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Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

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Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#121

Post by ffsm8 »

Espressosaurus wrote: post #18
mattnewton wrote: post #11

Not only are we throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I feel like the current rhetoric in the US doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of the metaphorical baby anymore. The strongest advantage of the US has always been the ability to absorb global talent. I don’t think that is a popular view anymore, and we are instead stuck talking only about stopping abuse that is ultimately still bringing skilled workers to t…

It's worse: we're actively ejecting the global brain drain that has been to our benefit since the post-WW2 era. I know several people on various visas that are making plans to leave after having gotten PHDs here. Still more have naturalized and are making contingencies for exiting. Immigrants found close to half of the fortune 500 businesses, and start something like 20% of our new businesses each year. For those mot…

I'm from Germany, and from an outsiders perspective I can only say that your argument wouldn't convince me.

I looked into the h1b for myself before, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to start my own successful business while on it.

You're aware that there will continue to be immigration without the h1b visa, right? That's just a common way big corporations use to import cheap labor, at least that's what I looked like to me - because id be fully at the mercy of the company I'd be unable to really negotiate my contracts etc

It's definitely possible to make an argument in favor of the program, but it's a lot more nuanced at the societal level - and I suspect overall net negative, because often the h1b visa recipients will transfer their money back to their home country, which makes this into a net-negative again.

Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#122

Post by myk9001 »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #117
Muromec wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3 months is nothing really. Half a year is more the start of negotiation in a comparable place in Europe. That and having a 2 years burnout leave as an option and having trade unions and the regulator to sign off on your layoffs plan in more reputable places. Add: It's not that layoffs are not a thing, they are a bit more complicated and expensive for a company than getting a list of people and sending mass-email, th…

> 3 months is nothing really. Half a year is more the start of negotiation in a comparable place in Europe. Employment law differs wildly from country to country, there is no general European labour law (with the exception of the working time directive). For instance, I live in Ireland where you can fire anyone for any reason for the first six months, and are not required to pay redundancy until after they've been em…

> I recognise that Germany/Austria/France are different, but that's exactly my point, there is very little common European labour law.

So, I don't live in Germany but I tried to look into how things work there a little deeper.

It seems to have a lot in common with what you describe about Ireland actually.

Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#123

Post by mrtksn »

mattnewton wrote: post #11

Not only are we throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I feel like the current rhetoric in the US doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of the metaphorical baby anymore. The strongest advantage of the US has always been the ability to absorb global talent. I don’t think that is a popular view anymore, and we are instead stuck talking only about stopping abuse that is ultimately still bringing skilled workers to t…

US looked like the next stage of humanity, if you are ambitious you go to USA. Anyone can become American and didn't feel like betrayal to the country or the people who raised you. Whatever you achieve in USA it will be available to all the humanity.

Fast forward to mid 2020s, now USA feels like old style European country that is rich as f and about to go through stages of great suffering to eventually become a nation. It's not even like Dubai or something, its straight out time travel. You don't go to USA to be treated fairly and climb to the top in a meritocratic system anymore, its all about race, identity and paperwork now. It looks like a shitty European country, why would you go to a shitty European country? You can have that experience at home in most places in the world and you don't have to suffer the part of being far away from your friends and family. I'm sure a lot of people will still go to USA but their profiles will be different.

IMHO the predominant feeling towards USA is disappointment, not even anger. It wasn't supposed to end up like that.

Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#124

Post by TMWNN »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #57
TMWNN wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It looks like the next Andrej Karpathy (born in Czechoslovakia, educated in Canada) will be taking their talents somewhere besides the US in the future. Karpathy, with a Stanford PhD, would not have received or needed an H-1B. This, like the new $100K fee, is about shutting down the Indian body shops that consume the vast majority of "tech" H-1Bs.

There's so many Americans who have this intuition you're expressing, that there must be some good immigration system for responsible people who obviously ought to be allowed to stay in the country. The reason there isn't is that immigration reform deals have been sabotaged for decades by the people who are feeding you this disinformation. To emphasize, the person who told you this information knew it was false, lied…

>The actual law, dictated by the F-1 visa program allowing foreign studies, is that a foreign Stanford PhD must permanently depart the United States within 60 days after graduation. There's a one-time extension available under the OPT program, where they can stay up to one additional year so long as they maintain employment complementary to their education for at least 20 hours a week. But after that year they must either obtain an H-1B or leave.

Strange how you accuse me of intentionally lying, yet write the above. I will be more kind than you, and assume that you are unaware of (for example) the EB-2 visa which someone like Karpathy would certainly qualify for immediately. All a H-1B allows, from the "dual intent" perspective, is to temporarily extend the time one can stay in the US while looking for a job that will sponsor for another visa type (typically EB-2); it by itself *does not automatically lead to a green card or US citizenship*.

EDIT: I somehow overlooked another, ahem, inaccuracy in your riposte. Someone like Karpathy would easily have qualified for the 24-month STEM OPT extension to the base OPT year.

Bottom line: A Stanford PhD (not necessarily in a STEM field) who wants to stay in the US has very good odds of being able to do so.

Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#126

Post by amenghra »

m00dy wrote: post #25
QGQBGdeZREunxLe wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question I think is more interesting is why can't Canada retain talent?

The question I think is more interesting is why can't Europe retain talent?

It’s been easier to build a company, hire people, and sell products in USA. In Europe, you have to deal with many languages and many legal frameworks. You might also have to tailor your product to each region’s culture, which adds a barrier.

Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#127

Post by thisisit »

cmxch wrote: post #70
mattnewton wrote: post #11

Not only are we throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I feel like the current rhetoric in the US doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of the metaphorical baby anymore. The strongest advantage of the US has always been the ability to absorb global talent. I don’t think that is a popular view anymore, and we are instead stuck talking only about stopping abuse that is ultimately still bringing skilled workers to t…

That’s because the damage has gone on too long. When three generations (late Boomer, Generation X, and Millennials) have seen it and the various alphabet soup of programs from the perspective of having to train their replacements from these programs, or hear their parents having to do same, the sympathy and empathy have long since run dry. The only valid thing to do is to have the various involved entities from the l…

As a country US can't even agree on securing rights for its own people. Raising minimum wage or universal healthcare or housing leads to lots of bad faith discourse on socialism. The wealth is instead spent on fighting wars and strong arming others. Heck even the guy who promised no wars and America First cannot get enough and attacks another country in name of "liberation" and oil. But somehow immigration has dealt damage to three generations?

> the sympathy and empathy have long since run dry

The has to be the funniest part of the whole statement. The whole point of creating an "outsider" is that you have an enemy to fight contend with and can justify your dislike by accusing them of fraud and other crimes. People who dislike "outsiders" never had sympathy or empathy for those "outsiders" so lets not pretend something has changed.

Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#128

Post by com »

cmxch wrote: post #75
bjourne wrote: post #59

Every state has the right to regulate its labor supply. In fact, that is how society got better. Unions setup oligopolies to ensure workers were fairly compensated. Unlike other commodities, labor cannot be traded on a free market because if you can't sell your time you'll starve and become homeless. And if supply and demand is a thing, it seems that restricting supply favors the sellers. The US has no shortage of la…

You make the erroneous assumption that these people are defective and are default not qualified. Retraining has been tried and has failed every time when taken at scale. Just have the tech firms and the like cut huge, straight, salary replacement checks to the citizens who they harm.

I ran a corporate networking team in the 2000s with two of the five network engineer team members, being two years out of retraining (they were welding specialists in the former local shipbuilding industry). Non-white collar supervisory and work ethic issues, but excellent work in general. Had an issue with the team on-call car getting bullet holes once (suspect some drug dealing on the side, long story!) but excellent colleagues in general.

I've worked with a lot of retrained and second-career people and I can't sing their praises enough.

Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#129

Post by CalRobert »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #118
CalRobert wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a kid in the US people told me "you can do anything! Anyone can be president! Just set your mind to it!" Now as someone raising kids in Europe the general sentiment is "The system is rigged, don't even try, anyone with nice things got it through avarice or corruption, nothing ever changes" (to be fair, I've lived in only two European countries, but this seems to be a common sentiment that varies primarily…

> it was utterly atrocious in Ireland Speaking as an Irish citizen, this does not match to my experiences at all. But countries are large, and individual experiences are rarely a good sampling of population level traits.

Well, I’m also an Irish citizen (albeit naturalised) and it certainly matched the sentiment of both the circle I hung out with in Dublin (champagne socialists and frustrated artists) and Offaly (a different sort entirely….)

Though I did appreciate that the culchies were pretty practical about getting things done.

All the same, “maybe I like the misery” didn’t come out of a vacuum…

Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#130

Post by happytoexplain »

anal_reactor wrote: post #98
happytoexplain wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nuts - but I can only speak with anecdotes. The Americans around me are desperate to pull absolutely any lever that will slow the death of the American dream, and at this point even the "light" version of the dream is dying (work hard, be smart and a little lucky, spend on an education in a strong field, get a family and small property). Stats and experts be damned - that's what desperation is. In the specific c…

The message "guys, it's really not that smart to let in a huge number of people from a completely different culture, this is going to be a problem" was completely ignored and labeled racist.

Yes, it's probably the left's single largest mistake in messaging in a hundred years. It's understandable, since so much of the right's take on this topic is in fact often more racist than pragmatic, but that's also a "loudest voice" problem, and the left has those voices too. I don't know how a country with the US's history and culture can even talk about this without those voices dominating the perceptual bandwidth. It's essentially impossible, I guess. And being ignored pushes more people into that tone. This is the vicious cycle that makes us incapable of electing anybody in the middle.
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