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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

#731

Post by cookieswumchorr »

epicureanideal wrote: post #685
reissbaker wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The higher pay seems like an overall positive change to reduce the prevalence of "body shops" and so that H1-Bs aren't an easy way for companies to lower overall pay rate. I'm not sure that narrowing degree qualifications is a win; high-skill immigration is a significant boon to America's economy, and I think ability to do the work, and American company willingness to pay above-rate salaries (legally mandated now to…

The pay level still isn’t high enough. Minimum pay of about 170k in San Jose for a software engineer? That’s not a specialist, that’s average for a small startup.

but your average small startup still needs to hire people somehow, right? Is there still free workforce on the Market?

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

#732

Post by ricktdotorg »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #658
reissbaker wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The higher pay seems like an overall positive change to reduce the prevalence of "body shops" and so that H1-Bs aren't an easy way for companies to lower overall pay rate. I'm not sure that narrowing degree qualifications is a win; high-skill immigration is a significant boon to America's economy, and I think ability to do the work, and American company willingness to pay above-rate salaries (legally mandated now to…

What makes the immigration process in the US truly horrific is the extraordinary time it takes to approve or reject a greencard petition. In many cases it takes years - or even over a decade or more. That's insane. People bring their spouses here, they have kids who are born and go to school here, and all along the way their immigration status is uncertain. And meanwhile they are tied to whatever job they're in. It's…

why would your comment be downvoted? do downvoters think you are lying, or do they think its a good thing that green cards take so long?

what you say is correct.

as a green card holder myself i can attest to both my initial approval period (3.5 years) and also the renewal period (2 years) being onerously long, and at times, having a particularly deleterious effect on my life.

look, i can understand the initial approval taking a long time. they have a lot of stuff to check.

but i applied for the renewal a full 18 months before my GC's expiration date (because i knew they took a looong time) and i received the card a full 2 years after my renewal + bio was accepted in the system, i.e. six months after my GC expired.

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

#733

Post by KyleSanderson »

lenkite wrote: post #720
analyst74 wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what countries like Canada has, while they do have a work visa program, getting permanent residency is actually easier for talented folks.

Getting Canadian permanent status is fairly tough. The points based system is merit based .

No, it really isn't. If you have your masters you can immediately be granted PR. This is the case for all Indian nationals - however it is still lottery based. The point system you're talking about is for unskilled labour, and that still has the 5 year in the country+ language requirements.

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

#734

Post by alixander »

rmk wrote: post #694
908B64B197 wrote: post #25

This is a great move. The current H1B program made no sense at all. If I wanted to hire: A smart graduate from EPFL, Polytechnique or ETH Zurich who interned at CERN and has contributed to the Linux kernel for a software engineering job at a unicorn startup or A grad from a second tier "technical college" in India with a visa refusal rate of ~90% for a job doing manual UI testing and QA for a body shop my only path f…

For "exceptional" people, there's the O-1 visa category. But candidate no. 1 likely would not qualify. You seem to think that the H1 program should place candidate 1 over candidate 2. Let me give you a counterexample: Suppose you are hiring candidate 1 to write an app that will help you single men find hot women to date in a 5 mile radius in your 4-billion dollar, VC-backed startup. The second candidate is being hire…

The scenarios you’ve posed doesn’t make candidate 2 any less replaceable. Maybe candidate 1 is needed for whatever advanced AI the dating app uses, but there’s many non-foreign options for the function candidate 2 is performing at ImportantCorp.

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

#735

Post by epicureanideal »

cookieswumchorr wrote: post #731
epicureanideal wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pay level still isn’t high enough. Minimum pay of about 170k in San Jose for a software engineer? That’s not a specialist, that’s average for a small startup.

but your average small startup still needs to hire people somehow, right? Is there still free workforce on the Market?

I guess they should offer more than 0.0001%?

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

#737

Post by slyfox »

dasudasu wrote: post #571
ravila4 wrote: post #434

I feel like this thread has a lot of bias coming from bad experiences in the computer science field. While I do understand the bad practices of many tech companies, I think the picture is very different when you look at careers in other STEM fields, such as biology, chemistry, and physics. H1B visas are very important for foreign students in these fields particularly those hoping to pursue careers in academia. H1B vi…

Postdocs are not even on H1B the vast majority of the time, because it's considered academic training. It's possible to get on a H1B if everything has been exhausted, but never the preferred option.

I did my Ph.D. in Physics on an F visa, and H1B was my only option when I became a postdoc. Already on the old system, I was paid significantly more than my US citizen colleagues due to the minimum wage. I’m worried about what this rule change will do to my field, where talented postdocs are hard to find. It also never made sense to me to invest many $100k in foreign Ph.D. students to then make it so hard for them to repay part of this investment to the country.

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

#738

Post by michaelt »

vostok wrote: post #670
cheese65536 wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One issue with this is that it would favor H1B workers working for companies located in high wage areas (the coasts) over low wage areas (mid-west).

I don't really see a problem here. If you are in a low wage area and feel that your workers are as productive as workers in high wage areas then you can pay them a high enough wage that they get a visa. If you don't feel that way then obviously the visa should go to a more productive worker and it doesn't matter that they happen to be in a high wage area.

> I don't really see a problem here.

If you believe immigrants are good for the economy and make everyone richer, strengthening existing companies with their unique talent and expertise and founding many successful new companies, why let rich costal cities get all the benefit when poor cities have a much greater need for an economic boost?

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

#740

Post by redditmigrant »

IvyMike wrote: post #100
notJim wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There's lots of articles if you google for "h1b visa abuse", but this will get you started: https://www.infoworld.com/article/3004501/proof-that-h-1b-vi...

There are lots of articles on how vaccines cause autism also.
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