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

U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 637 posts

Re: U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

#231

Post by sudosteph »

niyazpk wrote: post #139
maximente wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the whole idea of "just moving the jobs offshore" doesn't really come out to be as simple as you have equated here. there's often time zone differences, cultural difference, a simple inability to do work (e.g. anything requiring access to physical infrastructure, any client-facing meetings, etc.) it's not like you can flip a switch and get a fully functioning setup, even with something like development. we've seen th…

I was under the impression that Amazon has a large portion of its engineering talent outside the US.

Who told you that? That was not my experience at all working there a few years back. Even for global teams like AWS engineering support, the US offices easily tripled the international ones in number of engineers.

I knew exactly one team based in Germany, but that was only because AWS acquired that product and team.

Re: U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

#232

Post by [deleted] »

niyazpk wrote: post #111
briandear wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When H1s are used to displace American workers at a lower cost, I am not sure “cheering all immigrants” is warranted. Some, but definitely not all. The Disney firings happened. And it has happened in many other places that aren’t as famous. When Disney has H1s displacing Americans who were already doing the job, that isn’t a “shortage,” which is the single purpose for which H1B was created. I am not disputing the val…

I am wondering how not having H1B could have helped the Disney employees though. If Disney wants to cut costs and hire cheaper labor (presumably why they hired H1Bs? I don't know), they could as well move the jobs offshore. Now the US is losing out on much more than just the jobs. What am I missing here?

[deleted]

Re: U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

#233

Post by jessaustin »

mc32 wrote: post #168
arcticbull wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chili sounds spicy. I’m not pro jus soli but to characterize birth tourism as a big problem is crazy. A conservative think tank estimated it at 40,000 births per year out of 4.3 million (0.9%) — the average delivery costs $32,000 for an economic benefit of $1.28B per year. Then those poor kids are going to have to pay US income taxes for the rest of their natural lives no matter where they live. We can expect the fir…

It’s not a problem in and of itself but it’s illustrative of our lax policy.

No matter how much some people might dislike the 14th Amendment, it ain't going anywhere.

Re: U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

#234

Post by femiagbabiaka »

stevenwoo wrote: post #202
femiagbabiaka wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that those on H1B visas are bringing wages down for software engineers is a popular one. Is it supported by data? If it isn’t, this is just thinly veiled xenophobia. Personally, I think the more diverse groups have an opportunity to come to America legally, the better.

Norm Matloff at UC Davis has blogged about this for a decade. A sampling of one paper has several references about the bias toward much younger and cheaper H1-B candidates in academia and professional workforce. He also argues diversity is better. https://normsaysno.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/reforming-h-1b-a...

Thanks for the link. It looks like he wrote for U of M Journal of Law Reform on this topic: http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Mich.pdf. Until I read through it and cross check his sources I can't judge the validity of course, but after reading over the first two pages his arguments seem compelling.

A link to a 2000 profile in Salon on him: https://web.archive.org/web/20150307053811/http://www.salon....

Re: U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

#235

Post by zjaffee »

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #220
zjaffee wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You understand that the predictions for industry growth on those pages are virtually the same as the number of CS bachelor's degree graduates every year. We don't need to important more labor that that which is getting educated inside of the United States short of those who demonstrate extraordinary ability (i.e. those who come into the country on EB1 rather than on H1B).

> You understand that the predictions for industry growth on those pages are virtually the same as the number of CS bachelor's degree graduates every year. they're not... > We don't need to important more labor that that which is getting educated inside of the United States short of those who demonstrate extraordinary ability (i.e. those who come into the country on EB1 rather than on H1B). We can't produce enough in…

You're wrong, look at the data. There are 75,000+ graduates of bachelors and masters programs in the US each year, with many more in related majors and in bootcamps, where the BLS data predicts an industry growth for software developers (including standard, applications, and systems) of around 600,000 workers between 2016 and 2026.

You can make the argument that many of those with degrees aren't as skilled as companies would like, and in turn they seek employees from abroad, but it's blatently false that the US isn't graduating enough engineers to meet demand.

Re: U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

#236

Post by defen »

joshe wrote: post #94

I've worked with a few H1-B holders in Silicon Valley and they're awesome. A great improvement would be to allow H1B holders to change jobs easily (maybe after a year). It's too easy for them to get stuck in not great situations. It would be great for everyone if they could move to better fitting jobs, especially for startups who have trouble running H1-B programs. If you are, like me, a software engineer, you should…

> To prime your intuition a bit, consider how woman and minorities more than doubled the work force from the 1960s to 1990s with no loss in jobs or lowering of wages.

That is not at all obvious. How would you respond to Elizabeth Warren's "The Two-Income Trap"?

Re: U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

#237

Post by joshe »

maximente wrote: post #164
joshe wrote: post #94

I've worked with a few H1-B holders in Silicon Valley and they're awesome. A great improvement would be to allow H1B holders to change jobs easily (maybe after a year). It's too easy for them to get stuck in not great situations. It would be great for everyone if they could move to better fitting jobs, especially for startups who have trouble running H1-B programs. If you are, like me, a software engineer, you should…

i'm sorry but this comment reads like a puff piece. the red flag for me was when you simultaneously claimed that economics is complicated and then almost immediately... make an economic claim? look, i get that you want to signal positive sentiment towards immigrants. that's great. but it's not at all clear what you're saying is true - one would need to factor in inflation, minimum wage growth, purchasing power, and t…

My claim is "economics is complicated", so we should listen to economists. Then I put in a link to what some economists say to give the flavor.

You can go adventuring for yourself. Look for papers from the federal reserve, university economics blogs, and academic journals. You can just read the abstracts. You will find a very clear consensus.

I am also explicitly saying that the media and even high quality media like the Nytimes will leave you with very bad intuition about the effects of immigration.

Re: U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

#238

Post by baby »

peferron wrote: post #213

H-4 holders (spouses of H-1B, for the uninitiated) should be allowed to work. That they don't is inhuman and de facto hurts women, since the overwhelming majority of H-1B holders (at least in the Valley) are men. It's forcing women into a stay-at-home role as if it were the 50s. It's especially hard for H-4s because they are newcomers to the USA who may not have local friends or family. My wife went through it for a…

I know a bunch of people on H-4, it's really really sad :/

Re: U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

#239

Post by zjaffee »

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #217
zjaffee wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From an economics perspective, unless the hiring of more software engineers results in an increased demand for software engineers (i.e. there being a significant latent demand), H1B absolutely then lowers the earnings potential of engineers. Especially those earning more towards the middle and bottom of the market. I'd also add that BLS data suggests that this induced demand isn't true. As the projected employment gr…

There aren't 60k people graduating with computer science bachelor's degrees every year in the US from any source I can find: https://datausa.io/profile/cip/110701/ . And the projections are for 300k, not 600: https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/fastest-growing-occupations.h... . where are you getting your data from?

There are more job codes for software engineers than just the one listed on that fact table.

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

Additionally, you can see what degrees people are graduating with here https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=37

So yes my numbers are correct if not lower than they should be for both.

Re: U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

#240

Post by [deleted] »

wyldfire wrote: post #55
mc32 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Punish employers with heavy fines for e-verify violations. If no one hires you, no reason to stick around. This is what Japan does, Korea, Taiwan, etc. The US is way lenient on illegal entry and accommodating to irregular workers. In many countries the only way you get around that is if you work with the local mobsters --so only highly risk taking indivs take that opportunity.

IIRC employers avoid this liability by executing the fraud themselves. There's no e-verify violation because they use legitimate SSNs from a living person, fraudulently. The workers aren't the problem, the employers are. Legislators and govt executives look the other way in order to preserve competitive agriculture.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN