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Updates to H-1B

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Re: Updates to H-1B

#331

Post by fmeyer »

rbanffy wrote: post #164
kqgnkqgn wrote: post #120

Seem like sensible changes, though more is still needed. Requiring H1B holders to leave the country to renew paperwork is an insane anachronism. The per-country caps also seem like a throwback to the early 1900's era immigration exclusion policies. Re: the concerns over "immigrants taking our jobs!". As a native-born American working in a large tech company today - the threat is very clearly not from H1B's and other…

> It's much much better for America if tech companies hire workers in the US I used the same argument in Brazil to support a strong free software preference in all government functions. Support from voters in Redmond wouldn’t get anyone re-elected in Brazil.

Then we got RedHat using the same strategy to sell support for the government :D

Re: Updates to H-1B

#332

Post by ashconnor »

lupusreal wrote: post #277
ashconnor wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a non-immigrant to the United States, I don't really buy into the idea that companies prefer H1B candidates purely for financial reasons. The H1B process is frankly a rigid, unreliable and time-consuming process. It's hard for even Canadians and Mexicans to find jobs in the US and we have access to the supposedly easy to obtain TN visa. Australians too with E3. I'm more inclined to believe that H1B workers have ot…

> I'm more inclined to believe that H1B workers have other benefits to employers such as longer tenure due to the restrictions of moving jobs. That is a financial motive. Companies don't want to pay the kind of compensation which would induce employees to be loyal to the company, and so they use H1B quasi-indentured servitude as a cheaper alternative.

I think you're assuming that everyone has a price.

Also H1Bs can't also start their own businesses (at least before this rule). So that was another restriction.

Re: Updates to H-1B

#333

Post by silisili »

closeparen wrote: post #294
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #161

A supposed shortage of qualified US applicants for tech jobs, especially software developers, doesn't jibe with the huge numbers of US developers currently looking for work, including highly experienced older workers suffering from age discrimination. I'd be surprised if more than 5-10% of H-1B positions are ones where the hiring company has even looked for US applicants.

Only in the context of H1B does anyone conceive of tech workers as having a binary condition called "qualified." In white-collar jobs worth having, impact scales essentially infinitely with skill. You aren't looking for people who are merely capable of some baseline, you are looking for the best. The world is much bigger than America, so even if Americans are very good, many of the best are still foreigners.

I agree with this in theory, but in practice...

I've worked directly with probably 50 or so H1B folks in my career. I can only think of a few I'd call exceptional. Just like Americans, most were a mixed bag from good to terrible.

So the idea and argument of best of the best is sound, but it's definitely not being used solely that way.

Re: Updates to H-1B

#334

Post by cflewis »

nosequel wrote: post #59

> Roles tied to research institutions cap-exempt And in comes a flood of "Research Software Engineer" roles

Yeah, I wonder what that is going to ground out to. With the AI race, basically anything tangential is research, at least in the definition of "doing something scientific-looking that's not been done before". That could include a _lot_ of companies from massive to tiny.

Re: Updates to H-1B

#335

Post by bdangubic »

0x457 wrote: post #315
bdangubic wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

65k or 80k or say even 250k GLOBALLY per year is going to “brain drain” 8+ billion Global population? Yup, you got it, that’s what US is doing…

What make you think that majority of that 8 billion population is worth to drain?

nothing at all :)

Re: Updates to H-1B

#336

Post by asoneth »

I wonder if switching from a lottery to an auction would help curtail some of the abuse?

That is, for each position a company wants to fill with a non-citizen they also have to bid on the visa fee they're willing to pay. The highest ~7,000 bids that month are accepted and paid to the government in exchange for a visa.

We could debate things like sealed-bid versus open auction and uniform-price versus paying your bid but whatever details we pick I suspect this would allow us to discover which companies are actually desperate for skills and which primarily use it as a cost-savings measure.

(I'm also curious how much H-1B visas would cost if there was a market: thousands of dollars? tens of thousands? hundreds of thousands? more?)

Re: Updates to H-1B

#337

Post by throwaway48476 »

silisili wrote: post #333
closeparen wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only in the context of H1B does anyone conceive of tech workers as having a binary condition called "qualified." In white-collar jobs worth having, impact scales essentially infinitely with skill. You aren't looking for people who are merely capable of some baseline, you are looking for the best. The world is much bigger than America, so even if Americans are very good, many of the best are still foreigners.

I agree with this in theory, but in practice... I've worked directly with probably 50 or so H1B folks in my career. I can only think of a few I'd call exceptional. Just like Americans, most were a mixed bag from good to terrible. So the idea and argument of best of the best is sound, but it's definitely not being used solely that way.

The idea of 'best of the best' relies on the assumption that it is measurable which history has shown that it is not.

Re: Updates to H-1B

#338

Post by lesuorac »

akira2501 wrote: post #154
lesuorac wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh downvote. The USG has to go through a very length period of coming up with a proposed rule. Allowing comments to be made about it, adjusting (or not) the rule based on those comments, and then finally submitting the final rule. Nobody at USCIS wrote this document yesterday and published this today. This is the result of years of work. Do you seriously expect the USG to shut down anything they don't think they can…

> has to go through a very length period Doesn't the bottom of this announcement describe a previous rule that was announced in January 2024 and then implemented in March 2024? Interesting that rules process was far more rapid than this one.

And?

So a different related rule started its process awhile back and a second rule was in the works concurrently. Is the USG only allowed to do one thing at a time?

The comment period for this rule ended last year to give you an idea of how long this has at least been in the works. All of this information is rapidly found via the submitted url at the top of the page.

https://www.regulations.gov/docket/USCIS-2023-0005/document

Re: Updates to H-1B

#339

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway7783 wrote: post #239
PittleyDunkin wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a shortage of applicants willing to work at what companies want to pay. That and companies are just hilariously bad at finding workers they want to hire for nebulous reasons. I have no doubt even if my company hired 95% of the workers it had marked down as "no hire" they'd be able to squeeze a salary's of value worth out of each of them (well, if management is competent, which it tends to not be). I'm sure…

Okay, I have interviewed hundreds of people in the last decade, and I can tell you that most are not good enough. There are companies that are downright abusing H1B for wage suppression, but as a startup founder, I will try my hardest to avoid hiring people who I have to squeeze their salary's worth and still get mediocre results (nothing to do with citizen or not - I had this experience with a Canadian contractor -…

[deleted]

Re: Updates to H-1B

#340

Post by bdangubic »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #301
bdangubic wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is limited number of H1B visas that are issued each year (as if I have to even say this)... so they won't make a dent if you are correct with "the huge numbers of US developers currently looking for work." we abolish the program and boom, 65k people out of this apparently HUGE number of US developers looking for work won't make a dent... so this argument holds absolutely no water ...

...other than... you know... the entire point of the H1B visa program... is to get talent the US DOESN'T already have ...

I am not arguing the merits/purpose of the program. just the silly that this program is affecting US population tech (un)employment
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