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Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles

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Re: Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles

#161

Post by davidw »

pekk wrote: post #72
inoop wrote: post #66

Earlier this year I interviewed for a research/engineering position at Apple. I was offered the job, took it, and went into the H1B lottery. It took the USCIS four months to let me know that my application was not selected, even though it was filed under 'premium processing', and the draw had been done using a computer in the first week after submissions closed. Since the job required me to be in Cupertino, the deal…

American citizens are not entitled to work in the EU. If an American wants to plan their long-term life around working in the EU, that is far from a sure thing. Even with a masters and PhD. So why should the US be singled out for this?

Not job related, but family related: if you're married, here in Italy, you can stay, end of story. Effective immediately.

In the US, the process is something like 6 months, although apparently there was/is a backlog, and they were taking something like a year to process applications for spouses.

It gives you an idea of how screwed up the system is.

Re: Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles

#162

Post by hkmurakami »

WildUtah wrote: post #136
rdtsc wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, what would you have done to fix the root issue -- handling a large number of H1B requests? One answer is well why should there be a cap. Well there is a cap and one reason is probably because opening the gates wide open will skew the job market in US. For better or for worse it is hard to say but if you ask those in US they might say for worse. So there is a cap. (And obviously it is being pushed agains…

An auction is the obvious solution. Submit bids with your application for the fee to be paid yearly to the USA and the highest bidders get the H1-B visas. There's no need to raise the cap and all the Apples and Googles get all the applicants they want. Today the majority of H1-B visas go to Wipro and Infosys and the like for low paid tech grunts; Apple won't have any trouble outbidding them. And those tech grunt comp…

With an auction system like that, basically every small business will be out of the picture then.

Re: Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles

#163

Post by potatolicious »

jtzhou wrote: post #157
exstudent wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you want open borders? You haven't said why it's bad.

Immigration is very important for all countries, but assimilation takes time. (If you believe in the country enough to want to immigrate there, then the existing culture must have some value.) Ask Syria, Iraq or South Sudan, how they are enjoying their open borders. Meanwhile, Iceland, Japan and other countries are doing fine. Arguably, they could be richer if they allowed in more immigrants, but I'll take the rule o…

Meh, as a visible minority I'd rather the open borders than the opposite. The Nordic countries, Japan, and others with historically xenophobic and anti-immigration attitudes have a "stronger" rule of law, and the illusion of fewer social ills, because they don't have to deal with the discomfort of a heterogeneous population.

And now that immigration is increasing in these places the amount of racism being exposed is shocking, even when compared to the USA where racism has been front-and-center for decades. Hell, just look at HN threads whenever Muslim immigration to Sweden/Norway comes up, it's like Stormfront on steroids.

Your argument has been levied against just about every immigrant population that's made its way into the US. The Irish, the Italians, the Jews, the Chinese, all of whom were subject to enormous racist and xenophobic backlash, much of it under the guise of some vague notion of cultural integrity.

All of the above populations have integrated into American society and in fact the US would be markedly poorer - economically and culturally - without them now.

There's a small amount of schadenfruede I feel when I look at the struggles going on right now in previously-closed countries as they experience large-scale immigration for the first time. For years they tsk'ed tsk'ed at the US (and Canada) for their social upheaval, as people came to grips with living in a heterogeneous society, and criticized us for the many examples of blatant racism and xenophobia. Now that they're going through the same thing it makes me sad to see people from these very countries spouting the same justifications and views as Jim Crow-era America, as if they've learned literally nothing for themselves while observing us in judgment this whole time.

Re: Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles

#164

Post by dropit_sphere »

exstudent wrote: post #87
afafsd wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We should be giving more visas - not less or the same amount reclassified. True, but you should also be doing more to exclude the people who don't have visas, which is the main reason the US immigration system is currently broken. I lived in the US for a few years, did everything legally, queued up at embassies, paid endless fees, and saw that everywhere I went I was surrounded by people who had entered the country…

What harm were those people actually causing you?

While it would of course lower afasd's blood pressure to relax and let it go, his question needs to be considered. Anyone telling law-abiding would-be American immigrants to wait their turn comes off as either oblivious or downright malicious if they tacitly condone, um, "extralegal" immigration. As an American, frankly, it's embarrassing.

Re: Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles

#165

Post by eli_gottlieb »

WildUtah wrote: post #136
rdtsc wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, what would you have done to fix the root issue -- handling a large number of H1B requests? One answer is well why should there be a cap. Well there is a cap and one reason is probably because opening the gates wide open will skew the job market in US. For better or for worse it is hard to say but if you ask those in US they might say for worse. So there is a cap. (And obviously it is being pushed agains…

An auction is the obvious solution. Submit bids with your application for the fee to be paid yearly to the USA and the highest bidders get the H1-B visas. There's no need to raise the cap and all the Apples and Googles get all the applicants they want. Today the majority of H1-B visas go to Wipro and Infosys and the like for low paid tech grunts; Apple won't have any trouble outbidding them. And those tech grunt comp…

> An auction is the obvious solution. Submit bids with your application for the fee to be paid yearly to the USA and the highest bidders get the H1-B visas.

Nah. They can bid with salaries rather than fees. Better to just collect the income and payroll taxes while giving the visas to the most valuable guest workers possible.

Re: Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles

#166

Post by bdamm »

BrainInAJar wrote: post #84
inoop wrote: post #66

Earlier this year I interviewed for a research/engineering position at Apple. I was offered the job, took it, and went into the H1B lottery. It took the USCIS four months to let me know that my application was not selected, even though it was filed under 'premium processing', and the draw had been done using a computer in the first week after submissions closed. Since the job required me to be in Cupertino, the deal…

I'm Canadian, and I've rejected countless job offers because it'd mean ~6 years of my spouse not being able to work until we get green cards.

It's not so bad if you spend some of that time raising children :)

Re: Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles

#167

Post by hackerboos »

hkmurakami wrote: post #162
WildUtah wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An auction is the obvious solution. Submit bids with your application for the fee to be paid yearly to the USA and the highest bidders get the H1-B visas. There's no need to raise the cap and all the Apples and Googles get all the applicants they want. Today the majority of H1-B visas go to Wipro and Infosys and the like for low paid tech grunts; Apple won't have any trouble outbidding them. And those tech grunt comp…

With an auction system like that, basically every small business will be out of the picture then.

My thoughts exactly - basically a immigration system for the Fortune 500.

Re: Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles

#168

Post by 0xab »

mbesto wrote: post #125
disbelief wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Countries in the EU (and elsewhere) have more sane immigration systems. As a Canadian having immigrated to both Germany and the US, I can say that the US system is at least two orders of magnitude more difficult, costly, needlessly complicated, and in the end a lot of it comes down to luck (most of it bad). Germany has no lottery system, and renewal is very straightforward. I applied for my visa while in Germany as a…

What's your definition of sane? None of those countries have the scale, frequency and volume of demand that resembles anything like the US.[1] > Contrast that with how things work in the US (which I don't have time to get into in an HN comment), and you'll see why it deserves to be singled out for this. I don't think anyone is questioning that other countries have much more lax policies. The question is what is your…

In terms of immigrants as a percentage of population the US is nothing special. Canada has a lot more (closer to 19% instead of 14%). Many European countries have statistics similar to that of the US (Sweden has a bit more, the UK a bit less, etc).

But I digress. The problem with the existing system is that it is insane and a waste of resources. One has to get a lawyer and wait for a long time with no certainty in the outcome while dealing with an extremely opaque bureaucracy where anything can go wrong at any time.

This has nothing at all to do with volume. Indeed, a simpler more streamlined and less opaque system would help with volume.

Say a system like the Canadian or the UK one. There's a point scale. You can compute the number of points you get ahead of time, now there's a simple web form actually. If you cross the threshold you will get in. There are known wait times, you can just call the embassy. There are points for things the country needs (particular jobs), for certain qualifications (degrees, etc), for language proficiency, some regional tweaks, family, and having an employment offer.

And extremely importantly. You get permanent resident status (green card), not an H1B. What Americans don't realize is that you want to hand out green cards. H1B lower both your salaries and ours. The H1B restricts immigrant mobility, can't move to a better job and raise the average salary, and encourages people to go home with all of their newly gained knowledge and money.

I'll give you a personal example of the difference between a sane and an insane system:

As an 11 year old I filled out all of our Canadian immigration paperwork (my parents checked it but it was correct and they didn't change it). We knew we would get in based on our points. The embassy told us the timeframe in which we should expect our paperwork to go through. It went through a bit early. We moved to Canada.

Now for the US. As a near-30-year old with a US PhD working at a top research institution I have to pay a specialized law firm several thousand dollars, spend weeks getting paperwork, bugging people in several countries to write absurd letters, building a case, etc. All of this to basically the same thing. And in the end, who knows what will happen because there are no standards, no appeal, no one to discuss anything with. Oh, and I have no idea what the processing time is.

So no. It is not an issue of "why can't they just let me in". It's a system that hurts your salary by restricting my mobility, hurts me by making me pay lawyers needlessly, hurts the image of the US by creating disgruntled people, and hurts the economy by routing business and increasingly prestigious conferences elsewhere. It just makes no sense.

Re: Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles

#169

Post by fwilliams »

McDoku wrote: post #145
cperciva wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if we ever start a second YC location, this will be the reason Please do. Tarsnap will apply to be part of YC Vancouver if it happens. (I'm assuming that if you create a YC somewhere outside of the US it would be in Vancouver, because really, nowhere else in the world is anywhere near as awesome.) FWIW, I think there's two "markets" of which you've only mentioned one -- in addition to founders who can't get U…

Real estate is better in Montreal. Was paying 2K for small loft 700sqft in Gastown vs 1.3K for a 1600sqft loft in Old Montreal with a view of the basilica. Startup dollars will go further here and the office will be twice as awesome. Much easier for new people to make friends and the art scene is not priced out. Montreal is undeniably more fun. And lord, the festivals... Mind you, winter lives here but it is sunny ev…

As someone who grew up in Montreal, and moved to Silicon Valley, one of the appeals of SV is the weather. Montreal winters are long, cold, and dark. These are not conditions everyone wants to live in. Additionally, the Office De La Langue Francaise will make the life of any English company a nightmare. To top it all off, taxes in Quebec are absurdly high (especially considering the quality of social services). So while Montreal is a great city, I think it would be a poor choice for a YC office.

Re: Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles

#170

Post by eli_gottlieb »

paul wrote: post #67
x0x0 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are referring to recent proposed visa changes, you appear to be defining dysfunctional as not passing visa programs very beneficial to a tiny group of people: incubators like YC, and owners / large investors in tech dependent startups. As not a member of those groups, that's quite a stretch.

Given that I also mentioned state and local government, it should be clear that I'm referring to more than just immigration issues. I get your point though. I'm an evil capitalist who doesn't want to fund Americans because they are unwilling to give up 7% equity, or something like that. Maybe you think that Sergey Brin and Paul Graham stole their jobs from some hard working, native born Americans. That's the problem…

Nice talking points, both of you. However, neither of you are actually addressing how to design the immigration system to function as a positive-sum game for both Americans and immigrants.

This is a discussion that needs to be had, because the current immigration system is tilted, like so much else about USAian government right now, towards "give the capitalists whatever they need and if everyone else survives that's good".

For instance, as I proposed upthread, if the H1B system was really about bringing in high-skill workers to fill shortages, visa allocation would go by auction, with the bids being proposed salaries. For N visas, the N proposed jobs for immigrants with the highest salaries get the visas, and the salaries are then legally binding.

This design is absolutely nothing like the current H1-B system, which is why most of the top users of H1-B visas are Indian outsourcing firms.

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