a total of 1.18 million legal immigrants (618k new arrivals, 565k status adjustments) in 2016"

And refugees are only one type of immigrant. Should illegal immigrants count as refugees, since many frequently claim to be fleeing violence, even if they don't get officially declared as a refugee by the US? If so, that means the US admits closer to 500,000 refugees per year.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#67

Post by notJim »

The new rule is that H1B workers need to earn higher salaries relative to the distribution of salaries in their profession. The worker must make the 45th percentile wage, where previously it was 17th. Won't this primarily hurt people early in their career, or does it also take into account experience level?

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#68

Post by [deleted] »

mc32 wrote: post #59
jzymbaluk wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is right. The answer that's best for the economy is to allow more immigration, not less (especially skilled immigration). This move will just make it more dificult for the average company to sponsor H1B workers

Why not make companies sponsor underprivileged kids who need the opportunity just as much but don’t get as much consideration?

[deleted]

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#69

Post by cmdshiftf4 »

arcticbull wrote: post #18
frequentnapper wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a canadian immigrant, I'm actually against the ramping up of so much immigration because we do not have the infrastructure to support it. I liked the slow and steady pace of quality over quantity before liberals came into power.

It wasn't much lower in the past -- the number's been hovering around the high 2xx,000 to low 3xx,000 per year since 1992, and immigration per year as a percentage of the population has remained around 1% that entire time, according to IRCC and statcan. [1] The real issue is that Canada's birth rate is 1.4 children per woman on average. This means within a generation the population would be reduced to 2/3. With a poi…

>The real issue is that Canada's birth rate is 1.4 children per woman on average. This means within a generation the population would be reduced to 2/3. With a points-based immigration program, the country is able to be selective about who it brings in.

And instead of supporting the native Canadian population in having more children themselves, Canada, like most of the modern West, simply opted to replace them over time via migration.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#70

Post by gok »

arcticbull wrote: post #10

It's pretty amazing to me how anti-immigrant America is, for a country built on immigration, but I suppose it's always been that way. Benjamin Franklin hated the Germans in the 1750s [1]. For perspective, Canada, a country 1/10th the size of the US, brings in 30,000 refugees each year. The US brings in 18,000. This means Canada brings in 25X the number of refugees per capita than the US does. Canada, a country 1/10th…

> Canada, a country 1/10th the size of the US, brings in 300,000 new immigrants each year. The US brings in 140,000.

I don't know what definition of "brings in" you are using, but around 1.1 million people obtain permanent legal resident status per year in the US. By this metric your Canada numbers are about right (a bit low, around 340,000 in 2019).

Perhaps you're looking at purely comparing Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program with just H-1Bs? If so those numbers are still a bit off -- there were around 190,000 H-1Bs issued in 2019 -- but also that's only a small sliver of all temporary foreign work visas issued in the US (there are again over a million per year).

Canada does admit many more immigrants per capita and generally has a much better immigration system but the numerical difference is not quite as huge as you say.

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