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New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

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Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "… do not put my name on it or associate it with me in any way." If you invented it, then they have to put your name on the application as the inventor. There’s also a declaration that the inventor is supposed to sign as part of the application. If the inventor is dead or otherwise unavailable (e.g., refuses to sign), there’s an alternative form that can be filed.

I'd be willing to bet lots of companies play fast and loose with the "inventor" names on patents anyway. I've looked up software patents issued to companies I've worked for, and sometimes the "inventors" listed were just eng managers and likely had nothing to do with the actual grunt work of writing the code.

"the actual grunt work of writing the code" isn't actually patentable in my experience, from Europe (inc. UK).

The inventive step is the actual decision of 'we will do this thing in this way', or rather determining the 'method'. In fact, the guidelines we follow are that someone implementing the design based on some instructions, i.e, just working on a ticket, is explicitly not to be included as an inventor - unless they actually decided that's how it should be done.

Of course, it's nice to work in a place whereby you get to design and implement the system and become an inventor. In my opinion and experience at least. But I can see some organisations whereby developers are popping off tickets in sprints and implementing them - but that is by definition not an inventive step.

Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#272
This isn't bad timing really, we just had a year of layoffs and have a federal election just around the corner. The people who are interested should read up on Trump's previous immigration policy, which looks to be considerably more favorable to domestic citizens

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/news/trump-h1b-changes-miss-...

Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#273
post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ensuring diversity of immigration sounds like an important criteria to keep in mind.

Really? 1. Is that why they give special virtually uncapped visa classes to Australia, Singapore, Canada and Chile while everyone else has to deal with h1B? 2. Do you think there are country based limits when admitting people through the southern border or granting refugee status?

Australians, Chileans and Singaporeans are eligible for a class of work visa that basically has no cap (or cap has never been reached). They don't have the complete with the unwashed masses who have to deal with H1B.

Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#274
post #267
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Canada full of foreign PhDs driving taxis because they qualify for permanent residence on points but then can't get jobs because employers want "Canadian work experience"? Canada also has a major housing crisis due to not building enough housing for population growth (which is entirely immigration, Canada's population would shrink without it). Doesn't seem their system works very well in practice. At least the…

> Isn't Canada full of foreign PhDs driving taxis because they qualify for permanent residence on points but then can't get jobs because employers want "Canadian work experience"? Canadian here. Nope.

Also Canadian here. PhD might be a stretch but there’s absolutely a large number of Uber drivers with a foreign masters.

Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#275
post #256
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to look far, Canada has already implemented a point based system for granting permanent residence to skilled workers. It assigns scores to applicants based on education, skills, employment offer, language speaking ability, etc. I believe it can be a good starting point for a more objective selection criteria than the current system which is more based on luck. https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refug…

Isn't Canada full of foreign PhDs driving taxis because they qualify for permanent residence on points but then can't get jobs because employers want "Canadian work experience"? Canada also has a major housing crisis due to not building enough housing for population growth (which is entirely immigration, Canada's population would shrink without it). Doesn't seem their system works very well in practice. At least the…

"Canadian work experience" is a generic reason often given to people who the company doesn't want to hire. It has happened to people I know. There can be many reasons:

- Racial bias

- Sexual bias

- Age bias

- Candidate's English / French ability.

- Candidate's actual experience isn't relevant enough.

- Candidate's personality.

- Candidate's appearance.

- Candidate's communication skills.

Why would I give you the real reason when I can provide a generic reason and stay out of trouble?

Some people I know went to college to get local credentials. Luckily community college is affordable and respected. Others changed fields. Others started their first business. A few left the country.

Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#276
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? 1. Is that why they give special virtually uncapped visa classes to Australia, Singapore, Canada and Chile while everyone else has to deal with h1B? 2. Do you think there are country based limits when admitting people through the southern border or granting refugee status?

I have no idea what these have to do with the matter being discussed here. We're talking about legal immigration and cap applied to visa/green card. What is "virtually uncapped"? Do you have a source explaining how Australia, Singapore, Canada and Chile are treated differently? And as an FYI, I see no problem with Canada having a special regime.

https://www.jackson-hertogs.com/us-immigration/temporary-wor...

BTW Mexico gets the same special regime as Canada under NAFTA.

Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A historic year of tech layoffs? Does that mean most tech layoffs ever? Or just that layoffs occurred when they didn’t in the last few years?

> does that mean most tech layoffs ever why would it mean that? historic= famous or important in history, or potentially so. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/historic

Historic means the year must be notable for something. Otherwise, it is just being used as embellishment here. I doubt 2023 layoffs will actually make it into the history books.

Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#278

>“You don’t have any accomplishments,” the lawyer told him. “You don’t have a patent, or even a product.” That scolding spurred Sanjay to make a list of what he needed to do to achieve his goal of staying permanently. He improved the technology his AI-based firm was developing, expanded its customer base, and filed for a U.S. patent, which was awarded earlier this year. In May those efforts paid off, allowing him to…

As a US citizen interested in improving the visa process who regularly interfaces with policymakers, propose an objective rubric that is better and I will get it in front of policymakers. Can't guarantee an outcome, will guarantee the effort. Patent quota is bullshit, but also "I know talent when I see it" (even though I do and how I hire) isn't going to fly. Sorting hats are hard, Goodhart's Law, etc. High level, yo…

I’m an American (born here), but I’ve felt our skilled immigration policies are wrong-headed for a while, especially after dealing with them as a hiring manager. Broadly speaking, I feel we need a better focus on a) getting people who have the skills that our businesses need and b) naturalizing those people as US citizens who are willing to commit their whole careers to our country. The H1-B system seems to be the worst of both worlds…gamified so that bad actors get many of the hires and gamified on the employee side so you get people, say, sacrificing salary for a better green card process.

If I were to propose something different, it would be ratios by job title/salary, with obvious veto ability by government TLA agencies for security risks. Points systems for skilled migration are an in exact proxy and miss out on talented people with less formal educations. I’d rather place the burden of deciding who gets to work here on businesses who are trying to fill actual positions. Let them decide who is actually qualified based on the actual skills they’re looking for. And because they have to hire a requisite number of similar-level Americans, the worst thing that might happen is a sort of jobs program for Americans when companies are forced to employ more Americans to satisfy the ratio needed to hire foreigners.

This would have two other benefits that I can see. First, it would make it much easier for small companies with primarily-American workforces to hire foreigners since they wouldn’t need so much legal help or luck in winning a visa lottery. Second, foreign workers would integrate better because they’d always be working with Americans.

The main weakness that would need to be protected against is companies under-classifying and underpaying foreign workers (i.e. the janitors are American but are up-classified as software engineers and the software engineers are foreign and paid janitorial wages), but I feel these sorts of situations should be addressed by judges when complaints are made against companies trying to game the system.

Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#279
post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a feature, not a bug. Otherwise you could find X country that is loose with citizenship requirements and get around the US' per-country limit.

Only a feature if you believe in the per country limit. The alternative is to just score everyone based on point based system and admit the highest scorers regardless of national origin.

> point based system

Today if you're an illegal migrant and claim asylum, you get +inf points. If you're born in certain countries with long wait time, you get -inf points.

Clearly the system today is working within your definition.

Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#280

[flagged]

>I suppose the counterargument is that the US educational system is generally so poor that it's not generating enough people with the necessary technical capabilities to meet employer demand...

It's not the quality of the education system, it's the motivation of the students. In the mid-2000s, it was very fashionable to believe that all programming jobs should be offshored to India. People imagined that the startups of the future would have executives living in California and programmers living in India. Some VC firms would even pressure their startups to structure themselves in this way.

Now imagine it's 2006, you're 18, you're American but you're hearing that the future of programming is going to be in India. Are you going to major in Computer Science? Probably not.

Fast forward to 2012. The problems of offshoring to India are much more apparent, plus some of the most successful startups of the mid-2000s (e.g. Facebook) did not rely on offshored talent. So now people want to hire in the US. But now there's a shortage of new CS grads.

But of course, companies/executives/VCs blamed the laziness of American students and the alleged poor quality of the American education system, rather than the messages they themselves had been sending out for the previous 10 years.

>It's also rather noticeable that the VC tech investor sector wants more cheap obedient labor, and doesn't want this point raised.

I've never been able to wrap my head around VCs, executives, and others in the US who have a obvious preference for foreign-born talent, but still complain about the lack of US-born workers.

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