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

H-1B: Oracle favored hiring foreign graduates of US colleges over American grads

mercurynews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 377 posts

Re: H-1B: Oracle favored hiring foreign graduates of US colleges over American grads

#121

Post by sn_master »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #118
sn_master wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 to the Europe comment. You can become a citizen in Ireland by working 5 years. Same for a couple more European countries atleast.

That may be true, but do you become Irish by working for 5 years? I know countries in Europe where even if you were born there, the native population will still consider you a foreigner. In the US, people will treat you as one of their own as soon as you step out of the airport.

huh ? It largely depends on your personality and the connections you can build.

Re: H-1B: Oracle favored hiring foreign graduates of US colleges over American grads

#122

Post by blahblahblogger »

mykowebhn wrote: post #8

Granted that H-1B visas should ostensibly be filled only for positions where it is difficult to find qualified American citizens or permanent residents, but in all honesty are the Department of Labor's allegations really that surprising? In the Bay Area, qualified job candidates are so scarce that it's quite common for citizens/permanent-residents to change jobs frequently. H1-B candidates are attractive for companie…

> H1-B candidates are attractive for companies because it is harder for them to switch jobs. Companies can lock these employees for longer, and they can pay them less.

This is ultimately what it's about.

I work as a software engineer in the Bay Area and the number of H1Bs doing the same grunt work coding that I do is astounding. H1Bs were supposed to be for some sort of super specialized work no?

Re: H-1B: Oracle favored hiring foreign graduates of US colleges over American grads

#123

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

an_cap wrote: post #114
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose it depends on whether or not you consider it morally acceptable for a country to prioritize the prosperity of its own citizens over that of non-citizens. I.e., whom does a country's government serve?

Why is it morally acceptable for a country to prioritize the prosperity of its own citizens, but not for whites to prioritize the prosperity of fellow whites?

I'm having trouble understanding which level of abstraction you're trying to discuss.

Are you arguing that two human attributes in particular, race and birthplace, should for some reason be subject to the same level of discrimination in hiring?

Or are you asking a more abstract question? I.e., given any human attribute ${attrib}, what are the principles a government should use when deciding if ${attrib} is a legally protected class?

Re: H-1B: Oracle favored hiring foreign graduates of US colleges over American grads

#124

Post by temp4358 »

diogenescynic wrote: post #113
temp4358 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not saying people from around the world are trying to get into china. People of chinese origin have already started to go back and people from china believe they are better in China then is US. They have kept their highest talent and have used them to compete with US in spaces in which US held monopoly for an extremely long time. If other countries get better, US's heigmony over the world will be challenged agai…

So not bringing over underpaid foreign workers makes us MORE colonial? Got it... Some of us don’t care about US hegemony, which doesn’t really exist anyways... this is about labor. You’re just moving the goalposts to all this other non-sensical stuff.

US hegemony doesn't exists LOL

US currently controls the entire see trade. International money transfers, etc. If US puts UNILATERAL sanctions on a country, everyone has to follow it.

Every country has its advantages. US has capital and already monopolized a lot of industries. India/China have cheap talented labor. They use that to their advantage. If you want to stop them from using any advantage and still demand access to their resources, their markets, that colonization 101.

If US puts pressure on the advantage india has, then India will retaliate. Both sides will have loses.

At this point, if you are too entrenched in your world view and nothing I say would change your mind, just say so.

I am just pointing out that H1-B even if it's causing trouble in US's market (and not that much) it's able to get them world's top talent, makes America looks good and give US advantage over othet countries in terms of talent. Dude just look at Google's CEO or Microsoft's CEO or other immigrants. If these guys were denied visa and they started companies back in their country (maybe they could have, maybe they wouldn't have) none of the jobs you are talking about would exist.

This is not a zero-sum game you are making it out to be.

Re: H-1B: Oracle favored hiring foreign graduates of US colleges over American grads

#125

Post by diogenescynic »

an_cap wrote: post #119
diogenescynic wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very dumb straw man attack. Stop it.

How so? I claim that severe discrimination (like banning a group of people from entry level positions) based on circumstances of birth is ethically dubious. I think that's why we don't entertain the idea of banning people from entry level work because they were born to black parents. Why doesn't it generalize to being born to Indian parents?

Because it’s intellecually dishonest and an argument based on the fallacy of appeal to extremes.

There is obviously a difference between citizenship and race... the entire purpose of a government is to service its citizens. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a Star Trek utopia where there is free movement of all people. If one country were to allow this first, they’d just be harming themselves, which would be against the interests of its citizens. You look out for your own citizens first. That’s just a government fundamental.

Re: H-1B: Oracle favored hiring foreign graduates of US colleges over American grads

#126

Post by geofft »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #103
geofft wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a simpler proposal: anyone from anywhere can come here and take any job. If you leave your job, voluntarily or not, you have 90 days (up from the current grace period of 60 and strict rule of 0) to find another job. If you've been here for a few years you can apply for citizenship, independent of your employer. The primary objection to this is crowding out the labor market, to which I'd say: protectionism does…

The primary objection to that idea is the complete destruction of your country's culture.

Again, protectionism. If a billion people in India and a billion people in China are competing in global markets, my country's culture isn't going to survive anyway. How is Ottoman culture doing these days? Honestly, how is the British culture of even a century ago doing these days? How long did the Japanese culture so carefully preserved survive Matthew Perry's arrival?

(Also as it happens I'm an American-born child of Indian immigrants, so I am actually a carrier of American culture and not Indian, so I have reason to question the implicit assumption that immigrants will destroy culture.)

Re: H-1B: Oracle favored hiring foreign graduates of US colleges over American grads

#127

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

an_cap wrote: post #120
addicted wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simple answer is that the US fought a war over the question of whether it can prioritize fellow whites and the pro side lost. Badly.

Might makes right. Got it. Edit : Sorry addicted, I interpreted your comment as a justification, not as historical account. My bad.

I don't think the GP was giving an argument that the current state of affairs is morally acceptable.

I think GP was giving a causal explanation in terms of political history.

Re: H-1B: Oracle favored hiring foreign graduates of US colleges over American grads

#128

Post by geofft »

diogenescynic wrote: post #108
geofft wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a simpler proposal: anyone from anywhere can come here and take any job. If you leave your job, voluntarily or not, you have 90 days (up from the current grace period of 60 and strict rule of 0) to find another job. If you've been here for a few years you can apply for citizenship, independent of your employer. The primary objection to this is crowding out the labor market, to which I'd say: protectionism does…

This is the dumbest idea I’ve ever seen. Why bother being a country at that point? You’d have 2 billion people moving here tomorrow and living in the streets. Bad idea.

Not sure what you mean by "being a country," but, no, you wouldn't. If they didn't have jobs they couldn't stay. If they did they'd find housing - perhaps some would even build housing for the rest. To imagine that two billion people could move to the US, find employment, and all be homeless is to imagine an interesting form of market failure that I don't yet understand.

Re: H-1B: Oracle favored hiring foreign graduates of US colleges over American grads

#129

Post by ip26 »

blitmap wrote: post #47
mykowebhn wrote: post #8

Granted that H-1B visas should ostensibly be filled only for positions where it is difficult to find qualified American citizens or permanent residents, but in all honesty are the Department of Labor's allegations really that surprising? In the Bay Area, qualified job candidates are so scarce that it's quite common for citizens/permanent-residents to change jobs frequently. H1-B candidates are attractive for companie…

I see 3 things here: 1) Qualified job candidates are scarce? Just... what? The only difference between here and there is when people lie and say they're qualified, the company is willing to pass this lie on to the government to say "the qualified candidates are over there". There are people who can do the work, and there are companies who want to pay less in total compensation. I feel like my entire generation was ra…

WRT #2 it's certainly not supposed to be that way. But if an H-1B worker quits, they have something like two weeks to find a new job or else be deported on the spot. In other news, mysteriously, H-1B workers tend not to quit even faced with low wages and poor conditions.

Re: H-1B: Oracle favored hiring foreign graduates of US colleges over American grads

#130

Post by enraged_camel »

1024core wrote: post #69

A simple solution to the H1B "cheap workers" problem is to sort applications by (descending) order of salary, and pick the top 65K as authorized by Congress.

And have basically all H1Bs go to Silicon Valley/Seattle/NYC tech companies?

(You really should think things through before suggesting them as solutions, especially when the problems are complex.)

Post reply on HN