Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay • Hacker News Board

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

#851

Post by C1sc0cat » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 12:52 PM UTC

CinchWrench wrote: post #573

guitarbill wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was already the case, they would ask for a request for evidence (RFE) how the degree was related. This is annoying if you e.g. studied maths and then started working in IT.

I've seen this abused so badly though--our compliance person in HR was asking me to help write one a while back for a candidate that had a BS in mechanical engineering and no relevant work experience, claiming that a course the applicant had that taught MATLAB was sufficient experience for a role as an android dev.

A lot of Mech/Civil Eng is done with computers these days and to be blunt working in CFD for example is higher skilled than CRUD webdev

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

#852

Post by Eratosthenes » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 12:55 PM UTC

throwawaygh wrote: post #528

davrosthedalek wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very simple. If it's harder for foreign people to become postdocs/profs in the US, the quality of US research will fall. Quickly.

> If it's harder for foreign people to become postdocs/profs in the US, the quality of US research will fall. Quickly. I sincerely believe exactly the opposite. The best and brightest in the USA avoid research academia because the quality of life is terrible and the pay is below average. Like, "all my students make more in their first year than I make with a PhD and 20 years of successful research" is a common lament…

Exactly this. I would have loved to go for a physics PhD but everything I read about academia in the US strongly discouraged me from pursuing it. I went into tech instead.

The academic system in the US is incredibly sick. The best and brightest students are certainly not lining up to squander their youth being treated like slaves when they can make top dollar in another field.

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

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Post by cmrdporcupine » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 1:01 PM UTC

dcolkitt wrote: post #690

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All that will happen now is the manual UI testing position that would have been hired in the US will now be done back in India as companies scramble to deal with this situation. They'll probably do the work for even less, companies and teams and infrastructure will expand in India to do the work, and taxes and spin-off benefits to the US economy will be lost. Or alternatively (and quite likely) we'll just hire that p…

> Or alternatively (and quite likely) we'll just hire that potential candidate up here in Canada; growing our tech industry further and competing with American workers in the same time zones and language as you, with a just-as or better educated work force, and a for lower cost to the employer and in a culture that on the whole appreciates immigrants more. I'm virtually certain that Canada will not have a single tech…

Plenty of Canada's best and brightest go into tech. And then immediately move to the Bay Area.

However I am confident that if the US keeps on the trajectory it's on this will change.

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

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Post by Broken_Hippo » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 1:01 PM UTC

blub wrote: post #725

shams93 wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However the best solution would be the replace h1b with just citizenship - if you have rare skills why shouldn't we offer immediate citizenship to the talented?

Because this would make citizenship worthless. Being a citizen means that one is loyal to and has a strong connection to their country.

That's what folks pretend it means. IF you give citizenship to folks born there - or even born there to citizens, etc - then it isn't at all about loyalty.

Same with granting asylum seekers citizenship and so on. Same with allowing dual citizenship - are you loyal to two countries? Citizenship is never about loyalty.

Citizenship has a lot more to do with the ways you contribute to the country. Folks born in a country are likely to live there for life and contribute by speaking the local language, participating in local customs, being educated in and working in the country, and most importantly, paying taxes. This is why some categories are seen as "less important": Because folks think that some categories won't integrate enough (and it is impossible for an immigrant to ever do this, regardless of background), some won't learn enough language, or won't contribute as much. The truth of this is thrown out the window, of course, and there is no real objective test to test these sorts of things. Time in country might be one of the better tests, though it isn't perfect.

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

#855

Post by mc32 » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 1:02 PM UTC

ocommentator wrote: post #792

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…

"…to lower overall pay rate." What's with this nationalism and view human value? Just because a person was or wasn't born in a certain place, something they had no ability to affect, they have more or less right to a certain job with a certain salary in a certain place? Looking at it from the other perspective of the individual who can get a job, they are probably not lowering their salaries, but rather significantly…

Oddly the same could be said for Argentina, Mexico or Venezuela, but people aren’t knocking to get into their economies. Why does the US owe the world any more than other countries?

At some point people have to be responsible for their own self determination —as leftists used to clamor for a couple of decades ago. Now they want a shortcut instead of doing the hard work to build viable economies. It took us a few hundred years to get where we are. It didn’t happen overnight. People still have no problem vilifying pioneers, but they’re the first to want the fruits of that hard labor centuries ago. Get to fixing your economies it takes time, but fortunately with the technology today and with the foundations today, we know it’s possible to turn things around in a few decades (China, S Korea, Panama, etc). Even Japan was extremely feudal up until the end of WWII.

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

#856

Post by jsnider3 » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 1:08 PM UTC

Trump sucks so much.

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

#857

Post by ascar » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 1:10 PM UTC

spicyramen wrote: post #544

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…

+1 on this. I have a CS masters degree from top UK university and was hired as Software Engineer, but company registered me as a Computer technician. When my H1b required renewal, DoL found out that I was a Software Engineer and company was forced to give a 20k yearly increase, not retroactive. This was Cisco. This is a.great move for people like me that I had no idea about salary ranges and US laws

I fail to see how your points are correlated to the changes. (As far as I grasped them, because wsj is paywalled...)

If a company lowered your wages by wrongfully registering you for a lower paid position, they could still do so, because the crux is comparing the salary to a different demographic. The problem wasn't with the law, but with them screwing you and you not carefully reviewing the visa laws of the country you immigrated to.

It actually sounds like the new visa regulations will make immigration for entry level positions much harder. So your alternative would've likely been not getting a job in the US to begin with.

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

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Post by Eratosthenes » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 1:22 PM UTC

rjkennedy98 wrote: post #719

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #475

People who oppose H1B fundamentally believe that foreign workers should not be allowed to enter the American labor pool thereby depressing the wages here. Fair enough. While on the margin, it is true that if a company can't hire a foreign worker, it _might_ be forced to hire a local worker in the short run. But in the long run, restricting labor this way only increases the chance of that job moving entirely abroad, e…

> It's also ironic that there is always generic xenophobia against "second-tier programming talent from India" when Indians as a group pay the highest taxes per-capita in the US and are one of the most law-abiding. I'm curious if you've ever actually worked at a US company that was almost entirely Indian. I think a lot of this has to do with people's personal experiences at work. I worked in a subgroup of Fortune 10…

Nooooo you've got it all wrong! Depressing the labor market for software engineers isn't just for the benefit of billionaire tech oligarchs, it's good for America! Don't you know there's a SHORTAGE of tech talent?? How are we going to compete with China if we can't hire highly skilled, highly specialized entry level workers at the 17th percentile of wages? How the heck is Jeff Bezos gonna buy a 37th mansion if he has to pay his workers market wages? Have you even considered how this new policy might affect billionaires?

Jeez man why are you so xenophobic? Are you racist or something? You're gonna kill the golden egg! America was founded by immigrants! Did you know that Albert Einstein was an immigrant? Seriously dude, you're being very unwoke right now. Do some soul-searching.

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

#859

Post by dougmwne » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 1:30 PM UTC

chmod600 wrote: post #378

hoka-one-one wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The decision would be ok in most other countries, where the land is some ethnic group's birthright. America, however, is unique in that it's everyone's birthright. The only reason most educated people don't support totally open borders is because there's so much poverty outside the US, but H-1B holders are not poor.

On what basis are you deciding what someone's (or some group's) birthrights are?

I think they may have been referring to varying citizenship laws across the world. The USA has citizenship by soil and blood, meaning that the country belongs to the people born here and the children of it's citizens. (Let's set aside naturalization for a moment, as that is not a birthright.) Some other countries have citizenship by blood only, so in a sense, those countries belong to their ethnic groups, wherever they may be. So in essence, the USA is more inclusive in bestowing the birthright of citizenship, which befits a nation of immigrants.

I support the free movement of people, but also the sovereignty of individual nations to decide who that country belongs to. For a strange example, the UK belongs to the queen, but she's nice enough to let her subjects have the use of it.

And back to naturalization, these H1b changes highlight why naturalization is important and should be achievable for anywho who ties their life to the USA. Citizenship confers privleges and protections and asking people to make life altering investments into a country without offering citizenship in return is exploitative and immoral.

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

#860

Post by Eratosthenes » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 1:32 PM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #560

Here we go with the protectionism. If we had SWE unions they would be making sure that all foreigners were evicted. You can read this thread to find out. That's my number one reason to oppose unions: they will be super protectionist. I derive that knowledge from the fact that lots of SWEs on forums like this are pro-union and simultaneously protectionist.

All I'm hearing are good reasons to support unions.