H1B rejected – builds unicorn back home • Hacker News Board

Re: H1B rejected – builds unicorn back home

#61

Post by ALittleLight » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 5:50 PM UTC

petilon wrote: post #20

going_ham wrote: post #2

Does it mean it costed the US of potential opportunities? I don't think it made any difference in the US. But it surely helped in his home country. While we are at it, what do you think of current visa issue in the USA? For a long time, I thought it was difficult only to people of Asian countries to migrate to US, but turns out it is equally difficult for any other nations. In the long term, does it make a difference…

> In the long term, does it make a difference in US if it doesn't bring talent across the world? Of course, it does! The only reason the standard of living in the US is higher than anywhere else in the world is because the US makes stuff the rest of the world covets. America is the leading economy in the world today not because it has the most number of people, but because it has the best and the brightest, gathered…

I think there are several countries, across North and Western Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, perhaps Singapore and Hong Kong, that could compete with the US for "standard of living". These countries don't have similar immigration policies or histories compared to the US.

If you think of a person who builds a unicorn as a national level resource, which makes sense because they create jobs, capabilities, and wealth, then you seem to be saying that it is good for the US to drain the national resources of other, poorer countries. Why isn't a good thing for Indian entrepreneurs to create Indian unicorns in India?

Re: H1B rejected – builds unicorn back home

#62

Post by hibikir » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 5:53 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #23

yardie wrote: post #9

Note this was in 2007, during the height of the H1B body shop scams. The USCIS visa system was overwhelmed by companies like Infosys and Tata just submitting 1000s of applications for clearly underqualified, yet cheap candidates for jobs that didn't exist. This writer probably got their visa rejected over a less qualified candidate because of the quota limits for H1b.

2007-2012 was actually the easiest period to get an H-1B visa. It has become significantly harder since then.

It was in no way the easiest: For that you have to go back to 2001-2003, where there were 195k available visas every year, instead of the current 85k. Visas would still run out, but the big race to submit on the first day, which eventually gave us the lottery, came later.

It wasn't all easy though: All those extra H-1s didn't come with extra green card slots, so even an EB2 from Europe had a very long wait.

Re: H1B rejected – builds unicorn back home

#63

Post by dahfizz » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 5:54 PM UTC

geodel wrote: post #29

manuelabeledo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Three worst addictions: Heroine, Carbohydrates and a monthly salary - Nassim Taleb Nassim Taleb is a bit of a wack. This sentence doesn't make sense. I really hope it was taken out of context, because otherwise, there's absolutely no value to it other than glorifying risk for the sake of it. May as well be talking about gambling money away.

Huh, just a couple of centuries back maybe 90% of world population was self employed. It was not the greatest risk but simply a way of life.

Being a subsistence farmer was incredibly risky. One bad year and your whole family starves to death. People only did that because there was no alternative. As soon as the industrial revolution came, people left their "self employment" en masse to work at a company.

Re: H1B rejected – builds unicorn back home

#64

Post by Temporary_31337 » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 5:56 PM UTC

Can anyone point me to how much the guy had actually earned? I feel that if he’d stayed in the US and earned Microsoft stock options he’d be much better off financially

Re: H1B rejected – builds unicorn back home

#65

Post by zht » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 5:57 PM UTC

factorialboy wrote: post #7

strikelaserclaw wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

agree, since India is like 5-10 years behind USA in the tech space, most unicorns in India are just companies that already exist in some form in USA. In India, the execution of a business is the hard part by far, and not the novelty of the idea.

> since India is like 5-10 years behind USA in the tech space, most unicorns in India are just companies that already exist in some form in USA. There are some areas where India has leapfrogged ahead of United States and China. Look at digital payments for instance. Since the 90's we have seen countless examples of how US / western products and services cannot be sold as-is. Like all markets, India is unique. It also…

sorry in what way has India's digital payments space leapfrogged China's? Do you know what WeChat/Alipay are?

Re: H1B rejected – builds unicorn back home

#66

Post by xtreme » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 6:00 PM UTC

Temporary_31337 wrote: post #64

Can anyone point me to how much the guy had actually earned? I feel that if he’d stayed in the US and earned Microsoft stock options he’d be much better off financially

There is more to life than chasing TC.

Re: H1B rejected – builds unicorn back home

#67

Post by coding123 » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 6:00 PM UTC

Temporary_31337 wrote: post #64

Can anyone point me to how much the guy had actually earned? I feel that if he’d stayed in the US and earned Microsoft stock options he’d be much better off financially

Is that all that matters to people these days?

Re: H1B rejected – builds unicorn back home

#68

Post by giobox » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 6:00 PM UTC

avasylev wrote: post #59

zb1plus wrote: post #49

[flagged]

Curious if you have example of racist US visa/immigration policy? There's a lot deserved criticism of current system, but can't think of anything specifically racist.

Green card quotas are based entirely on your country of birth.

For example, a UK citizen can obtain a green card far, far faster than an Indian citizen. If a UK citizen and Indian citizen on an H1B visa start the Green Card process at the same time, the UK citizen will obtain permanent residency typically in 9-18 months. For the Indian applicant, who applied on same day with same visa and process, it will likely be over 10 years before they have security of permanent residence.

Where you were born is built into the foundations of how the USA allocates Green Cards to many visa holders, regardless of who you are, how much you contribute to the USA or earn etc etc.

There are attempts to fix this too:

> https://www.fwd.us/news/per-country-cap-reform-priority-bill...

Re: H1B rejected – builds unicorn back home

#69

Post by hibikir » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 6:00 PM UTC

diogenescynic wrote: post #42

Simple solution is to give visas to the applicants with the highest salaries instead of just giving these out at random.

A variety of other non-software jobs also rely on H-1Bs: See, for instance, lab technicians. A change to highest salaries, while probably way better for the software industry, and applicants in general, would wipe out other sectors.

The system definitely needs fixing, but simple solutions often have all kinds of negative side effects.

Re: H1B rejected – builds unicorn back home

#70

Post by yardie » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 6:02 PM UTC

xuki wrote: post #43

paxys wrote: post #27

US immigration policies for Indian and Chinese nationals has been a blessing for their home grown tech ecosystem. There is no path to a green card or citizenship for anyone who immigrated in the last ~15 years, and the top 5% talent that used to come over by default is now working at or founding companies at home instead. This is directly correlated to the number of tech unicorns in these countries growing exponentia…

I don't know about India, but China's policy to block US big techs is the reason why China have the tech companies they have today.

Yes, block big US tech companies and steal as much IP as you can get away with.