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Immigration is about talent, not costs

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Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#81

Post by lttlrck »

mavelikara wrote: post #47
bokonist wrote: post #12

Seems like the sensible solution would be to auction off the immigration quota slots. Decide on some number of business/talent based visas to be issued each year. Then do a rolling auction of the visas. If a person gets a visa, comes to America, but then does not like their job and goes home, the company gets a prorated refund. If the person stays more than five years, they get a green card automatically and are free…

Along similar lines, the cost of sponsoring H-1Bs should grow exponentially with the fraction of the company's workforce that is on H-1B, beyond a small threshold.

That would unfairly target small specialist businesses unless you also take into account the revenue/workforce size.

When I came to the US on H1B I made up 25% of the company, at the time the cost was already significant enough to prevent any "abuse".

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#82

Post by kourt »

bradleybuda wrote: post #43
bokonist wrote: post #12

Seems like the sensible solution would be to auction off the immigration quota slots. Decide on some number of business/talent based visas to be issued each year. Then do a rolling auction of the visas. If a person gets a visa, comes to America, but then does not like their job and goes home, the company gets a prorated refund. If the person stays more than five years, they get a green card automatically and are free…

The unstated premise behind your comment, and indeed this entire debate, is that there is only so much "room" for immigration in the US. This leads us to arguments about how large the quota should be, how it should be divided, etc. This is a flawed assumption. The US has nearly unlimited room to accept immigration, and on average every single immigrant we accept would increase the size of our economy. Immigrants are…

The current US population is 7 billion, US population is 300 million. How many of the 6.5 billion non-Americans do you think could be rapidly absorbed, both terms of infrastructure (roads, water, sewers) as well as housing, culture, and government subsidies?

Your answer MUST be expressed a NUMBER, not some vapid BS platitude.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#83

Post by michaelochurch »

vonmoltke wrote: post #38
michaelochurch wrote: post #29

It's about a mix of things. First of all, intern salaries are typically set at ~90-100 percent of full-time salary (but without bonus or equity). So these people who are freaking out about intern salaries are missing the point. They assume that if "even an intern" makes $8,000 per month, that every full-time employee makes $200k+. No, it's not like that. It's like this: we properly pay interns with an entry-level sal…

> However, I take umbrage to the assholes who complain about a general "talent shortage" but won't look twice at a programmer over 35. Over 35 or off the coasts. It seems like companies would rather go across an ocean for talent than across the country.

It seems like companies would rather go across an ocean for talent than across the country.

Yeah, there's that too. I know of one fairly prominent company that refuses to hire outside of New York. What do you think that idiocy is about? Ageism? Stinginess with respect to relocation?

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#84

Post by trurl »

pm90 wrote: post #68
trurl wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe there is something I'm missing due to having little knowledge about all the legal subtitles. It seems like startups could come out ahead by realizing that in the modern world, there is no reason for a talented developer to be on-site 365 days of the year. They could save money by not getting on getting an H1B by having the developer work remotely and only need to obtain more limited visas for occasional on-site…

Im afraid that is a different debate on remote v/s local. There are both advantages and disadvantages to either. In this specific case, it is quite clear they really wanted their team to be together (i.e. on site) and went to extraordinary length to do that. BTW there are few visa's (if any) for "limited" or occasional visits to the US.

I'm pretty sure such visas exist, as my team has employees in four countries and we try to meet in person every quarter.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#85

Post by dashboardfront »

UK-AL wrote: post #72
dashboardfront wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you're "making 90k" in the valley you have the quality of life worth 30k in a midwestern city. Not true at all, yet this is constantly repeated like it's fact. Look up indifference curves and consumption bundles. You're ignoring microeconomics. For anyone that doesn't assign excessively high utility towards housing size, 90k in the valley is a much better quality of life than 30k in a midwestern city. This is…

Surely most of you money is going on rent, so the money left will be the same as other cities.

You can always adjust your consumption bundle. If I'm living in a high rent city, I'm more likely to find a friend to share an apartment with or settle for something not that great. This is a drop in utility (though I'd argue living with a friend is a positive for myself), but I also have a lot more money to use on other things, which increases my utility. Spending most of your money on rent when you're pulling something like 5,000 after tax a month is a choice, not a given, and is reflective on how much utility you perceive a better apartment to give you. In reality, we're probably terrible at accurately estimating utility of a good, but I personally have lived in a variety of places, and I was most happiest living in my tiny dorm room, so I personally don't care much about having a big place.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#86

Post by manticore_alpha »

Look HNers, let's be honest with each other.

There's a lot of H1B's on here. You have friends overseas who you want to see succeed in the Bay Area.

In my experience at many tech companies in the Bay Area, H1B Visas exist for one reason, and one reason only - to get skilled engineering/STEM labor -- and to exploit connections (primarily Indian/Pakistani) among these workers to continue to get cheap labor.

It absolutely, positively hurts local labor - naturalized citizens - etc. Without a doubt.

This is not a Xenophobic reaction, it's simply reality.

I've worked at multiple companies (managed their websites) -- where we would temporarily post a job description to appear that it was a fair playing field for local workers -- when in reality that position was definitely, absolutely going to be filled by a cheaper, exploitable H1B visa position.

It happens all-the-fucking-time.

There's standard, normalized ways immigrants have come to the US for a long time now. There's absolutely no talent shortage in the Bay Area, provided you can pay (and your ideas are interesting)

We also don't need any more of the divisive ethic-neuveau-ghettos we're seeing in the south bay, cupertino and east bay with communities insulating themselves rather than assimilating.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#87

Post by maerch »

hcho wrote: post #35
Spooky23 wrote: post #13

My grandparents were all immigrants who didn't need to jump through hoops to come in. IMO, this should still be possible. I think we should have a open lottery that meets 95% of immigration demand, and have some sort of competitive/fast-track process for skilled workers that would weed out the bodyshops. That said, this post is crafted marketing nonsense. For example, a statement like this from a company founder is r…

>My grandparents were all immigrants who didn't need to jump through hoops to come in. IMO, this should still be possible. I think we should have a open lottery that meets 95% of immigration demand, and have some sort of competitive/fast-track process for skilled workers that would weed out the bodyshops. Doesn't US have a green card lottery?

Yes, but it is tedious. It takes about two years (this October you applied for 2016) and your winning chances are between 1 and 2%.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#88

Post by selmnoo »

pauleastlund wrote: post #36
selmnoo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This brings up an interesting question. The reasoning for bringing talent over from abroad, does it make sense ethically? I'm greatly irked by the idea of a young and ambitious Indian/Nigerian/Chinese/Russian guy or girl coming here to... optimize ad targeting at Facebook, he/she should stay in India or Nigeria, because by golly Nigeria NEEDS that person much more than us. We can do fine with Facebook advertising alg…

I get where you're coming from, but are you really going to base policy on that? That would be bizarrely condescending: "Sorry, it would be advantageous for our economy and for your personal well-being for you to enter our country, but we've decided you owe it to your homeland to stay." Not to mention that it wouldn't be effectual if other first-world countries didn't play along. The genius who comes from Nigeria to…

> The genius who comes from Nigeria to the States to write some code is going to pick up skills and connections that will prepare them to go back and have a tremendous impact back in their home country.

But that's not going to happen. More than 95% of Indians who come here (and can stay here) will not go back to India. And that makes sense on the individual level, they're not going to find back home the safety and the quality of life they can get here so obviously they'll make the decision to stay here. But I'm not sure if we should base the policy on the liberties and considerations from the scope of the individual, we should ideally base the policy on what widely makes for a stable, safe, healthy world. I understand that a nation's job is to look after its own constituents, and nothing more, but I argue in this day and age we should recognize how interconnected the world is, and what magnificently deleterious ramifications our seemingly-benign actions can have.

> But hey: any one of us could go spend our lives living in and trying to improve a third world country.

That's going from, what is in my view, an active-bad action (siphoning talent from abroad, much to the detriment of the nations that are giving up these individuals), to a passive-okay action (letting Nigeria have its smart Nigerians) to an active-good action (we Americans going to Nigeria to make some good changes), aka philanthropy. As a nation responsible for its own constituents, we are not strictly obliged to do that, but we do -- and it's great that we do, we should continue doing it more.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#89

Post by manticore_alpha »

manticore_alpha wrote: post #86

Look HNers, let's be honest with each other. There's a lot of H1B's on here. You have friends overseas who you want to see succeed in the Bay Area. In my experience at many tech companies in the Bay Area, H1B Visas exist for one reason, and one reason only - to get skilled engineering/STEM labor -- and to exploit connections (primarily Indian/Pakistani) among these workers to continue to get cheap labor. It absolutel…

Oh and don't get me started on the terrible "conditions" - relative to the tech-bro startups in SF - where H1Bs are expected to stay insane hours and work weekends.

"Why, you're blessed to be here aren't you!?"

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#90

Post by olegious »

Have a friend- early 20s, speaks 5 languages, graduated from one of her country's top law schools, worked in corporate law, received a full scholarship to do a decent LLM program in the USA- she finished the program with a 4.0. She won a green card, but when it came time for her to interview for the green card she was told- "we filled the Eastern Europe quota." So now she's getting kicked out of the US, shouldn't the goal of an immigration system be to attract and retain the best and the brightest?
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