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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

#181

Post by acituan »

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?

Because a good chunk of immigrants are underpriviliged kids of the world, when you compare the GDP levels of their home countries to the US.

That and US doesn’t need to pay a dime for them developing their skills while getting to skim the cream of the crop.

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

#182

Post by cromwellian »

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…

Really? What if you need a bunch of translation/localization work done. America has a shortage of people who are bilingually fluent and have the engineering skill, in many of the needed cultures and languages.

Do you think companies are going to go to war bidding up salaries for a tiny number of qualified American candidates who can do this work, or are they going to outsource to overseas firms that can do the work?

So then the question is, do you want this work being done here, in America, paying taxes here, or do you want some consulting company in Asia or Eastern Europe to get the money?

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

#183

Post by addicted »

TuringNYC wrote: post #82
nrmitchi wrote: post #33

I'll give you that, but it seems like a much simpler solution would have just been improving the flexibility for an H1B worker to be allowed to work at any employer for the term of their status. If an employer used an H1B in order to hire a foreign worker and then under pay them, the worker would just get another job that pays market rate, without the work status concern. Without the artificial control over the emplo…

The best thing to do would be to treat them like local workers -- increased pay AND increased flexibility. This will help retain the best overseas workers in the US. Even better would be a salary auction where US companies get to auction (higher and higher salaries for the best overseas workers.) The highest auction rates would fill the quota first. Overseas workers win bigtime. Companies seeking talent also win. Loc…

So you have an auction, and you're capping the number of people.

A hybrid monster that takes the worst of both a private market (heavily benefiting the richest incumbents) and government regulations (broad and non targeted rules).

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

#184

Post by tshaddox »

Cherian_Abraham wrote: post #117

“ Because those required wage increases take effect this week, existing H-1B holders looking to renew their visas might not qualify unless their employers raise their salaries accordingly.” This is really bad. Families are going to get told to leave. I’m surprised that there is no discussion on this thread about the impact to people who haven’t done anything wrong.

> I’m surprised that there is no discussion on this thread about the impact to people who haven’t done anything wrong.

Existing H-1B holders should clearly be grandfathered in, but those aren't the only people who have done nothing wrong. What about the would-be future H-1B holders who would have benefited from working while making less than the new requirements? In other words, the vast majority of people who are going to be affected by these new rules.

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

#185

Post by nicoburns »

fernandotakai wrote: post #163
muzaffarpur wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the kind of families HN cares about. Only the right kind /s.

[flagged]

Eh. I think that's a little unfair on us HNers. I have seen comments like that. But I've also seen a lot of comments about how the H1b visas should be more flexible and widely available so as to give visa holders more freedom.

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

#186

Post by claudeganon »

nrmitchi wrote: post #155
booleandilemma wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: wouldn’t that be leaving less jobs open for Americans? As an American myself, I want to see my fellow Americans getting good jobs over people from other countries.

I'm not an American, but I fully understand your point. Let me provide some background. If you already know this, my apologies. The process of getting an H1B is not the employer picking up the phone and ordering "1 H1B for delivery please". It involves applying at the beginning of April, being entered into a lottery, and you find out if you "won" (and your application is looked at) around the end of March. IIRC it is…

> then any reasonable employer is going to go with the candidate that they can hire the next week, rather than going through the H1B process.

Except in industries that have high turnover, like technology and fashion. There, H1Bs are abused by companies who don’t want to compete for talent at market rates and instead can lock in foreign workers. It makes more sense to hire the foreign worker specifically because they can prevent them from leaving. Illegal threats and intimidation of H1B workers are more common than you think.

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

#187

Post by dheera »

jedberg wrote: post #74

I agree 100% with you. My view is even more extreme, I think we should allow anyone who passes a criminal background check to be able to get a work visa, with no quotas. But barring that pipe dream, this seems like a good interim step.

Personally I think there's a middle ground that's very important, which is that I think anyone who received a university degree in the US and passes the background check should be able to get an unrestricted work visa.

The US should want to keep the talent it selects and trains. These are people who build the economy, generate IP, and create jobs in the long run. Not only that, but these people who have spent 4+ years in the US university education system are extremely well-adapted to life in the US and will thrive at making the US a better place.

(Yes there's OPT, but it's not long enough and doesn't provide a path to permanent residency.)

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

#188

Post by zo1 »

core-questions wrote: post #32
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…

> This means Canada brings in 25X the number of refugees per capita than the US does. > This means Canada brings in 20X the number of new immigrants per capita than the US does. You assert this as though it's just automatically a good thing with no actual analysis as to the impact on Canadians. What happens to the cultural cohesion, wages, and living standards of Canadians when immigration is at such a rapid pace? Is…

It's just one of those things that's assumed as good and not to be questioned, not even with reasonable and genuine discourse.

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

#189

Post by chairmanwow1 »

Overall, I really support these changes.

However, this piece really struck me as a big mistake:

"Under the changes, an applicant must have a college degree in the specific field in which he or she is looking to work. A software developer, for example, wouldn’t be awarded an H-1B visa if that person has a degree in electrical engineering."

Some of the best software engineers I know are graduate degree holders from neuroscience, biophysics, EE, and more. This might be a distinction that is only relevant in software engineering, but my intuition is that other fields will feel the sting of this decision.

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

#190

Post by vsskanth »

flowerlad wrote: post #93

Requiring competitive wages is a good move. They should also have allowed H1B holders to switch to a different employer without requiring a new visa. Along with that they should also have increased the number of H1B visas available. Currently many strong developers are being hired into Amazon and Microsoft but being positioned in Vancouver BC (a Canadian city a couple of hours from Seattle) [1]. These developers take…

You need to pass laws for all that. Even this regulation surviving legal challenges is doubtful.
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