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U.S. Senators Advocate H-1B Freeze for 60 Days or Longer

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Re: U.S. Senators Advocate H-1B Freeze for 60 Days or Longer

#101

Post by xwdv »

koheripbal wrote: post #74
xwdv wrote: post #31

Good. H-1B is an exploitative system that forces people into something resembling modern slavery, at the cost of American jobs and business opportunities. People who are against this IMO, are mostly concerned with not appearing “racist” or xenophobic in any way. Virtue signal.

My wife started as an H1-B. It's true that she was unpaid and locked into her company, but ultimately it was her path to US citizenship. She knew exactly what she was getting into - and now she's making higher six figures than I do. The H1-B program is a choice they can walk away from at any time, which makes it fundamentally different from slavery.

So, your wife had to be a slave for a ruthless company for several years to finally earn her US Citizenship.

Re: U.S. Senators Advocate H-1B Freeze for 60 Days or Longer

#102

Post by unishark »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #64
KorematsuFred wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are over 200k Indians who are stuck on h1b for more than 10 years. Most of which have us born kids. Makes no sense to have a 60 day freeze on h1bs

10 years in the U.S.? I thought the path to citizenship or green card was 5 years, or 7 years at most? This is really not a very fair system.

H1B was always supposed to be a temporary worker program. People have been using it as an easier-to-get form of quasi-residency with the intention to move on to green cards. Everyone in the industry and govt have been winking and nodding at each other for so long that now there's a big pool of people who are basically residents without a right to stay other than nearly-automatic extensions. Govt gives businesses what they want with these workers, while superficially giving the public what they want with limits on green cards.

The green card process on the other hand just takes however many weeks or months it takes to process the paperwork. But there is a per-country limit per year. So if a vast number of people from your country are tying to immigrate you can end up in a really long line.

Citizenship has the requirement of being a permanent resident for a fixed number of years before you can apply.

Re: U.S. Senators Advocate H-1B Freeze for 60 Days or Longer

#104

Post by user5994461 »

nell wrote: post #91

There are 85K H1Bs a year of which 20K is for Masters/PHD students. - Most foreign student revenue will dry up if you take H1B away. - H1B is also used for doctors. Do we not want them? - Given the remote transition underway, they will probably transfer over to Latin America/Canada. This is an issue even for existing tech workers. We are now competing for jobs with everyone that fall in American time zones.

Don't worry about doctors getting visas. Have a look at the visa delivered by job: https://h1bdata.info/highestpaidjob.php

The top 15 paid job titles are all health related and well above $200k in average salary. Their organizations will always manage to get visas no matter what new fancy requirements might come up.

Re: U.S. Senators Advocate H-1B Freeze for 60 Days or Longer

#105

Post by SauciestGNU »

dariusj18 wrote: post #90
mmaurizi wrote: post #69

Choosing a nonpartisan description of "U.S. Senators" obscures the fact that all of the senators are from the same party (Republican). An example of where the journalistic commitment to being politically neutral harms the ability to properly inform the reader.

Plus, it has not context for how many. Saved anyone a read, it's 4.

It's 2 highly influential senators (Tom Cotton and Chuck Grassley), one up-and-comer (Hawley) and then Ted Cruz. I'd especially pay attention to Senator Cotton, there's a lot of chatter about him having presidential ambitions, and it wouldn't surprise me to see him become the figurehead of the post-Trump GOP.

Re: U.S. Senators Advocate H-1B Freeze for 60 Days or Longer

#106

Post by ulfw »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #42
melling wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is tech unemployment? Still in the single digits?

Sounds like it's still above 0, which means you should be forced to source local talent before you're permitted to source from outside the country. It's so strange to me that this viewport is controversial, but "Buy Local" (which I have yet to encounter someone who is against supporting local businesses) is not. This is the labor version of "Buy Local".

As if every local was as good as every foreigner.

God heavens. Just look around the Valley!

Re: U.S. Senators Advocate H-1B Freeze for 60 Days or Longer

#107

Post by ramraj07 »

JackPoach wrote: post #40

I think this is quite good in a strange way. Nobody was happy about H1-B. Tech companies were complaining that quotas were too low. Skilled workers complained that this is a ploy to keep costs down, especially in academia. I've once heard an American PhD say 'I am not afraid of competing with very smart Chinese or Indian scientists. But they are making me compete with 10 mediocre Chinese or Indian PhDs and nobody can…

I am one of those Indian PhDs. Many of my friends are. I suppose it's easy for you and your friend (let's not get into an argument about who's stupider) to sip some coffee and say let's blow it up and wait for a few years when you have no personal effect.

Meanwhile I'm back in India, and completely lost in my mind on where and how I should proceed with my career.

I'm of the view that a country can choose whatever the hell they want about who to let in. Just stick to some rules with some consistency though. I came to America believing that there was a path that works a certain way, and that I could Hope for a better life in America if I follow it and work hard. Clearly your country hasn't kept your side of a gentleman's agreement there.

I suppose your friend is right, we Indian abd Chinese PhDs are idiots to think America is a fairer country than wherever we come from.

Re: U.S. Senators Advocate H-1B Freeze for 60 Days or Longer

#108

Post by toomuchtodo »

screye wrote: post #97
toomuchtodo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some, but not all, H1B immigrants are highly skilled. Some are fodder for body shops, some are used to avoid having to pay market rate. This behavior has been documented in great detail. I do not believe it unreasonable to take measures to encourage hiring of citizens over importing workers when official unemployment is near 15%, and unofficially, closer to 20%. Your typical tech company is likely to be sophisticated…

> Your typical tech company is likely to be sophisticated enough to onboard skilled workers outside the US and support them working remotely, in which case, they are not impacted by this policy. Do you really think that ? We have worked with team members in different time zones (Europe, India, China), and even with WFH it is a massive headache to work with someone whose schedule runs with a 12 hour offset. Also, the…

> Do you really think that ?

Yes. I have worked at both at a successful (ie profitable) fully remote startup that employs hundreds of people, and now at an enterprise that is fully remote with thousands of employees across several continents. If you can't manage teams remotely, you can't manage.

Re: U.S. Senators Advocate H-1B Freeze for 60 Days or Longer

#110

Post by Traster »

Upvoter33 wrote: post #20

Of course, doing so will do very little to nothing for American workers. Companies who want the top talent will go where the top talent lives, and this may just speed up the process (one example could be a simple adjustment to hire more folks in Vancouver, for example). Somehow, some people in the US forget that yesterday's immigrant is today's citizen.

I'm not straight out saying you're wrong, but I don't see the evidence that this is obviously true. There's an equally compelling line of logic that by removing H1-B visas you create less supply for those jobs in the US, driving up wages for local workers and encouraging more local people to train up to take those jobs - because of the higher rewards. Will companies just immediately decide to hire in another country? Well, some of them might, but if wages go up 5% is that really going to force companies overseas? Running an international organisation is hugely expensive. So maybe wages go up and basically no jobs are lost to overseas. What if removing these options to basically steal talent from overseas meant companies needed to sponsor more university programmes to get the qualified staff they need?

I find it quite compelling that the first order effect of H1-B visas is to give large corporations an easy way of driving down wages by hiring cheaper overseas workers who are willing to take lower wages than the locals in order to earn their citizenship, and that benefits company profit margins at the expense of native workers.

I'm willing to believe that the net effect is actually different and you get some magical efficiency effect that makes everyone richer, but I think that actually needs to be demonstrated rather than assumed.

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