Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

science.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 440 posts

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

#341

Post by probablynish »

lgleason wrote: post #4

Expect further downward pressure on US tech salaries.

The article says that most of these approvals are going to tech entrepreneurs / startup founders. The effect of this seems to be to create new companies that otherwise wouldn't have existed, spurring demand for tech workers. The net effect of this is upwards pressure on wages if anything.

More generally, if another country became the global nexus for top tech talent, capital would eventually follow there, and the long term effect on US tech salaries would be negative.

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

#342

Post by probablynish »

snakeyjake wrote: post #37
lgleason wrote: post #4

Expect further downward pressure on US tech salaries.

My employer cannot hire H1Bs. They are prohibited by law. All employees must be US citizens. They pay extremely competitive rates. They are the reason for and a source of complaints regarding gentrification in my area. edit: as an example the starting rate for high school work-study and college interns is the hourly equivalent of $78k/yr plus the same benefits as full-time employees from the second they show up. The…

I interned at a company that can hire H1Bs. They do so often. My manager and several coworkers were not US citizens. I received the hourly equivalent of more than $78k/yr, with a great working environment. I'm not sure what your comment proves?

There are several companies in my area that can only hire US Citizens, and they all pay lower than the company I interned at.

This kind of issue cannot be analyzed anecdotally.

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

#343

Post by probablynish »

edgyquant wrote: post #82
thenaturalist wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economy is not a zero sum game. The US created literally all relevant consumer technology in the last 30 or so years and demand for tech talent has exploded ever since. Having a competitve sector/ economy which regularly pushes the edge of innovation and hence expands demand (both on sell and supply side) is actually what keeps salaries up. This logic is as deeply flawed as often as it comes up.

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…

> Every foreign employee getting that tech job is a US citizen from the Midwest not getting it.

This concentration of high paid tech jobs would not exist in the first place if it weren't for the foreigners. Look at the number of tech startups founded by immigrants. More broadly consider that if a different country became the global hub for top tech talent, capital would go there, and that country would become the home of high paid tech salaries.

The main input into a tech company is 'human capital' (hard working, highly intelligent, people) - Americans benefit from the spillover effects of having their country be the global nexus of human capital.

BTW, India is seeing significant upwards pressure on tech salaries and a boom in the number of domestic tech companies and jobs. This is at least partly spurred by restrictive American immigration policies forcing Indians to go back home. Purely economically speaking, I don't think America is the winner here.

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

#344

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#345

Post by alephnerd »

fallingknife wrote: post #305
alephnerd wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> companies like yours were told "too bad, hire and train locally" Companies would collapse and fail, unless the government gave a massive corporate stimulus package (probably 4-5x the size of PPE). > none of the skills you need, but I could easily be trained It would take at least 1-2 years. At that point, an Israeli or Indian startup has taken market share and won. Welcome to cybersecurity and networking.

I am unpersuaded as I have never heard of a company that collapsed and was replaced by foreign competition because they couldn't get enough H1Bs. But even if this is correct, the best that should get you is N visas for the next 2 years and then no more because you will have built the local talent pipeline you need by then.

I replied to OP saying "only hire domestic" for every role.

Even National Labs don't do that.

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

#346

Post by aorist »

photochemsyn wrote: post #232

[flagged]

> the US educational system is generally so poor that it's not generating enough people with the necessary technical capabilities to meet employer demand

The US educational system might be generating enough people with those skills, but a very large proportion of them are foreigners who would need visas to work (40-50% of STEM postgrads: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11347)

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

#347

Post by uyunnndug »

bufio wrote: post #330
_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People on here don't seem to realize what an amazing asset it is that the US has a large pool of talented people that want to move there. I am from Europe and HN folks really like to look down on the European tech sector, but I would argue that the most important reason the US has a much stronger tech sector is because of the talent pool from around the world. Moving to Europe is a lot less interesting for people fro…

I can see how it is an asset to businessowners. I cannot see how it is an asset to, say, qualified engineers who consequently cannot find a job in their field.

[flagged]

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

#348

Post by apwell23 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #277
apwell23 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> does that mean most tech layoffs ever why would it mean that? historic= famous or important in history, or potentially so. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/historic

Historic means the year must be notable for something. Otherwise, it is just being used as embellishment here. I doubt 2023 layoffs will actually make it into the history books.

True but that still has nothing do with "most layoffs ever" which you used to discredit that comment.

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

#349

Post by alephnerd »

geodel wrote: post #312
matrix87 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> achieved great success back home

And then begin lobbying against the United States.

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

#350

Post by apwell23 »

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…

> 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).

I am not sure if this logic is accurate. There can be housing shortage if people move to certain part of the country internally too. USA has 'housing crisis' but houses are plenty and cheap in peoria IL.

Post reply on HN