Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

I think it would help, but we could still be better.

As an America living in southeast with ~40 years of life to plan for, I face the similar issue of: which country can I feel can be a 'safe' home for me to live in?

If Vietnam had a f1 -> h1b system (and no country caps), I would still not feel safe to call Vietnam my home.

- The h1b is a lottery. I could work my butt off and still just be unlucky.

- H1b is tied to employment. If I lost my job due to economic situations, poor politics, or personal health issues, I have 60d to find a new job or buy airplane tickets to leave.

> Because german politicians are incapable of implementing an immigration strategy that isn't absolutely, undeniably retarded.

Please don't fulminate or post ragey flamebait and offensive epithets on HN. HN is for people who have higher standards than this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: We've warned you several times about this kind of commenting and you've posted similarly inflammatory comments in the past week or two, so we've banned the account.

> In what way do you think it worked as intended?

If I recall correctly, just my base was 20-30% higher than the prevailing wage that the government publishes (big tech bubble people forget how wages look like outside of big tech). In exchange, my employer hired someone with a graduate degree that knew C/C++ well enough to contribute immediately (I also did an internship with them a year prior).

> 13 years ago you should have been ineligible by both base salary and scarcity

I disagree. I don't believe my wage was lower than what a US candidate would get (from what I've seen at big tech, HR dictates wage brackets so same position translates to roughly same wage) and it is more expensive for a company to hire internationally. To me this means that they were unable to fill the position domestically. Later in my career I was involved in interviewing and the candidates were barely able to code (small sample size though) so either I was unlucky (after all, a lot of people apply even when they maybe shouldn't; some may have had a bad day), or the talent pool is indeed pretty small. I guess systems programming is a specific enough niche?

> I’m not saying you aren’t supposed to be here, I’m saying fix that program. The US shouldn’t be training talent and kicking them out. We should be training and keeping talent.

H1B was the only option available to me that allowed me to kick off the naturalization process so no issues there for me as well.

>Companies pay that simply because they can get away with it.

Which is usually called "market price". The latest thing I heard is "threemodal market", where there tier 1, is US subsidiaries, tier 2 is local it companies and banks, and tier 3 is a normal not fancy place. Upper tiers are more competitive and tier 1 can have 200k and up compensation packages (that including shares, and stuff), lower end of tier 3 and something like 50-60k. Then there are hourly contracts too.

>But EU could do so much better if only it got its shit together instead of this pathetic "but we got public transport" style coping.

It's a pretty shallow dismissal. Not having to deal with cars and heal insurance bullshit for my whole life saves me how much money exactly? Not even monetary amount, the peace of mind alone. How much would you pay to let you child cycle to school and generally not be afraid of environment?

There is even deeper level of belief to this sometimes, that you being able to afford food delivery or eating out every day isn't a good indication of the state of the society, but I don't want to go there.

I lived in a place with 5% flat tax rates too and I'm here by choice, paying for all that really.

None of the things you perceived are what I think the H1B should be for though

so I can see how we're talking past each other

in neither my model or the current model, a salary percentage over what the government publishes has nothing to do anything. that's not a factor.

your wage being lower than what a US candidate would be paid for that role is not a factor either.

regarding the talent pool, I think you have it backwards to rationalize how it benefited you, companies are often looking for candidates in many places and then retroactively decide whether to accomodate special circumstances such as visa sponsorship

I'm glad you felt valued, empowered, had a nice compensation package, and a naturalization path you were looking for

now to my model: in 2013 the minimum salary for the H1B with a master's degree should have been ~$113,000. Solely based on the 1989 $60,000 number adjusted for inflation. if the company wouldn't have justified that for their inability to fill the position domestically then it still shouldn't have occurred. or systems programming was that valuable and would have pushed up salaries faster because of the actual shortage.