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US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

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Re: US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

#61
post #2

They really should call them "indentured servant slave visas". The H1-B visa holder has to leave the country if he gets fired (and doesn't find a new employer quickly), and if he switches jobs the green card process has to start over. Because the H1-B visa employee is legally bound to the job, he becomes more attractive than hiring a US citizen, (assuming equal salary and qualification).

Do you have sources for the claims? An H1B visa is easily transferable and is not subject to the H1B quota.

Re: US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

#62

What is that makes the United States such an attractive place to immigrate to for people whose skill sets could take them almost anywhere in the world? (In other words, why is that successive sessions of Congress can basically count on lots of people desiring to live in the United States, thus setting up an environment in which immigration regulation is restrictive rather than open?) (I'm genuinely curious about this…

What evidence do you have that the US is an attractive place at all, relative to other advanced or semi-advanced nations? More applicants than places does not prove that much in a world of scarce jobs. People are dying, literally drowning in the Mediterranean, to get into Europe. As I know, people still apply to work in Qatar even as they engage in work practices that well be "nothing less than murder"in the process…

>What evidence do you have that the US is an attractive place at all

You don't have to look very hard to see that the US is still very attractive for migration: about 1 million people, legal, permanent, per year for almost 3 decades[1] (and 1.5MM "temporary"). For comparison, Germany had about 800k in 2011, France 150k, UK 500k.

[1]http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/immigrat...

Re: US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

#63

What is that makes the United States such an attractive place to immigrate to for people whose skill sets could take them almost anywhere in the world? (In other words, why is that successive sessions of Congress can basically count on lots of people desiring to live in the United States, thus setting up an environment in which immigration regulation is restrictive rather than open?) (I'm genuinely curious about this…

As an immigrant, I believe that US education is the number one cause for most of this. I did my undergraduate degree from Nepal and came to US to go to Grad school. Most of the engineering course content is American and most of us end up being inspired by the pioneers - Dennis Ritchie, Linus, Bill Gates, John Carmack to name a few

Once you are here, and have a degree, there are opportunities here that are not there back home and hence the interest in working visas.

Consultancies are another catalyst - in cases where the candidates do not manage to get a job right out of school, consultancies act as a bridge where they file immigrant visas for the candidates and then help them find companies that are in need of their skills.

Re: US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

#64

A good friend of mine works in the US under a high-Skill visa - as a tenured professor at Cornell, with oh, the Presidents medal for something very clever. I think high skilled is a term that we coders are happy to apply to themselves, but really folks we are not compared to a genuine elite. The future will be invented by a very small number of brilliant people - the rest if us are just here to fill in the gaps behin…

Exactly. Sure some H1-b visas might be used to just increase programmer supply, but many are like the professor you're talking about. Even catching a few geniuses in an extremely broad net is an invaluable boon to our country. Our concerns should be that we are missing some.

If I remember correctly, higher education institutions are exempt from the visa cap

Re: US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

#65

What is that makes the United States such an attractive place to immigrate to for people whose skill sets could take them almost anywhere in the world? (In other words, why is that successive sessions of Congress can basically count on lots of people desiring to live in the United States, thus setting up an environment in which immigration regulation is restrictive rather than open?) (I'm genuinely curious about this…

As an immigrant, I believe that US education is the number one cause for most of this. I did my undergraduate degree from Nepal and came to US to go to Grad school. Most of the engineering course content is American and most of us end up being inspired by the pioneers - Dennis Ritchie, Linus, Bill Gates, John Carmack to name a few Once you are here, and have a degree, there are opportunities here that are not there b…

It's good to see someone else in HN from Nepal :) We are a rare bunch.

Re: US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

#66

What is that makes the United States such an attractive place to immigrate to for people whose skill sets could take them almost anywhere in the world? (In other words, why is that successive sessions of Congress can basically count on lots of people desiring to live in the United States, thus setting up an environment in which immigration regulation is restrictive rather than open?) (I'm genuinely curious about this…

Money, and a corporate culture where being good at your job is, at least in some way, part of the equation.

For instance, a programmer in Spain makes about a third as he would in the midwest, with the same cost of living. He'd also be able to find a job by having skills that fit what companies need, instead of being about being a good friend of the CTO's nephew.

And that's a developed country in the EU. Imagine the same thing, in one of those places that have immigrants that move to Spain.

Re: US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

#67

Does anyone know why the number of visas isn't capped on a per-company basis? Last year, apparently 40,000 of the 85,000 available visas went to outsourcing companies, and one outsourcing company, Cognizant, got 9,000 visas! http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/04/03/176134... At my last job, we tried to get an H1 for just one person, and failed in the lottery! I feel there would be much less abuse of the…

Or just rank em by salary/comp. More skilled people => more valuable to the economy => receive higher salary => more likely to get visa (=> pay more in taxes).

That's a fantastic idea! The argument against more visas is that they drive down wages for current residents, and this seems to counteract that.

Re: US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

#69

What is that makes the United States such an attractive place to immigrate to for people whose skill sets could take them almost anywhere in the world? (In other words, why is that successive sessions of Congress can basically count on lots of people desiring to live in the United States, thus setting up an environment in which immigration regulation is restrictive rather than open?) (I'm genuinely curious about this…

There are only a few really good places to live for an educated worker. Japan, Australia, Western and Northern Europe, Canada, and the US. I will operationalize "good" as "an intelligent worker can make an exceptional living relative to their country of origin." Each of these places only take a limited amount of immigrants each year. Some are more difficult based on the national language -- learning Danish isn't more…

Canada will take anyone with an engineering degree.

Re: US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

#70

What is that makes the United States such an attractive place to immigrate to for people whose skill sets could take them almost anywhere in the world? (In other words, why is that successive sessions of Congress can basically count on lots of people desiring to live in the United States, thus setting up an environment in which immigration regulation is restrictive rather than open?) (I'm genuinely curious about this…

several things:

1. stability of the political system 2. percentage of large companies that originate (i.e. google, facebook, vmware, etc) 3. open opportunities with respect to social class

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