A loophole in immigration law is costing thousands of American jobs • Hacker News Board

Re: A loophole in immigration law is costing thousands of American jobs

#31

Post by mjmahone17 » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 8:48 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #26

A couple of thoughts on this. What's the difference between allowing h1bs and allowing people over the fence along the border? Illegal entry into the country, even if we all for amnesty, puts a dent on the income potential of citizens and immigrants at the lower income levels, who legally enter society... But for the most part, society recognizes the plight of low class immigrants and work to have them legitimized, h…

The issue is the nature of the h1b: if you lose your job, you're immediately kicked out. This gives employers much more leverage over their employees, allowing them to suppress wages. It's the nature of the h1b, which doesn't encourage people to invest in and make roots in the country they emigrate to, the problem. On the other hand, there's very little evidence that there's a "fixed" number of jobs in the country: allowing more people in likely causes more opportunities, especially if they have children, buy a house, etc.

There are a few possible solutions to this, such as:

- Make it so once you have an h1b, you have the right to stay in the US for at least 1 year, whether your job is terminated, and make it easy for another employer to take over your h1b. This gives immigrants leverage over a bad employer, in the form of being able to go somewhere that will pay them more.

- Make h1bs go to the highest bidders: each company says what salary they're going to give the h1b holder, and those companies paying the most get the visas.

Re: A loophole in immigration law is costing thousands of American jobs

#32

Post by mc32 » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 8:59 PM UTC

mjmahone17 wrote: post #31

mc32 wrote: post #26

A couple of thoughts on this. What's the difference between allowing h1bs and allowing people over the fence along the border? Illegal entry into the country, even if we all for amnesty, puts a dent on the income potential of citizens and immigrants at the lower income levels, who legally enter society... But for the most part, society recognizes the plight of low class immigrants and work to have them legitimized, h…

The issue is the nature of the h1b: if you lose your job, you're immediately kicked out. This gives employers much more leverage over their employees, allowing them to suppress wages. It's the nature of the h1b, which doesn't encourage people to invest in and make roots in the country they emigrate to, the problem. On the other hand, there's very little evidence that there's a "fixed" number of jobs in the country: a…

Illegal immigrants can also be deported and have this hanging around their neck throughout their stay. So I don't think it's that.

I think the middle class and upper classes say they believe in principles, except when believing those principles will affect their way of life.

For example, in SF, kids from areas with historically low scholastic performance are bused into schools with better performance, the hope is that aptitude will 'rub off'. Upper class SFers, are for this, it's socially responsible, but they put their own kids in private schools --the middle class immigrants I speak to, wish they could send their children to schools in their neighborhood, rather than ending up in a random school where performance is suspect.

Re: A loophole in immigration law is costing thousands of American jobs

#33

Post by sridhar87 » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 9:02 PM UTC

curiousDog wrote: post #3

As an Indian, I really really hope they ban Tata and Infosys (or any other Indian outsourcing company) from getting H1-B visas. The people they bring over are the bottom of the barrel in India and have no interest in Computer Science whatsoever. They suck at their jobs. They can't write a single paragraph in English without grammatical errors. Furthermore, incidents like these will perpetuate xenophobia against the g…

"They suck at their jobs.", "They can't write a single paragraph in English without grammatical errors", "The people they bring over are the bottom of the barrel in India ", " have no interest in Computer Science" - Way too many generalizations IMO. There are over 100,000 employees in each of the companies, and of course some percentage of them might be what you describe, but I do have some some good friends who are good coders working there... and both the companies mentioned have billion dollars in revenues - not without a reason.

Re: A loophole in immigration law is costing thousands of American jobs

#34

Post by kbenson » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 9:05 PM UTC

evanpw wrote: post #15

Let's say for the sake of argument that every Indian immigrant displaces one American from their job. Under what moral calculus is that a bad trade? The per-capita income in India is almost exactly 10 times less than in the US. By American standards, keeping someone from leaving India seems pretty equivalent to condemning them to life-long poverty. Can you imagine someone making (with a straight face) the argument th…

Because I believe morally the correct thing to do is not the thing that reduces poverty quickest in the short term, but reduces it the most in the long term. I do not believe economics is a zero-sum game, which would imply that the moral thing to do is to reduce our own fortunes to increase that of others less fortunate.

I think that some countries, being extremely successful, can both help guide other countries into successful strategies (there are hundreds of large scale economic experiments going on at all times by the nature of different states), and help bolster those countries that have followed strategies that were less optimal (global aid).

I do not believe this gives a blank check to some countries to ignore the less fortunate portions of the world, there is an obligation, enforced up by the reality of the threats these places produce, to attempt to help the world as a whole advance, which it largely has done over hundreds of years. This is analogous to the differences in the populace within a country, but I think it's easier for people to see it on a world stage, even if they don't equate it to income disparity within a country.

The global system we've been using, with countries largely distinct, has yielded great gains. Altering major aspects of that system should not be taken lightly, as unforeseen implications could cause great problems (would the world be served better overall if free movement between these countries caused a depression within America, and that happened to trigger a global depression?). That's not to say it shouldn't be tried. Indeed, as others here have posted, is seems the EU is trying this very idea out, to some extent.

Re: A loophole in immigration law is costing thousands of American jobs

#35

Post by murbard2 » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 9:05 PM UTC

A_COMPUTER wrote: post #22

evanpw wrote: post #15

Let's say for the sake of argument that every Indian immigrant displaces one American from their job. Under what moral calculus is that a bad trade? The per-capita income in India is almost exactly 10 times less than in the US. By American standards, keeping someone from leaving India seems pretty equivalent to condemning them to life-long poverty. Can you imagine someone making (with a straight face) the argument th…

Because I am legally and morally compelled to pay taxes to my country, and in exchange my country is legally and morally compelled to look out for my interests and well-being--not to find the fastest and most economical means to replace me. It's called the social contract, that is my moral calculus.

Valentino Mancini has been coming to your grocery store and he's offered to protect you against fire hazards. He made such a compelling offer you couldn't refuse it, and you've been paying him off for years.

Valentino protects you, he's been looking out for you. Like when they tried to build a K-Mart in the neighborhood, and the developer had an unfortunate accident.

But here's the thing, Valentino's consigliere has convinced him to let in a new grocer in the neighborhood, and business hasn't been that good since.

Is it ethical for you to go see Valentino and complain that, since you've been paying him off for years, he should kick that new grocer out of the neighborhood?

Re: A loophole in immigration law is costing thousands of American jobs

#36

Post by hackerboos » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 9:05 PM UTC

evanpw wrote: post #29

hackerboos wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"By American standards, keeping someone from leaving India seems pretty equivalent to condemning them to life-long poverty." That's a bit of a leap. "Can you imagine someone making (with a straight face) the argument that people from Detroit shouldn't be allowed to move to San Francisco to take a better job, because they'll steal jobs from and drive down the wages of SF natives? What's the difference?" Probably the f…

> That's a bit of a leap. If someone lives in India, they are likely to have a standard of living below what would be considered poverty level in the United States. If you actively prevent them from taking a job that would take them out of poverty, how else would you describe that? > Michigan and California are 2 states within the US This is my point. Why is it morally okay to exclude people from India, but not peopl…

> If someone lives in India, they are likely to have a standard of living below what would be considered poverty level in the United States. If you actively prevent them from taking a job that would take them out of poverty, how else would you describe that?

And thus placing an American in poverty in the process. You've displaced their job and gave it to an Indian who is paid less (so the article suggests). Less federal income tax, less state tax and it's not unreasonable to assume that a portion of the paycheck will be returned to India.

This is why we have foreign aid budgets and charities. People do care and want to give, but what you're suggesting is not the way to go about it.

> This is my point. Why is it morally okay to exclude people from India, but not people from Detroit?

Morally it's not OK. Agreed. Even economically it's possible, but not without severely driving down US living standards. Politically though, it's a disaster.

Re: A loophole in immigration law is costing thousands of American jobs

#37

Post by MichaelGG » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 9:07 PM UTC

enlightenedfool wrote: post #5

curiousDog wrote: post #3

As an Indian, I really really hope they ban Tata and Infosys (or any other Indian outsourcing company) from getting H1-B visas. The people they bring over are the bottom of the barrel in India and have no interest in Computer Science whatsoever. They suck at their jobs. They can't write a single paragraph in English without grammatical errors. Furthermore, incidents like these will perpetuate xenophobia against the g…

Nonsense. There are several Americans who are less skilled at the place I work. Xenophobia can't be stopped by Indians being better workers than locals. The article is about a loophole in law which any corporation would exploit, not just Tata and Infosys. My company (which is American) does it too, in way that isn't obvious. It makes zero sense to ban "any Indian outsourcing company"

> Xenophobia can't be stopped by Indians being better workers than locals

But it would. Every case I've encountered where there is a skepticism of Indian workers is due to horrific experiences with such hires. I haven't seen the same applied to, say, Russian engineers.

There may be a another reason, like just the sheer population and widespread English usage, but the result is that Indians suffer an unfair bias that other groups don't have. Things like MS shipping a major product made in IDC, with broken English in the dialogs. Or so many outsourced support and development failures. Perhaps it's because bad experiences are noticed because there was an interaction. But good experiences, say excellent code written by anonymous Google engineers, doesn't have any particular nationality associated with it (except American)? So if all tech support and dev was outsourced to Russia, then Russia would have a disproportionate bad rep?

It's not fair (or perhaps not even fixable in a fair way), but if more interactions were positive, then there'd be less resistance.

I feel bad for having an internal reaction when I start dealing with an Indian, but I try to balance that out by making an extra effort to be sure I'm concentrating on the work. And I know there's tons of far-more-talented-than-me Indians. It terrifies me that this bias might be mathematically incorrect, in addition to being individually unfair.

Re: A loophole in immigration law is costing thousands of American jobs

#38

Post by shas3 » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 9:12 PM UTC

curiousDog wrote: post #3

As an Indian, I really really hope they ban Tata and Infosys (or any other Indian outsourcing company) from getting H1-B visas. The people they bring over are the bottom of the barrel in India and have no interest in Computer Science whatsoever. They suck at their jobs. They can't write a single paragraph in English without grammatical errors. Furthermore, incidents like these will perpetuate xenophobia against the g…

Wow! Being an Indian (assuming you really are) doesn't make it any less inappropriate to make such sweeping generalizations!

Re: A loophole in immigration law is costing thousands of American jobs

#39

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 9:12 PM UTC

MichaelGG wrote: post #37

enlightenedfool wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. There are several Americans who are less skilled at the place I work. Xenophobia can't be stopped by Indians being better workers than locals. The article is about a loophole in law which any corporation would exploit, not just Tata and Infosys. My company (which is American) does it too, in way that isn't obvious. It makes zero sense to ban "any Indian outsourcing company"

> Xenophobia can't be stopped by Indians being better workers than locals But it would. Every case I've encountered where there is a skepticism of Indian workers is due to horrific experiences with such hires. I haven't seen the same applied to, say, Russian engineers. There may be a another reason, like just the sheer population and widespread English usage, but the result is that Indians suffer an unfair bias that…

[deleted]

Re: A loophole in immigration law is costing thousands of American jobs

#40

Post by jqm » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 9:17 PM UTC

hackerboos wrote: post #18

evanpw wrote: post #15

Let's say for the sake of argument that every Indian immigrant displaces one American from their job. Under what moral calculus is that a bad trade? The per-capita income in India is almost exactly 10 times less than in the US. By American standards, keeping someone from leaving India seems pretty equivalent to condemning them to life-long poverty. Can you imagine someone making (with a straight face) the argument th…

"By American standards, keeping someone from leaving India seems pretty equivalent to condemning them to life-long poverty." That's a bit of a leap. "Can you imagine someone making (with a straight face) the argument that people from Detroit shouldn't be allowed to move to San Francisco to take a better job, because they'll steal jobs from and drive down the wages of SF natives? What's the difference?" Probably the f…

It's more than a leap because it implicitly states that the only way a citizen of India can avoid poverty is to come to the US, and I'm pretty sure there are no shortage of wealthy Indians who became so without immigrating.