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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

#171

Post by serge2k »

blub5 wrote: post #36

"In 2013, 124,000 people applied for the combined 85,000 slots in the first five-day period." Considering that Americans seem to have little difficulty affording computers and software, yet continue to bankrupted by health care costs, wouldn't it make a lot more sense to give those 85k visas to cheap doctors from overseas to drive down medical costs, instead of giving them to cheap foreign programmers to drive down t…

Except that won't work because they will just come over and charge the same as every other doctor.

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

#172

Post by markdown »

anakha wrote: post #161
emdowling wrote: post #43

Good to note that this does not include the E3 visa available exclusively to Australians. Australia never uses its full allocation of 10,000 E3's each year and they are incredibly easy to get. the candidate simply needs a Bachelor's degree or higher as well as a job offer. If approved, their spouse is also instantly eligible for a E3 visa entitling them to work too. Generally, it takes 2-4 weeks to get one from start…

Are you aware of the details of the free trade agreements Australia signed with the US? We paid our dues to the US, has to be some reciprocity.

> We paid our dues to the US

Indeed. You gave them a base from which to spy on Asia and Oceania. Should have negotiated visa-free entry for that alone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Gap

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

#173

Post by markdown »

serge2k wrote: post #171
blub5 wrote: post #36

"In 2013, 124,000 people applied for the combined 85,000 slots in the first five-day period." Considering that Americans seem to have little difficulty affording computers and software, yet continue to bankrupted by health care costs, wouldn't it make a lot more sense to give those 85k visas to cheap doctors from overseas to drive down medical costs, instead of giving them to cheap foreign programmers to drive down t…

Except that won't work because they will just come over and charge the same as every other doctor.

Until their second week when they discover that due to increased competition, they have to lower their rates.

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

#174

Post by xyzzy123 »

jedmeyers wrote: post #160
tibbon wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that, why aren't more people trying to get to Australia to work? Aside from spiders (a personal fear of mine) it seems to be a pretty awesome place.

Earning less than a unionized plumber is sometimes degrading.

Why? It takes about 5 years to become registered plumber in NZ/AU.

Many plumbers are also qualified in drainlaying, gasfitting and roofing as well. If you work with gas then lives depend on the quality of your work.

You also have to be physically fit, willing to get up early and sometimes deal with really unpleasant situations (e.g. wade through shit).

"Average" plumbers in AU might only get 60-80k (seriously, check the ads), which is actually not that great an ROI on the investment.

It's not until you specialise, become senior, go out on your own or start doing lots of overtime that you make money.

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

#175

Post by gregsq »

tibbon wrote: post #129
thmcmahon wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia has an uncapped temporary migration program for skilled workers ( http://www.immi.gov.au/Visas/Pages/457.aspx ), the situation described in this article can not happen in Australia. On a permanent level, Australia has a permanent program of around 180,000 places a year in a country with only 22 million people.

Given that, why aren't more people trying to get to Australia to work? Aside from spiders (a personal fear of mine) it seems to be a pretty awesome place.

I'm from the UK but have been staying in Australia for a little over a year now. I'm making a hardware gadget from scratch, and some of the people involved are here. I've also lived in the US for a while.

On Bloomberg I listened to an interview with the founder of Jetstar airlines, currently owned by Qantas, and who is now expanding a renewables business, who called Australia a resource exchange economy. Reading how cooks can earn $325K a year in gas projects, and noticing that the just signed Australia - Japan free trade agreement is mostly beef and agriproducts in exchange for TV's and other electronics, the sense initially is of lack of diversity in tech.

There's no way I could make my hardware project in Australia, not that I ever intended to. I haven't been able to find a single viable option for PCB manufacture. And if a company can provide them they're almost always farmed out to China in any case.

In the UK and the US, but also Europe it's just much richer in scope and size. There are some outstanding hardware facilities in the US. They're virtually non existent in Australia, at the right level of expertise and scale.

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

#176

Post by wyclif »

untog wrote: post #156
tibbon wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that, why aren't more people trying to get to Australia to work? Aside from spiders (a personal fear of mine) it seems to be a pretty awesome place.

It's far away, and as a developer I don't think you can earn as much as you would in the US. Certainly to be more HN specific, the startup scene is not much to talk about.

I was interested in migrating to Australia for a while, mostly because it's closer to where my wife's family lives. But it's just so expensive to live in Australia and the pay scale isn't nearly as good as the US or UK. On top of that, they have so many barriers to getting a skills visa it's just not worth it.

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

#177

Post by kamaal »

nairteashop wrote: post #12

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…

A H1 Visa is a great job perk for wannabe immigrants to US. Do you want to know the worst part of it?

H1 is supposed to be for high skill individuals, the actual people getting it are really like the absolute worst mid level corporate sycophants. The real high skill individuals are likely working at start ups, bootstrapping, or successfully running their own start ups. Who will never get Visas.

There are also other H1 candidates like doctors, Many of whom I think justifiable deserve it.

Either way the Indian start up ecosystem is growing wildly due to these Visa restrictions. Most people who would have likely started in San Francisco given a chance are starting up here now.

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

#178

Post by crazypyro »

stephencanon wrote: post #112
crazypyro wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't this create the obvious problem of companies artificially increasing comp.? How do you judge that? Seems like its asking for trouble. They already do this a little bit with advanced degrees.

Yes, they would increase the compensation until they were paying the same rate they would need to to hire a citizen (which should already be the case, in theory).

I'm saying the company would try to "artificially" increase the value of compensation without adding anything that really is valued at the price they say it is. Think extra benefits, not increased salary.

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

#179

Post by kamaal »

firstOrder wrote: post #5

> Does turning away highly skilled and educated people due to an artificial cap on visas sound silly? This is a false way of framing things on many levels. First, as Norm Matloff has extensively documented, they are not all "highly skilled and educated people". Secondly, they can be given green cards and other such things, why is this specific visa necessary? Also, if there's a shortage of talent, then the Silicon Va…

>>need to get into the USA then an Indian IIT graduate.

I'm not from IIT.

But I guess it was Tom Friedman who said, It is a no brainer for the US to take people from IIT. Because you really have like the extreme best of India landing at US doorstep and practically begging to give them opportunities, to make US awesome.

Why would any country want to not have that kind of people?

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

#180

Post by malandrew »

tsax wrote: post #124
malandrew wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one job type where these visas should not be usable is consulting. If the employee isn't coming here to work on a very specific product or service, then they are being brought in only to reduce wages and not because the employer can't find someone who is capable of performing a very specific need. Consulting by its nature is the most unspecific need. It's a wildcard need. The most valuable employees to the countr…

This does not square with my perception but that's anecdotal. Nonetheless I work at a very large financial firm and the rates paid for consulting are 70-80% higher than salaries at the same level. Even accounting for 30-50% add-ons for benefits/vacations, etc, consulting firms are still paid higher than employees, at least here.

That wasn't my point at all. I was making the point that we should be encouraging immigrant visas for positions that actually create growth. i.e. The position will help with scaling so that we end up with a larger business that results in more jobs for Americans. If an immigrant moves here and works for a company that has 10 people and helps create a product that scales so that one day that company employs 1000 people, the US is better off. If the immigrant comes to the country to work at a consultancy doing work that doesn't really scale, that worker is just another person suppressing the wages for Americans who would otherwise be doing that work. An immigrant who comes here to do consultancy doesn't do work that typically generates more jobs. The consultancy can only grow by adding more people like the immigrant since the supply of people like the technical immigrant is already limited.

Second, although consultants typically make more than other software engineers, it still suppresses wages for all software consultants. The pay for software consultants in the US would be much higher without bringing in immigrants to do that work.

Personally, I don't want to reduce the number of highly skilled immigrants that come to this country. I would love to see it increase a lot more. But I don't think it benefits the United States economy and the average American citizen when this immigrant labor is focused on non-scalable activities where the labor needed is likely to be highly fungible. That only serves to increase the bottom line of the shareholders of such companies at the expense of suppressing wages for similar professionals working in the US. That's net-negative for the country, and a subsidy for those shareholders. Every one of those H1-B visas should be decided on the likely value that immigrant can bring to the US economy and not the value that immigrant provides to the shareholders of a consultancy.

IBM getting 5 more generalist software engineers is far less valuable to the US economy than 5 engineers that are specialists in some new emerging technology such as renewable energy. The decision process for granting H1-Bs should be similar to the decision process for making an investment in a startup. You invest in things that can grow.

FWIW, You might think I'm a red-blooded anti-immigration American, but I'm actually an immigrant software engineer living in the US.

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