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

#871

Post by ashconnor » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 2:12 PM UTC

koluna wrote: post #57

908B64B197 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The immigration quotas in Canada are simply out of control. Almost every week on this forum I see Canadians whining about low wages in Software.... in a market that's more or less flooded with cheap labor!

Mind sharing some numbers? This is a patently false statement. Wages in Canada might be lower, but that is because they get a number of other social benefits, such as healthcare, that gets paid through taxes taken from said wages.

Taxes in Ontario are similar to say California. That's not the reason wages are lower.

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

#872

Post by ashconnor » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 2:13 PM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #66

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…

Where are you getting the 140k new immigrants each year number from? Wikipedia says: "According to the 2016 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, the United States admitted a total of 1.18 million legal immigrants (618k new arrivals, 565k status adjustments) in 2016" And refugees are only one type of immigrant. Should illegal immigrants count as refugees, since many frequently claim to be fleeing violence, even if they…

140k is the cap on Employment Based Green Cards. The rest is for family class Green Cards (spouses, siblings, parents etc.)

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

#873

Post by sjm » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 2:20 PM UTC

digianarchist wrote: post #693

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…

Wouldn’t the Swiss grad be better served applying for the O1A visa?

O-1 visas are an incredible pain to apply for, and you need to prove at extension requests how you've "remained extraordinary" during the time you've actually been working. As far as I'm aware, no graduate would be eligible unless they've produced some kind of world renowned thesis.

Let's say you join Google as a SWE on an O-1. If you just perform your duties for the duration of the visa, you won't be able to extend. You'll have to, during the visa, continue to do something "above and beyond" (in SWE, maybe tech talks/events, host conferences, etc.) and show proof of all of this, plus obtain written documentation from employers about how amazing you are. It's not for everyone.

The O-1 works for internationally regarded film directors who want to move to the US and produce work here, but it doesn't work really well for software development.

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

#874

Post by JAlexoid » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 2:22 PM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #806

ocommentator wrote: post #792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"…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…

The duty and role of a government is to act in the best interest of their citizens which that government represents. The interests of outsiders are simply not relevant to that - they have their own government to represent their interests, which can and should enact policies that benefit them, and negotiate in international agreements policies that will help their citizens. If it's a win-win situation (which is the ex…

The duty of the government is to justify the existence of the government.

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

#875

Post by GavinMcG » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 2:28 PM UTC

willis936 wrote: post #844

GavinMcG wrote: post #841

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discussing policies and discussing politics is hardly the same thing.

Then there are plenty of equally-or-more pertinent policies that should also be discussed. Immigration is the 6th most important topic to American voters this election [0,1]. Trump has unpopular stances on the top 5 topics [2] but headlines related to that are not allowed on HN because they are political. This is the double standard. Finally, Trump’s legal immigration policy is very anti-immigration [3]. This is a st…

Pertinent how? H1B visas are exceptionally relevant to Silicon Valley/Y Combinator, and the topic is understandably treated exceptionally.

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

#876

Post by jason2323 » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 2:29 PM UTC

I'm actually curious on the effects of this on international students who come to the US to study CS. One of the biggest reasons international students come to the US is to be able to live and work after graduation. If anything, this will deter international students from studying in the US, thus reducing much needed out-of-state revenue that colleges get from international students, which consequently only raises the costs for in-state students. I see the point of this rule, but I'd be interested in seeing the tertiary effects of it as well.

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

#877

Post by skelseys » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 2:30 PM UTC

cheese65536 wrote: post #662

fmajid wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be simpler to award the limited pool of H1-Bs in order of descending wages, and cross-check with the IRS afterwards to verify those salaries are actually paid. That would kill all the bottom-feeding body shops.

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).

Do you think American citizens should be allowed to choose to work in the Bay Area and New York if they want to?

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

#878

Post by JAlexoid » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 2:32 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #855

ocommentator wrote: post #792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"…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 hund…

Open borders isn't a leftist idea. It's literally the opposite of control over private interactions.

US gets huge financial benefits from being the world hegemon. Then there's the Northern Triangle that US messed up and Americans pretend that they have nothing to do with it.

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

#879

Post by wing-_-nuts » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 2:34 PM UTC

analyst74 wrote: post #606

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?

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

Canada discriminates against those with disabilities that they deem would impose an 'excess burden', regardless of whether you have a good paying job or not. They are not perfect.

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

#880

Post by golem14 » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 2:37 PM UTC

firstfewshells wrote: post #634

golem14 wrote: post #472

I can't access the link, but if the headline is accurate, that's probably a good move. For FAANG companies - they usually pay all their employees including H1Bs pretty well. But it's hard for Google/FB/... to even get a H1B visa for their prospective H1B employees because the cap is filled by a number of consulting companies that imports people from other countries (I think mostly India) and treat those people pretty…

I doubt FAAG base pay would be 95th percentile for level 4 Software engineer wage. A sizeable chunk of the compensation is in equity which doesn't count when benchmarking prevailing wage against employee pay.

You can doubt it all you want. I was also not claiming that fangs pay 95th percentile wages. I said that in my experience they pay h1bs pretty well (not that different from domestic entry level engineers).