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

H-1B: Government issues first-ever official estimate of visa population in U.S.

mercurynews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 136 posts

Re: H-1B: Government issues first-ever official estimate of visa population in U.S.

#21

Post by corporateslave5 »

rpiguy wrote: post #12

The H-1B program is terrible and needs to be reformed. It is supposed to temporarily shore up the supply of critically skilled workers that are in demand. While it does this, when the program was envisioned no one imagined H-1B visa holders working here for 10+ years. If only there were a word for the importation of minority labor and locking them into employment with their sponsor, effectively reducing their negotia…

As an American worker, I have been discriminated against on majority H1B teams at two separate companies. I have seen the same for other Americans.

Re: H-1B: Government issues first-ever official estimate of visa population in U.S.

#22

Post by refurb »

arcticbull wrote: post #14
vsskanth wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it exists. It's called an I-94. DHS has that info. Every single foreigner is assigned a unique alien number and tracks your entry and exit into the country. They just don't want to deal with connecting information from two different departments.

Strictly speaking that's insufficient as crossing from the US into Canada by land doesn't invalidate your I-94. They do need to join it against a bunch of other data -- which they do have.

Exactly. They have the data, but they’d need to link it to a few other sources for it to be complete.

The US, unlike Europe (at least in my experience) doesn’t check passports on the way out. They rely on flight manifests or information from Canadian authorities on who has exited.

Re: H-1B: Government issues first-ever official estimate of visa population in U.S.

#23

Post by sjs7007 »

arcticbull wrote: post #18
xxpor wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you generally, but I think you might just be a missing a piece of the puzzle. For folks from countries that don't have a large backlog, you can get a green card in something like 3 or 4 years today. But if you're from somewhere with a large backlog (e.g. India and China) you're looking at a decade+. So the real issue here is the green card quota levels, not so much the h1b itself.

> For folks from countries that don't have a large backlog, you can get a green card in something like 3 or 4 years today. If you've got a motivated employer you can get it done in 18 months. - PERM takes 6-9 months to prepare. - PERM takes 120 days to certify currently. - I-140, I-485, I-765, I-131 and I-693 can be filed simultaneously for rest-of-world. - I-140 with premium processing takes 1-15 days (3-12 months w…

I think you are missing the point that it's only a pain point for countries with a backlog, not ones without a backlog. 3-4 years in the grand scheme of things is not all that long for gaining PR of a different country.

Re: H-1B: Government issues first-ever official estimate of visa population in U.S.

#24

Post by rpiguy »

xxpor wrote: post #17
rpiguy wrote: post #12

The H-1B program is terrible and needs to be reformed. It is supposed to temporarily shore up the supply of critically skilled workers that are in demand. While it does this, when the program was envisioned no one imagined H-1B visa holders working here for 10+ years. If only there were a word for the importation of minority labor and locking them into employment with their sponsor, effectively reducing their negotia…

I agree with you generally, but I think you might just be a missing a piece of the puzzle. For folks from countries that don't have a large backlog, you can get a green card in something like 3 or 4 years today. But if you're from somewhere with a large backlog (e.g. India and China) you're looking at a decade+. So the real issue here is the green card quota levels, not so much the h1b itself.

This is good information, thank you. I had team members who had put down roots here and they would be terrified every time they had to renew. They were Indian so it was likely because of the queue you mentioned their green card application seemed to never end.

I'd still rather spare people that terror.

I am a conservative strongly against illegal immigration, but conversely I think we need to open up legal immigration a lot more, especially to those who've worked here and contributed to our economic success, like H-1B workers.

Re: H-1B: Government issues first-ever official estimate of visa population in U.S.

#25

Post by anticonformist »

rpiguy wrote: post #12

The H-1B program is terrible and needs to be reformed. It is supposed to temporarily shore up the supply of critically skilled workers that are in demand. While it does this, when the program was envisioned no one imagined H-1B visa holders working here for 10+ years. If only there were a word for the importation of minority labor and locking them into employment with their sponsor, effectively reducing their negotia…

Reforming the H-1B to do what it was intended to do would mean eliminating 99% of the visas that are granted.

It turns out that the entire H-1B program has been a massive scam. It was created and promoted by American Big Tech companies to make them money at the expense of American citizens. It's been a trillion dollar theft from lower and middle class Americans into the hands of the 1%.

Without the H-1B in place, these companies would be working to fix America's education system, paying more in salary to workers, and lifting more Americans into the middle class.

The program has been beneficial in many ways but the overall effect has been to use foreigners as a weapon against citizens.

One of the most reprehensible aspects has been the propaganda by the Big Tech companies. They're pretending to care about America's melting pot and helping immigrants, but they're importing primarily the wealthiest immigrants. They're damaging America and other countries at the same time, all in the name of money.

Re: H-1B: Government issues first-ever official estimate of visa population in U.S.

#26

Post by russellbeattie »

The H-1B program definitely needs more regulation to prevent abuse by companies (especially when it comes to salary negotiations). But if anything we should increase the number - it's not like those people are just going to not work if they don't come to the U.S. They'll just work in different countries, either driving more offshoring of labor by American companies, or just competing with them directly. It's in the U.S.'s best interest as a whole to get as many of the best and the brightest in the world to work here, and then do everything we can to get them to stay.

Currently, 48M+ people in the U.S. were born outside the U.S. and we welcome a larger total number (like 1.2M+) of immigrants per year than any other country in the world. By far - it's like double the closest country easily, year in and year out. Basically all of Western Europe combined. Might as well have a lot of them be PhDs and other highly skilled/educated people.

Besides, half of Silicon Valley was started by immigrants or children of immigrants - maybe more. In my experience, third+ generation Americans tend to take what they have for granted. If you've worked your ass off and crossed the world to get to the U.S., you're the type of person we want here. It's been that way for literally generations. To quote Hamilton (which I just saw this weekend), "Immigrants. They get the job done."

Re: H-1B: Government issues first-ever official estimate of visa population in U.S.

#27

Post by arcticbull »

sjs7007 wrote: post #23
arcticbull wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For folks from countries that don't have a large backlog, you can get a green card in something like 3 or 4 years today. If you've got a motivated employer you can get it done in 18 months. - PERM takes 6-9 months to prepare. - PERM takes 120 days to certify currently. - I-140, I-485, I-765, I-131 and I-693 can be filed simultaneously for rest-of-world. - I-140 with premium processing takes 1-15 days (3-12 months w…

I think you are missing the point that it's only a pain point for countries with a backlog, not ones without a backlog. 3-4 years in the grand scheme of things is not all that long for gaining PR of a different country.

Indeed this assumes your priority date is current, which it is for all EB2 excluding India and China, and many EB3s. [1]

[1] https://www.uscis.gov/visabulletininfo

Re: H-1B: Government issues first-ever official estimate of visa population in U.S.

#28

Post by sagarm »

anticonformist wrote: post #25
rpiguy wrote: post #12

The H-1B program is terrible and needs to be reformed. It is supposed to temporarily shore up the supply of critically skilled workers that are in demand. While it does this, when the program was envisioned no one imagined H-1B visa holders working here for 10+ years. If only there were a word for the importation of minority labor and locking them into employment with their sponsor, effectively reducing their negotia…

Reforming the H-1B to do what it was intended to do would mean eliminating 99% of the visas that are granted. It turns out that the entire H-1B program has been a massive scam. It was created and promoted by American Big Tech companies to make them money at the expense of American citizens. It's been a trillion dollar theft from lower and middle class Americans into the hands of the 1%. Without the H-1B in place, the…

Those big tech companies already have international offices. Why wouldn't they have just expanded those offices?

Investing in education etc is not really the job of companies in our capitalist system. They could not capture enough of the value to justify the cost, especially given the very long lead times.p

Re: H-1B: Government issues first-ever official estimate of visa population in U.S.

#29

Post by Lammy »

arcticbull wrote: post #15
rpiguy wrote: post #12

The H-1B program is terrible and needs to be reformed. It is supposed to temporarily shore up the supply of critically skilled workers that are in demand. While it does this, when the program was envisioned no one imagined H-1B visa holders working here for 10+ years. If only there were a word for the importation of minority labor and locking them into employment with their sponsor, effectively reducing their negotia…

> If only there were a word for the importation of minority labor and locking them into employment with their sponsor, effectively reducing their negotiating power for salary to zero... It really doesn't do that. To be fair, H-1Bs are supposed to be in-demand specialty workers, to meet the spirit of the program. That means they have, by definition, negotiating power. I've spent a lot of time in H-1 status and I have…

It's fundamentally not a level playing field in "at-will" employment states where losing a job means finding a new one or leaving the country within number of days.
Post reply on HN