Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Immigration is about talent, not costs

aerofs.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 644 posts

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#141

Post by jarek »

krschultz wrote: post #114
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…

Exactly. When I lived in the suburbs I had a 3 bedroom condo, and my wife and I owned two cars. I moved to the city and we now have a 1 bedroom apartment and no cars. Total cost of living is roughly the same. My happiness in my living arrangements is about the same. A cost of living calculator would make it look like we are getting absolutely hosed. Our take home $ into bank accounts tells an entirely different story…

You can also live in the city with no cars in midwest or many other places with lower CoL than Bay Area

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#142

Post by manticore_alpha »

makmanalp wrote: post #135
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…

Without commenting on your opinions, let me touch upon one point you make: > 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. Alyandon below also says: > I worked as a cont…

I can't name names. I can tell you one was the kind of company you're probably thinking about, and the other was a publicly-traded (now) supply chain company.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#143

Post by deskamess »

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…

I would prefer a system where the candidate can leave the job immediately, or worst case, after 3-6 months of arriving in the US. The company that does the sponsoring should not have the power to hold on to the employee. If the candidate can stay employed in his/her field and average[1] the salary filled on the non immigrant application sheet for 4 out of the 5 year period, then, regardless of company, the green card should be reachable. It is certainly a risk for the sponsoring company but that is known ahead of time and not unlike the risk of hiring a local candidate. There certainly should be no compensation for losing an employee (local or via H1). Employee mobility should not be different just because of your visa status.

Summary: Open work permits that segue into GC's are my preferred approach.

[1] Verified via IRS filings. The applicant gives permission to DHS to check the IRS filings.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#144

Post by sriram_sun »

wrexsoule wrote: post #96
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…

> The H1-B program keeps the worker captive Let's be serious a few minutes, no H1-B worker is held captive at all. I've been on H1-B for 4 years and still on it, and have changed employer twice with no issues. The only case you can make is that if a H1-B is applying for a Green Card then he can have to wait a while before moving, but it's nothing to do with H1-B itself.

The Valley is a lot more open about H1-B transfers than the rest of the country is. I made the mistake of working the mid-west for a number of years where job hopping was not as rampant as the Valley and generally looked down upon. Also, every time you jump to a new employer keep in mind that your Green Card clock gets reset and your H1-B's 6-7 yr. limit stays the same. Having spent a significant portion of my youth here, my goal was to become a naturalized citizen. For most H1-Bs this is one of their major goals. The questions you'll have to deal with are always a bunch of What ifs.. What if I get laid off tomorrow? I've one month to find a job. What if my employer soft pedals on the Green Card application? What if my manager turns out to be an ass and my Green Card is only 2 years away? In that situation, I am pretty much a captive. It even took Alexandrescu (author of Modern C++ Design) about 16 years to become a citizen. Not acceptable.

Now Yahoo is closing it's India office and bringing a bunch of people to Sunnyvale. Not sure how they are going to do that with all the lottery bull going on.

YMMV.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#146

Post by harryh »

rayiner wrote: post #75
bradleybuda wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 U.S. has a fixed capacity to absorb immigrants while integrating them into our culture. In many places in the country, immigration is already too much, resulting in insular immigrant communities and tensions between immigrants and everyone else. Those are bad things. The unstated assumption underlying the assertion that "the U.S. has nearly unlimited room to accept immigration" is that culture, and institutions a…

> In many places in the country, immigration is already too much

This makes me wonder if there is anything we could do to better spread out immigrants to improve the pace of assimilation and hence increase our total capacity to accept immigrants without negative cultural impact.

No idea how this might be accomplished but it's got me thinking.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#147

Post by illumen »

alyandon wrote: post #117
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…

>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. I worked as a contract developer for over 10 years and this was absolutely the norm for the companies I worked at. It wa…

Any evidence? Otherwise I don't believe you.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#148

Post by uniformlyrandom »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #123
olegious wrote: post #90

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…

>> "She won a green card" I'm guessing this was through the DV Lottery program? If so I agree that the goal of immigration should be to attract the best and the brightest but there are plenty of ways to do that. The DV program is the only avenue for people who haven't had a chance in life to become the best and brightest yet - it's their only way in. Your friend could presumably get in on a work visa which, consideri…

Right now, getting a GC through L1/H1 path is extremely painful (again, H1B lottery + huge delay in actually getting a GC + painful employment-based GC process). You can try EB1, but good luck proving "extraordinary abilities" in the tech sector.

DV is a nice 'instant jackpot' option. Some people I know were playing DV even when they had EB GC pending. Small percentage of those won the GC, and opted for DV (paid out of pocket) instead of waiting for company-sponsored EB.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#150

Post by guyzero »

manticore_alpha wrote: post #109
NhanH wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to know about the "standard, normalized ways immigrants have come to the US" that you mentioned.

I won't say it's trivially easy, but with determination it can be done.

Ha, funny guy. The US immigration system is shit.

Explain to me how someone can become a permanent resident or a US citizen who is current a citizen & resident of Canada, India or the Philippines.

H1-B visas are the most straightforward way for someone with an education to get a job and permanent residency in the US. O and L visas are not universally applicable. Family sponsorship isn't always possible. Not everyone wants to marry an American.

It's not like the UK, Canada or Australia which have point-based immigration systems. The US has very few ways for a competent, educated immigrant to enter the country.

Post reply on HN