Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 1001 posts

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

#311

Post by [deleted] »

munk-a wrote: post #246
runarberg wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xenophobia is more expected, when the immigrant population is ghettoized, alienated, given fewer opportunities and stricter policing, and made to compete with the local population for limited jobs. A more reasonable policy would be to make sure the that doesn't happen. Say by abolishing racist policing, better urban planning, better labor laws, and partly socialized job market. EDIT: Changed wording, previously incor…

Xenophobia is never natural, it's comprehensible but there are a lot of folks able to resist falling into it as a scapegoat from bad circumstance. I agree with improving society to help less folks fall into it, but I don't believe in allowing any excuses for xenophobic views.

[deleted]

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

#312

Post by ponker »

notJim wrote: post #75
jedberg wrote: post #9

Credit where credit is due, this is a good move. The H1B program has been abused for a long time. It sounds like these changes should help make it too expensive for the fraudulent abuse to continue.

> The H1B program has been abused for a long time What's the abuse?

The abuse is that the H1B program is supposed to be for truly distinctive skills. But the "body shops" bring people with very low skill.

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

#313

Post by greatwave1 »

KerryJones wrote: post #247
greatwave1 wrote: post #219

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!

This is great, thanks for putting it together. What's the source of your data? It would be great to be able to sort by the median salary (maybe highlight which companies are taking advantage). It would also be useful to compare it with "median non-H1B salary" which also might highlight where people are taking advantage.

Thanks! Data is sourced from the Department of Labor: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor/performance

If you click the column heading in the second table, you should be able to sort by median salary for the major H1B employers.

Any suggestions on where to find non-H1B median salary data, aside from doing something like scraping Glassdoor?

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

#314

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

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 would never have made it to the US with that rule. I had a UK BS(c) in molecular biology, had done 1 year of a PhD at EMBL in computational molecular biology, dropped out to focus on the computers instead. 2 years later, hired on an H1B and emigrated to the US.

6 years after that, I was the 2nd hire at amzn, and the rest is history. Does the Trump admin really want to mess with that kind of story?

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

#315

Post by tshaddox »

hal9000-tng wrote: post #258
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.

> 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. It's not a moral issue (except for the big H-1B mills that are gaming the system.) But nothing has changed: these are not an offer of citizenship. They are temporary work visas with no guarantees: an opportunity to do temporary specialty wo…

I don't think you can dismiss the moral issue. The fact that there may technically be no "guarantee" does not mean that people ought to be treated unreasonably. The fact that some people may not care about the effects American policies have on people who are not American is not the same thing as it not being a moral issue.

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

#316

Post by nrmitchi »

coding123 wrote: post #307

It's a good idea, but it misses something very important. The last company I worked at I was one of 6 developers in the US. The rest of the developers was a team in Pakistan - 30 to 50 employees. The 6 employees were paid about the same as the 30-50 in Pakistan (combined). So before I would support this, I would support the US making remote technical work illegal without also increasing that pay to match the equivale…

You want the US government to step in and start dictating to companies what it pays employees in different countries? If that happened, there is an almost-0% chance you get the outcome you want (which seems to be the staff in Pakistan getting paid more).

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

#317

Post by juniper_strong »

runarberg wrote: post #268
dudul wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you avoid seeing 500M indians/Chinese landing in America on the very next day? I think there is a middle ground between the disaster that are immigration laws today, and full open borders.

Bad scare call. In the US, over 3 million Puerto Ricans are now allowed to migrate to the mainland US (say to DC). The borders are completely open to them. In Europe, similarly, around 20M Romanians are allowed to Sweden. But they don’t. Just because people are allowed to migrate, it doesn’t mean they will. And in the case of an overwhelming majority, they won’t.

> In the US, over 3 million Puerto Ricans are now allowed to migrate to the mainland US (say to DC). The borders are completely open to them. In Europe, similarly, around 20M Romanians are allowed to Sweden. But they don’t

According to Wikipedia, as of 2018 there were 5.8 million Puerto Ricans living stateside. The population of Puerto Rico is around 2.8 million. There are more than twice as many Puerto Ricans living on the mainland as there are in Puerto Rico.

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

#318

Post by victor106 »

glennpratt wrote: post #265
victor106 wrote: post #46

I finally agree with something this administration is doing. This is a solid move. H1B has been/is being abused by all companies (big and small) for a number of years at the cost of not only American workers but also the visa holders. The only ones benefiting are the companies that sponsor H1B visas by suppressing wages for everyone. I just hope the new administration don't role back these changes. Typically when a n…

> H1B has been/is being abused by all companies (big and small) I don't see this exactly. I have worked with multiple, brilliant visa holders. Many of them have moved on to bigger and better things. Presumably paying a huge amount in taxes for the privilege. Most software developers I know are not making what I would deem suppressed wages, especially in the current conditions (and I don't have an SV job). Most firms…

> I have worked with multiple, brilliant visa holders.

I don’t disagree one bit. I think immigrants contributed and continue to contribute tremendously to the US economy. But at the same time policies should not be used to suppress wages by the “C” suite class. By paying low salaries it increases profits for the companies and contributes to income inequality

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

#319

Post by sedatk »

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’m a high school graduate and a self-taught developer. I got hired by Microsoft as a software engineer to the Microsoft Windows Core OS team based on my skills with an H-1B. I made Microsoft millions of dollars with my work. I’m now writing a book on software development published by Manning Books. None of that would have happened if such a criteria existed. That policy doesn’t make any sense at all.

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

#320

Post by pkaye »

belltaco wrote: post #234
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…

This one is also a particularly terrible move: >“ 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.” Copying from my comment below, this is likely to backfire. Since remote work has become acceptable and they already know the ins and outs of the job, many of these folks losing their…

> Since remote work has become acceptable and they already know the ins and outs of the job, many of these folks losing their visa will just be allowed to work remotely from India or Canada where it's trivial to get a work visa if you have a job offer.

If remote work becomes more acceptable, companies in Canada and EU can also move their jobs outside those countries. Less taxes and laws to worry about.

Post reply on HN