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New H1-B Visa bill doubles the salary requirements to $130K/yr

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

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Re: New H1-B Visa bill doubles the salary requirements to $130K/yr

#251

Post by Vampires123433 »

PhaseLockk wrote: post #222
Vampires123433 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. F1 students are not American citizens and are not entitled to an immigration pathway through employment. They are on a student visa with the right to study at an American university.

This is true, but on the whole immigrant college graduates are typically a boon to an economy, not a drag. It's in our best interest to keep these people here, rather than shipping them back home.

I don't know the statistics to agree or disagree.

I can only convey that the current system is shady and is rife with abuse. Reform is necessary, preferably nonpartisan.

Re: New H1-B Visa bill doubles the salary requirements to $130K/yr

#252

Post by cylinder »

Vampires123433 wrote: post #189
Retric wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

H-1B was not setup as a path for graduates to stay in the US. It was intended to allow highly skilled workers in and has been gamed since then to do all kinds of things. That said, I think a permissive immigration policy is in our intrests, but H-1B is a poor basis for such a policy.

This. F1 students are not American citizens and are not entitled to an immigration pathway through employment. They are on a student visa with the right to study at an American university.

We do not need more entry level candidates. By allowing the importation of entry level workers you deny graduates the chance to receive training and obtain valuable experience. There's then little incentive for employers to train fresh grads.

Re: New H1-B Visa bill doubles the salary requirements to $130K/yr

#253

Post by amluto »

I think this is the entirely wrong solution because it misunderstands the problem.

The problem isn't that the H1B requirements are off a bit. The problem is that H1B visa holders are essentially indentured servants. Say you're a foreigner who applies for an H1B job. Your employer does a bunch of paperwork, gets you an H1B visa, and imports you. Now you can't quit because you can't get a new job. Of course you get underpaid, and of course companies love their H1B workers.

The US should scrap the whole system and replace it with some kind of merit- or point-based visa system for skilled foreigners. The replacement system should have portable visas so that the foreigners aren't inherently cheaper to employ than citizens, permanent residents, and holders of less broken visas.

(Frankly, I agree a bit with the anti-immigrant save-our-job perspective right now. Citizens, permanent residents, etc do have an unfair disadvantage to H1B workers because of the broken structure of the H1B visa.)

Re: New H1-B Visa bill doubles the salary requirements to $130K/yr

#254

Post by [deleted] »

readhn wrote: post #209
samfisher83 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do know something about the industry. A couple a of years ago Merk had a massive layoff. Basically there mission was to get rid of R&D because R&D wasn't cost effective. They would much rather just buy up startups when a drug looked promising. I think most of the other big pharmas are doing the same. I have friends who are phds doing stuff that a tech could do. Look at how many BMEs with BS degrees are getting jobs…

Who do you think is driving a lot of the research work at the biotech start ups that the Merc and others are buying up?

[deleted]

Re: New H1-B Visa bill doubles the salary requirements to $130K/yr

#255

Post by beachstartup »

readhn wrote: post #209
samfisher83 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do know something about the industry. A couple a of years ago Merk had a massive layoff. Basically there mission was to get rid of R&D because R&D wasn't cost effective. They would much rather just buy up startups when a drug looked promising. I think most of the other big pharmas are doing the same. I have friends who are phds doing stuff that a tech could do. Look at how many BMEs with BS degrees are getting jobs…

Who do you think is driving a lot of the research work at the biotech start ups that the Merc and others are buying up?

the scientists that got laid off, and then found funding elsewhere.

Re: New H1-B Visa bill doubles the salary requirements to $130K/yr

#256

Post by webmaven »

refurb wrote: post #200
webmaven wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, it is a bit exagerated, but try living on $130k in SF (as opposed to, say, East Palo Alto), paying off student loans, saving a bit, etc. $130k is a very good salary if you moved to SF a couple of decades ago and bought a house then .

I don't get this perspective. SF is one of the most expensive cities in the US. The very fact you live there means you're well off. People with the mean (or median) US wage, couldn't even fathom living within the city limits. It's kind of like someone who lives in Beverley Hills saying "I make $500K per year, but I'm only middle class since I can't afford an average home in Beverley Hills". Well no shit, the homes th…

OK, I'm going to try and keep this simple, rather than a rant.

Big expensive cities (like NYC) usually have inexpensive areas inside them. SF basically has the Tenderloin, and rents there are still nuts.

Edited to add: BTW, aside from the fact that Beverly Hills has less expensive neighborhoods within city limits (south of Wilshire? I forget) there are other even less expensive areas practically next door (just go downhill to where nobody has a view).

Re: New H1-B Visa bill doubles the salary requirements to $130K/yr

#257

Post by webmaven »

dandare wrote: post #93

A quick calculation: $60,000 in 1989 adjusted for inflation equals $116,132.42 in 2016. This changes the narative a lot.

Rather than adjusting for inflation, try adjusting for productivity instead:

http://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

Re: New H1-B Visa bill doubles the salary requirements to $130K/yr

#258

Post by randcraw »

readhn wrote: post #209
samfisher83 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do know something about the industry. A couple a of years ago Merk had a massive layoff. Basically there mission was to get rid of R&D because R&D wasn't cost effective. They would much rather just buy up startups when a drug looked promising. I think most of the other big pharmas are doing the same. I have friends who are phds doing stuff that a tech could do. Look at how many BMEs with BS degrees are getting jobs…

Who do you think is driving a lot of the research work at the biotech start ups that the Merc and others are buying up?

Biotech products are seen as harder to copy (me too drugs), require an expensive-to-validate pipeline (like vaccines), and look very attractive as a novel mechanism of action (as compared to traditional small molecule drugs). Most pharmas are inexpert in large bio-molecule mechanisms and drug design, and the fact that small molecule high-throughput-screening infrastructure cannot compete in that space makes it attractive as a game changer. (Since HTS has not shown the ROI that was hoped.) Many also see RNA-based or immune-based therapies as the next revolution in drugs.

Re: New H1-B Visa bill doubles the salary requirements to $130K/yr

#259

Post by ScalaFan »

itshoptx wrote: post #85
School-Cotton wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason top companies (FB, Google, major SV startups, etc.) exist primarily in the US is because the US is able to attract talent from all over the world. If these companies had never been able to hire the best people, there wouldn't now be the same companies hiring more Americans. They would simply exist in other countries, instead of the United States. By the way, I work at one of these companies and have had fr…

I understand the nuances of immigration and why people seek the worker visas... My dad moved here from Europe in the early 60s, went through INS, got a green card, a job, and 6 months later was drafted into the Army and went to Vietnam. Unlike Americans at the time, my dad was given the choice to accept the draft or go back to Europe. He accepted the draft, fought in Vietnam, was injured, and EARNED his citizenship t…

I believe that a green card and eventual citizenship is still available through a similar path today. You just have to want it bad enough to sign up for the American military and followup with proper paperwork.

Not many immigrants want to sign up for that duty though.

Re: New H1-B Visa bill doubles the salary requirements to $130K/yr

#260

Post by readhn »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #157
angry_octet wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree that 60k is too low. But 130k is too high. Consider someone who has just finished their PhD in a relevant area. You want to employ them in your startup in e.g. Orlando, where the cost of living is much lower than SF. Maybe 80k is reasonable. But you'll have to pay a 50k premium. Or you could set up an office in Montreal. And then your tech team will come to Florida for a 3 month code camp every December anyway.…

>Consider someone who has just finished their PhD in a relevant area. If they're hiring fresh grads, it should be an American. There's plenty of them.

There are not. By the time you graduate with a masters or PhD you often accomplish a body of research work in a SPECIFIC field, have publications, patents. So yes you are a "fresh" grad but with 5-10 published scientific papers to your name. High tech scientific companies often don't have a luxury of choosing between multiple qualified candidates. Often you have 1-2 qualified applicants ( which takes a long time to find) who are a good fit and often they have foreign backgrounds. Why? I don't know, may be it has something to do with poor American education system? Which noone is interested in fixing it seems.
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