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New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

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Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#311

Post by tacheiordache »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #190
toomuchtodo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a US citizen interested in improving the visa process who regularly interfaces with policymakers, propose an objective rubric that is better and I will get it in front of policymakers. Can't guarantee an outcome, will guarantee the effort. Patent quota is bullshit, but also "I know talent when I see it" (even though I do and how I hire) isn't going to fly. Sorting hats are hard, Goodhart's Law, etc. High level, yo…

How about any company that is found to have engaged in discrimination against any protected class loses their ability to sponsor visas for a decade.

Not a good punishment as it has workarounds. They'd hire through shell companies and when one becomes tainted they'd use a different one.

Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#312

Post by geodel »

matrix87 wrote: post #241
alephnerd wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does when those people who leave have a chip on their shoulder due to bad experiences with the US. For example, the founder of Zoho (Sridhar Vembu - I actually lived in the same apartment complex in the Bay Area that he started Zoho at) has become a NatSec cabinet advisor to Narendra Modi's administration, and has a chip on his shoulder about his experience dealing with US immigration. It was a big reason he retur…

> The US Immigration system exudes a sense of American exceptionalism because voters say "Love it or leave it". But the people who leave end up becoming successful, but still angry at how much effort and stress was expended for naught. That's funny. I guess every visa holder is some little genius doing particle physics work You're going out of your way to give very specific anecdotes here, the average level of talent…

Great point. If out of many million immigrants few brilliant ones went back due to bad experience and achieved great success back home, I'd say it is excellent system already for US in terms of overall people chose to stay and people went back to great success.

Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#313

Post by geodel »

jltsiren wrote: post #284
creato wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't miss the point. You're missing the point that if these people soured the US because it was hard to immigrate, they are being very hypocritical. It's hard to immigrate anywhere ("crap treatment"), including the countries they came from.

It's somewhat difficult to immigrate to most places, but usually the difficulties can be resolved in weeks or months. The US level of difficulty is an exception, not the norm. Or more accurately, the processes are obfuscated and full of inexplicable delays. Why would someone even consider hiring a lawyer for something as simple and common as employment-based immigration? And how can the green card process take longer…

If it were that bad people would've stopped migrating to US long long back. In this case people are speaking with their feet (including those who chose to go back)

Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#314

Post by matrix87 »

bradlys wrote: post #304
throwaway34916 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I suppose the counterargument is that the US educational system is generally so poor that it's not generating enough people with the necessary technical capabilities to meet employer demand... It's not the quality of the education system, it's the motivation of the students. In the mid-2000s, it was very fashionable to believe that all programming jobs should be offshored to India. People imagined that the startups…

I think you're exaggerating the idea of offshoring. The reality is that tech is not a sexy sector at all and that's what pushes Americans away from it more than anything. The people who work in tech are usually people who were never going to fit into mainstream roles anyway. If you went into tech, you weren't ever going to be in sales or marketing. Same for those who went into the arts, they didn't see offshoring of…

> Most of the decisions people make in the US around careers has more to do with image than it does with financial sense.

I've thought the same thing about this, it's kind of depressing. It's like science and tech are both stigmatized. These are fields that have to compensate well, because if they didn't, very few people would take interest in them

And I don't think the problem is under-funding of stem, it's more cultural

I shouldn't be complaining from a money standpoint, but from a national standpoint it's probably bad for places like the DoD which hire mostly domestic citizens

Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#315

Post by labster »

krisoft wrote: post #86
jmyeet wrote: post #8

There's no changes that affect the real bottleneck: the annual quota on green cards and the per-country limits of 7% or children aging out. Those all require Congressional action and that's just not going to happen in the current political environment [1]. Here's my take: you get a work visa for 3-5 years that's tied to your employer and allows you to freely leave and re-enter the US. Believe it or not, we still have…

Your take sound reasonable and practical. The only problem with it is that the problems it solves are problems for people who don’t have a say in the matter. While the drawbacks it implies affects people who have a say in the matter. (Either through voting or lobbying) The fact that the current system imposes a form of long identured servitude on imigrants is not a bug but a feature. This benefits the employers in ve…

Having done some student lobbying on H1B visas a few years back, I can tell you the fatal flaw in that plan is that it does nothing to secure the southern border. The same thing is true about sending military aid to Ukraine now — how does that stop people from crossing our border?

In the twisty little minds of Congressmen, we can’t do anything good and obvious unless we solve their tangentially related problem first. All of that stuff you said about the system sounds like it matters but honestly those concerns never even appear in their minds.

Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#316

Post by dctoedt »

tptacek wrote: post #303
rayiner wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like a good deal for them. Plus, they don’t have to leave their families and social networks behind.

It's a great deal for them. It's not the best deal for us, though, since they're not part of our tax base, nor are they growing families and social networks here for us to benefit from. It's a great outcome morally (Latam, African, and Asian countries deserve greater participation in global industries), but the one thing it doesn't do is optimize for the interests of America.

> the one thing it doesn't do is optimize for the interests of America.

Short-term: Perhaps.

Long-term: A more-stable LATAM (and world) economy is in America's interest.

Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#317

Post by Detrytus »

bluedevilzn wrote: post #274
ink_13 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't Canada full of foreign PhDs driving taxis because they qualify for permanent residence on points but then can't get jobs because employers want "Canadian work experience"? Canadian here. Nope.

Also Canadian here. PhD might be a stretch but there’s absolutely a large number of Uber drivers with a foreign masters.

And that makes sense, since in some countries Master’s degrees are dime a dozen. PhD still means something

Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#318

Post by hasty_pudding »

alephnerd wrote: post #107
edgyquant wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is. Every foreign employee getting that tech job is a US citizen from the Midwest not getting it. Fuck this dishonest talking point, I know people coding since high school working at Toyota plants while people from overseas with entry level skill sets have employers move them to the west coast and land jobs (for whatever reason.) It’s favoritism, it’s cronyism, it’s a nation putting its own struggling people l…

> a US citizen from the Midwest not getting it No offense, but maybe your resume didn't reflect that you had the skills required. The companies I worked at and now portfolio companies of mine pay Bay Area market rate to both citizens and non-citizens. We hire noncitizens because we didn't find the right talent we need.

This is another dishonest talking point.

With most tech jobs if a person has a computer science background they have the skills.

The company is just lying to justify outsourcing.

Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#319

Post by hasty_pudding »

jevoten wrote: post #307
commandlinefan wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your resume didn't reflect One observation I've made throughout the years of reviewing tech resumes - if I get a resume from a U.S. citizen, I (and anybody else) immediately know the difference between MIT/Stanford vs. "The University of Wisconsin" without even researching it. OTOH, I have no idea what the difference between the University of Hyderabad vs. the University of New Delhi, and there's not really a good…

No wonder they can't find workers, if from a nation of 334 million, all but ~16k/year [1] are considered substandard because they couldn't get into an Ivy. Edit: More relevant is comparing Ivy undergrads (64.5k) to all US undergrads (20.3 million) [2], meaning only the top 0.3% make the cut. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League - total number of undergrads (64.5k), divided by 4, assuming a 4-year college cour…

Agreed thats insane.

Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#320

Post by FooBarBizBazz »

klipt wrote: post #256
xtreme wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to look far, Canada has already implemented a point based system for granting permanent residence to skilled workers. It assigns scores to applicants based on education, skills, employment offer, language speaking ability, etc. I believe it can be a good starting point for a more objective selection criteria than the current system which is more based on luck. https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refug…

Isn't Canada full of foreign PhDs driving taxis because they qualify for permanent residence on points but then can't get jobs because employers want "Canadian work experience"? Canada also has a major housing crisis due to not building enough housing for population growth (which is entirely immigration, Canada's population would shrink without it). Doesn't seem their system works very well in practice. At least the…

I was going to say something similar. I don't believe in points any more. It just reproduces the class prejudices of overeducated people. The US has an abundance of "highly skilled" FAANG workers. It has a shortage of construction workers, plumbers, and electricians. The one "high skill" (really high class) industry where I'd make an exception is medicine, because there are shortages there.

But FAANG stuff? No, these are the companies that just had layoffs.

And we can see exactly how this has played out in Canada. Too many upper class professionals gouging each other's eyes out for $1M starter homes, and not enough people with real physical skills, like building them.

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