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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

#211

Post by HarryHirsch »

dheera wrote: post #187
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+ year…

anyone who received a university degree in the US

No. No. No. That would mean that anyone from the University of Oxford would be out until he got himself a masters degree from the Christian College of Lost Hope, AR. There are far too many paid masters degrees around already that serve exactly that purpose and that are good for no one except the useless college.

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

#212

Post by dartdartdart »

jzymbaluk wrote: post #55
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…

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

I agree, American is built on the hard work of immigrants. We need to allow more immigrants, especially highly skilled workers

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

#213

Post by [deleted] »

chairmanwow1 wrote: post #189

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 neu…

[deleted]

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

#214

Post by hoot »

chairmanwow1 wrote: post #189

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 neu…

I share the same experience. The most talented software developers that I've worked with have just about all been EE's. On the flip side, I've also met some terrible software developers who were also EE's.

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

#215

Post by dkhenry »

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…

H1B employee's can work at any employer for the term of their status. The employee only has to transfer the visa to the new employer. I have done this for multiple employee's on H1B's its nothing like getting a new H1B for someone on OPT or getting a new H1B for an oversea's employee

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

#216

Post by mamon »

notJim wrote: post #67

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?

I think this is by design. You don't want to issue visas to "people early in their career" - those jobs should go to Americans first. You only hire from abroad if there really is a shortage of specialists in some profession, and you want those professionals to prove their worth in their home country first, before allowing them to the US.

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

#217

Post by Retric »

kbenson wrote: post #146
ed25519FUUU wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t that cause a large displacement of the existing labor force and significantly drive down wages?

It depends. Short term and long term there's a lot of shuffling that would happen until it settled into an equilibrium (Maybe. On the other hand maybe it would be extremely sensitive to global issues). Those people all need food and housing and need to buy goods and services, so it's not like you're obsoleting an existing person's job, you're adding demand as you add supply. Whether one eventually outweighs the other…

The problem beyond simple policy choices is infrastructure takes time to build. If hypothetically 100,000 people show up in NYC tomorrow there is some slack that might accommodate them. But, how do you scale the transportation network to handle even just 1 million extra people in NYC? Now extend that to every other part of the country.

Sure that seems unlikely, but when millions of people are willing to become undocumented immigrants, it’s likely a more open policy would see dramatically larger influxes. Especially in response to local events like civil wars. Really, just raising the caps by say 10% every year gets the same result without the chaos.

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

#218

Post by sjg007 »

nerdface wrote: post #96
sjg007 wrote: post #44

I mean they will pay H1bs higher but still doesn’t make a company pay a us citizen higher. Maybe it will open up space for lawsuits based equivalent responsibilities and help the equal pay for equal movement. Even excluding H1bs we know there are people doing the exact same work for vastly different

H1Bs usually require the employer to prove they couldn't find someone within the country.

Well yes, theoretically, but I imagine there are plenty of ways to game the system.

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

#219

Post by greatwave1 »

I'm working on a dashboard to track H1B visa hiring and salary data at https://www.quiverquant.com/sources/visas

Right now you can use it to see the biggest H1B employers and their median salaries for workers on visa. Open to any suggestions on how to make it more useful!

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

#220

Post by cm2187 »

chairmanwow1 wrote: post #189

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 neu…

That's going to be interesting for people who studied humanities.

In banking, you have even more diverse backgrounds than software development.

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