171–180 of 1001 posts
There's a reason Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and others have been expanding offices and raising TC in Eastern Europe and India for years.
The main industries that will be severely hit are chip design, biotech, pharma, and STEM academia.
Good for India though, who needs a "Thousand Talents" program when the targets of a brain drain are to cost prohibitive to hire in the US.
IMO, the fee is the wrong thing that needs adjusting. It's the salary that should be adjusted. The minimum salary for an H1B should be $200k. It's something like 50k right now which is ridiculous especially with all the restrictions an applicant is under. It both suppresses wages and abuses the worker.
It's not in this article but in others that this will be addressed. "The proposal would increase the wage floor for H-1B visa recipients from $60,000 to $150,000, eliminate the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program, and replace the current lottery-based selection process with a highest-bidder system." EDIT: This is a proposal by 1 senator - not Trump. https://www.newsweek.com/h-1b-visa-change-proposal-2132484
I don't know many tech workers who criticize H1B visas, outside of maybe the way that they empower the employer over employees.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The top end of H1B has been great for America. In the last few decades, there has been growth of abuse of the program to get mid level talent at below market rates which really hurts the middle class in America. People need to understand that most reformists don't want to get rid of the truly exceptional immigration to the US. We need to limit the volume, especially the immigrants that are directly competing with a h…
The median pay of an H1B visa holder is $118k. The 25th percentile is $90k. This is from the government's official data: https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/O... Any suggestion that the program is dragging wages down instead of dragging wages up is not just misleading but factually wrong.
Second, Indians have to pay their bosses to get a job. Their real pay is at least $20k lower. And there's far worse as well.
IMO the problem is that H1B employees are stuck at the employer for the duration of their green card process, and so end up both paid lower and unable to escape abuse. I think a very high application fee is actually part of a good solution, but is useless by itself. A flawed proposal: * Dispense with the 'need to search for a qualified American' which just complicates the process without achieving the stated goal, an…
No company would ever sponsor someone if the last bullet is part of the deal. You're just killing the visa program another way with that wishlist item alone.
If they are just using the program to pay less than they otherwise would for labor that does exist in the us, well, then we have another issue.
I would modify the proposal to include a larger annual fee rather than an application fee, so that the initially sponsoring company isn’t solely bearing the cost. There should also be a floor pay rate for the visa holder, something the 75th or 80th percentile of both the company and of income in the MSA the visa holder is located in.
I think there’s plenty of interesting debates to be had about immigration policy and its effects on the labor market, but one thing worth noting here is that the primary problem that damn near every other country on earth has isn’t immigration, it’s brain drain. A core strategic strength of the US over the last century has been that everyone with any talent wants to come here to work, and by and large we’ve let them…
Often, the person may not have been as productive, happy, or well compensated in their own country.
Also, over time, some of those people make money in the US and take that, their knowledge and skills and go back home to share there. Everyone is better off.
I was discussing this elsewhere, and dug up something I wrote 11 years ago, and I think I'm still pretty happy with it:
https://journal.dedasys.com/2014/12/29/people-places-and-job...
IMO the problem is that H1B employees are stuck at the employer for the duration of their green card process, and so end up both paid lower and unable to escape abuse. I think a very high application fee is actually part of a good solution, but is useless by itself. A flawed proposal: * Dispense with the 'need to search for a qualified American' which just complicates the process without achieving the stated goal, an…
No company would ever sponsor someone if the last bullet is part of the deal. You're just killing the visa program another way with that wishlist item alone.
Interesting decision. I'm on the F1 -> H1B pipeline myself as a software engineer. And my wife is a researcher working on Genetic Engineering. Of the both of us, I've been the strong proponent for moving the US. and with each passing day, its getting harder to make a strong case for the pain, and uncertainty of moving here. Lately everything has been counter to what one would expect from a pro-growth, accelerationist…
That is exactly the goal here by this administration.
I think there’s plenty of interesting debates to be had about immigration policy and its effects on the labor market, but one thing worth noting here is that the primary problem that damn near every other country on earth has isn’t immigration, it’s brain drain. A core strategic strength of the US over the last century has been that everyone with any talent wants to come here to work, and by and large we’ve let them…
One man's rising gas prices are another man's oil industry boom. The H1B process is unfair to engineers because it drives down their compensation in a way that doesn't affect nurses or welders. If immigration were completely irrespective of profession and based solely around whether the imported laborers get paid enough to contribute more than they receive in taxes/public services, nobody would have any standing to c…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The top end of H1B has been great for America. In the last few decades, there has been growth of abuse of the program to get mid level talent at below market rates which really hurts the middle class in America. People need to understand that most reformists don't want to get rid of the truly exceptional immigration to the US. We need to limit the volume, especially the immigrants that are directly competing with a h…
This is exactly correct. The H1B visa has not lived up to its original premise in quite some time. A very significant percentage of people who are now working on these visas are not offering anything beyond what is already available within the American workforce, except for lower compensation.