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

Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

huffingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 490 posts

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#21

Post by at-fates-hands »

zzleeper wrote: post #12

> Their lobbyists claim there is a “talent shortage” among Americans and thus that the industry needs more of such work visas. This is patently false There is no way SV would have grown to what it is now without foreign talent. So the shortage has been real for the last 30+ years. Not sure why this point is still controversial. > most Silicon Valley firms sponsor their H-1B workers, who hold a temporary visa, for U.S…

>> There is no way SV would have grown to what it is now without foreign talent. So the shortage has been real for the last 30+ years. Not sure why this point is still controversial.

Mainly because we have over 7 million people unemployed. The controversy is why are we bringing in so many foreign workers when we have so many people out of work here?

The argument basically comes down to what would we need to do to get some of these unemployed people here trained to be able to take some of these jobs? and if so, what's that cost compared to these H1-B's were bringing in? Also, at the end of the day, how motivated are those unemployed people to go through the rigorous training in order to be able to take these jobs? If you've spent 20 years putting hubcaps on cars in a factory, are you going to want to take six months to learn basic .Net or Javascript?

I don't have any of the answers, these are just some of the rumblings I've heard from executives I know at various large corporations.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#22

Post by yummyfajitas »

I'll just suggest that it's probably a great time for tech companies to open a Bangalore or Gurgaon office. Bangalore in particular is a good choice - the people are smart, the infrastructure is good, and it's a very pleasant place to visit. Perfect weather all year and the best breakfast in India. Also a very strong tech culture; second in the world to SF, in my view, and without many of the social pathologies [1] that seem to be threatening SF.

Rather than fighting with the legal system to replace one or two of your overpaid employees, you can replace entire divisions. It's certainly an investment of effort but it's well worth it.

Plus if you need foreign talent, as long as you pay $25k/year the visa is more or less guaranteed.

If the US wants to be uncompetitive, leave the US.

[1] Meritocracy is still considered a core value and a great thing. There's a lot less xenophobia - while many in US tech harbor negative feelings about immigrants "who took our jorbs", I've literally never seen the same negativity in the Indian tech scene.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#23

Post by thecardcheat »

> The industry lobbyists’ ace-in-the-hole argument is that if they can’t hire more H-1Bs, they’ll ship the work overseas. But for projects on which H-1Bs are hired in the U.S., face-to-face interaction (between themselves and their American coworkers) is crucial. That is why employers bring H-1Bs to the U.S. in the first place rather than sending the work abroad, where the wages are even cheaper.

Considering the growth of tools that facilitate working remotely, and the flexibile schedule pursued by many software engineers, the willingness to ship jobs overseas is hard to merely cast aside.

Visa workers should absolutely be paid a fair wage, and it seems a realistic side-effect that there may be a shift in the type of roles offered to visa employees vs. overseas when the cost of in-house now represents a premium on the foreign employee.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#24

Post by throwawaydbfif »

zzleeper wrote: post #12

> Their lobbyists claim there is a “talent shortage” among Americans and thus that the industry needs more of such work visas. This is patently false There is no way SV would have grown to what it is now without foreign talent. So the shortage has been real for the last 30+ years. Not sure why this point is still controversial. > most Silicon Valley firms sponsor their H-1B workers, who hold a temporary visa, for U.S…

The endless talent shortage is a farce. Every tech company I've worked at rejects well over 90% of their applicants and has an interview process that would be considered insane in almost any other field.

I would say the opposite is true based solely on hiring practices. Look at Google for example, who hire around 1/5000 people that apply.

The shortage is artificially maintained because it works in companies favor. It makes engineers more willing to work for low salaries since they have to work so hard to get an offer, and makes it possible for them to import "talent" which is 95% of the time an excuse to import cheap foreign labor.

Look at what these H1B's are mostly used for. Yeah sometimes it's specialized jobs but usually just generic "developer" or "consultant". Is it really true that you need to hire an H1B because you can't find a "developer"?. The visa process is meant to be used for skills you can't find in the US, and with this in mind it's clearly failed its purpose

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#25

Post by Bartweiss »

zzleeper wrote: post #12

> Their lobbyists claim there is a “talent shortage” among Americans and thus that the industry needs more of such work visas. This is patently false There is no way SV would have grown to what it is now without foreign talent. So the shortage has been real for the last 30+ years. Not sure why this point is still controversial. > most Silicon Valley firms sponsor their H-1B workers, who hold a temporary visa, for U.S…

> there is a “talent shortage” among Americans

I see a bait and switch conducted here all the time, where thinkpiece writers will count up the number of annual graduates in Computer Science (or sometimes Information Technology in general), subtract the number of new software jobs per year, and conclude that we have massive overproduction of programmers.

This is obviously stupid, but I keep seeing it. It ignores CS graduates who stay in academia or take nonprogramming jobs (e.g. in finance). Often it counts "new software engineering positions", a metric which ranges from insufficient (by excluding Sysadmins and similar) to idiotic (by excluding "programmers" and other job titles the author couldn't be bothered to search for). Shockingly often, it counts new positions but doesn't account for positions vacated by people leaving programming (e.g. to management or retirement). And, of course, it ignores employability, pushing an implication that any CS graduate can fill any software job regardless of specialization, experience, or interest.

It is a relentlessly stupid 'statistic', but I think one reason for this ongoing perception of surplus talent is that people keep rewriting the same silly article.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#27

Post by yummyfajitas »

ones_and_zeros wrote: post #18
zzleeper wrote: post #12

> Their lobbyists claim there is a “talent shortage” among Americans and thus that the industry needs more of such work visas. This is patently false There is no way SV would have grown to what it is now without foreign talent. So the shortage has been real for the last 30+ years. Not sure why this point is still controversial. > most Silicon Valley firms sponsor their H-1B workers, who hold a temporary visa, for U.S…

> There is no way SV would have grown to what it is now without foreign talent. So the shortage has been real for the last 30+ years. Not sure why this point is still controversial. Is this a fact or a feeling? Economics allows us to directly measure these things and the price of labor hasn't gone up in the last 30 years at rates indicating a shortage with executive pay and corporate profits at all time highs. > Then…

Economics allows us to directly measure these things and the price of labor hasn't gone up in the last 30 years...

Real compensation per hour (for workers as a whole) has gone up 40% since 1987. This number is adjusted for inflation.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/COMPRNFB

Pay in software has been rising more rapidly than pay for the country as a whole. Is this even remotely in doubt?

http://insights.dice.com/2013/01/22/tech-professionals-enjoy...

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#28

Post by ska »

ones_and_zeros wrote: post #18
zzleeper wrote: post #12

> Their lobbyists claim there is a “talent shortage” among Americans and thus that the industry needs more of such work visas. This is patently false There is no way SV would have grown to what it is now without foreign talent. So the shortage has been real for the last 30+ years. Not sure why this point is still controversial. > most Silicon Valley firms sponsor their H-1B workers, who hold a temporary visa, for U.S…

> There is no way SV would have grown to what it is now without foreign talent. So the shortage has been real for the last 30+ years. Not sure why this point is still controversial. Is this a fact or a feeling? Economics allows us to directly measure these things and the price of labor hasn't gone up in the last 30 years at rates indicating a shortage with executive pay and corporate profits at all time highs. > Then…

It's entirely possible (I am not claiming either way) that both are true: that the H1B system has benefited employers by allowing lower wages and technology growth has increased by access to a broader talent pool than was available in the US alone.

There are very few clean economic metrics - in this case you can't directly measure the effect because you don't have data from an equivalent system without the effect of H1b wages in it. So in the end, as with most economic arguments, it is more art than science.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#29

Post by t1o5 »

ex H1B here. Yes Trump is right.(though I do not like him personally, he is right in this matter) Most of the corporate America is exploiting H1B workers. I have worked in one of those firms and I have friends in many other firms. These are not Indian body shops, these are American companies. Everyone's topic of discussion when we hangout is how our H1B visas were being exploited and there is nothing we could do about it. We were bound to the employer with no hopes of promotion and the long wait for GreenCard (10 years). H1B has become a system to pay lower wages than a skilled visa. How can it be a skilled visa, if the visas are allocated based on lottery ?

So we decided to do something about our situation. We started foraying into the immigration systems of other countries and we decided to use the express entry system of Canada. So we all applied for it ourselves, got evaluated for our skills & degrees and now I am happily typing this as a permanent resident from Canada.

Express Entry System -

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/express-entry/grid-crs.asp

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#30

Post by tomtheelder »

ars wrote: post #15
youdontknowtho wrote: post #4

Blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes...

So when he does something you disagree with, he's evil? When he does something you agree with he's still evil, he just did it accidentally? And this is your chosen approach regarding people who disagree with you?

You're really putting words in their mouth, they never called him evil, not by a long shot. They were just pointing out that this is only one potentially positive facet of a whole series of deeply questionable policies on trade and immigration.

Not a hugely productive comment, but not worthy of the scorn you gave it.

Post reply on HN