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Fewer H-1B visas did not mean more employment for natives (2017)

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Re: Fewer H-1B visas did not mean more employment for natives (2017)

#31

Post by justinhj »

whatever1 wrote: post #18
justinhj wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or pay $100k

If I charge you a fee of $10000 / month for home internet, while useful, you will prefer to just not use it and find other ways to access it (maybe from a library or a coffee shop). Similarly the employers will just cut the bleeding edge programs that require specialty skills and will focus on others that the local labor market can cover.

The argument is that companies cannot hire locally the talent they need. The super star devs that make or break a company. And yet they are not worth $100k?

Re: Fewer H-1B visas did not mean more employment for natives (2017)

#32

Post by whatever1 »

justinhj wrote: post #31
whatever1 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I charge you a fee of $10000 / month for home internet, while useful, you will prefer to just not use it and find other ways to access it (maybe from a library or a coffee shop). Similarly the employers will just cut the bleeding edge programs that require specialty skills and will focus on others that the local labor market can cover.

The argument is that companies cannot hire locally the talent they need. The super star devs that make or break a company. And yet they are not worth $100k?

It depends on who you ask. If I’m a startup with $500,000 in the bank, I definitely don’t have $100,000 cash to spend on the taxman

However, if I’m a trillion-dollar company, why not?

Re: Fewer H-1B visas did not mean more employment for natives (2017)

#33

Post by DrewADesign »

mikert89 wrote: post #10

Outsourcing has never worked for core products and innovation. Anyone claiming all these jobs will go over seas has never tried to outsource something complex. Zero large cap businesses have succeeded at this. The outsourcing comes in long after the innovation has stalled and the product is KTLO

Tell that to the VFX industry

Re: Fewer H-1B visas did not mean more employment for natives (2017)

#34

Post by whatever1 »

The question of finding cheap competent programmers has already been answered via remote work.

There are tons of agencies who provide access to good to excellent talent from abroad (India, Eastern Europe even Latin America if you prefer same time zone) for a fraction of what the US market offers (even after accounting for overhead).

You can literally find someone vetted to work on your project within hours. No mess with payrolls, insurance and whatnot, you just pay a consulting fee.

So if the H1Bs were not really better than the expensive local and cheap remote talent, why would the companies get into this mess?

Re: Fewer H-1B visas did not mean more employment for natives (2017)

#35

Post by Herring »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #9

There is some evidence of fraud, substitution of native workers with H-1Bs, power imbalances and more playing a part in the labor market. A lot of Americans, including in tech seem to be clamoring for less H-1Bs and immigrants, let them have it and see how it goes. Maybe it really will be better. It should be a win-win where India gets to keep more of its best talent and the US native population has less competition.

Where are you getting "less competition"? The article clearly says that's not what happens. Study after study has shown that immigration generally has a net positive effect on the US job market.

What'll probably happen is a spiral like in the US South and rural/republican areas. The economy keeps getting worse and people keep getting more hateful and anti-intellectual and self-destructive.

Re: Fewer H-1B visas did not mean more employment for natives (2017)

#36

Post by wenc »

SpacePortKnight wrote: post #30

Vancouver is very close to Seattle. Would restrictions in H-1B result in increased hiring in Canada or a higher usage of L-1 visa perhaps?

Canada has great homegrown software talent (mostly out of schools like UWaterloo and UToronto). They usually come to the US on TN visas, not H-1B.

Canada has given the US so many great people: Brian Kernighan, Alfred Aho, Rob Pike, Ken Iverson, James Gosling, Rasmus Lerdorf, Matei Zaharia, Geoffrey Hinton, Ilya Sutskever, Andrej Karpathy, John Chambers, Robert Gentleman...

Re: Fewer H-1B visas did not mean more employment for natives (2017)

#37

Post by mieses »

dangus wrote: post #17

Of course it doesn’t. Don’t forget that immigrants are participants in the economy. If they are removed there are fewer customers. Without immigrants, the US is losing population. That is fact.

The argument makes sense if you value numeric population over culture.

Re: Fewer H-1B visas did not mean more employment for natives (2017)

#38

Post by mieses »

Herring wrote: post #5
cranberryturkey wrote: post #2

well it don't mean less either.

It almost certainly does mean less. Numerous studies have shown that immigration generally has a net positive effect on the US job market. It’s the broad consensus among economists. Racism is crazy. Everyone can look at the US south and plainly see the results of failed policies .. everyone except the Southerners.

Rates of immigration in US history were small compared to current rates. Their conclusions are based on small numbers. Small numbers over time can "integrate" into a culture. Large numbers over time may also be called an invasion. A lot of the economic papers lead to the conclusion that infinite Somalis will have net positive effects. We need better research.

Re: Fewer H-1B visas did not mean more employment for natives (2017)

#39

Post by zaptheimpaler »

Herring wrote: post #35
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #9

There is some evidence of fraud, substitution of native workers with H-1Bs, power imbalances and more playing a part in the labor market. A lot of Americans, including in tech seem to be clamoring for less H-1Bs and immigrants, let them have it and see how it goes. Maybe it really will be better. It should be a win-win where India gets to keep more of its best talent and the US native population has less competition.

Where are you getting "less competition"? The article clearly says that's not what happens. Study after study has shown that immigration generally has a net positive effect on the US job market. What'll probably happen is a spiral like in the US South and rural/republican areas. The economy keeps getting worse and people keep getting more hateful and anti-intellectual and self-destructive.

I don’t really know what the studies show or how accurately they represent the effect of restricting H-1B today. I do believe there is a chance it could help the native population, partly because a lot more Americans studied CS in the last few years after it became a prestigious and high-paying career compared to its usual immigrant dominated status. I'm tired of the constant slurs and hatred. It’s better for immigrants too to be turned away before getting a visa than live amongst people that hate them. I know many people believe that eliminating it would cause less competition and they have many anecdotes to back this up - including discrimination by some hiring managers, caste system stuff, poor work quality, etc etc. Ive seen enough evidence that this is not just a fake bot created trend - a lot of people really do not want immigrants. Democracy demands that the government run the experiment and gives the people what they want.

Re: Fewer H-1B visas did not mean more employment for natives (2017)

#40

Post by barrkel »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #39
Herring wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you getting "less competition"? The article clearly says that's not what happens. Study after study has shown that immigration generally has a net positive effect on the US job market. What'll probably happen is a spiral like in the US South and rural/republican areas. The economy keeps getting worse and people keep getting more hateful and anti-intellectual and self-destructive.

I don’t really know what the studies show or how accurately they represent the effect of restricting H-1B today. I do believe there is a chance it could help the native population, partly because a lot more Americans studied CS in the last few years after it became a prestigious and high-paying career compared to its usual immigrant dominated status. I'm tired of the constant slurs and hatred. It’s better for immigra…

That's a lot of evidence free speculation. "Many people believe", and you doubt any studies that show the opposite.
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