Cancel the program. It's not needed. It's used to game the system. It's not supposed to be a backdoor to a green card.
What is the correct pathway to green card for a worker immigrant?
America does not owe the world a green card.
Updates to H-1B
321–330 of 1001 posts
Re: Updates to H-1B
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is a shortage of applicants willing to work at what companies want to pay. That and companies are just hilariously bad at finding workers they want to hire for nebulous reasons. I have no doubt even if my company hired 95% of the workers it had marked down as "no hire" they'd be able to squeeze a salary's of value worth out of each of them (well, if management is competent, which it tends to not be). I'm sure…
Okay, I have interviewed hundreds of people in the last decade, and I can tell you that most are not good enough. There are companies that are downright abusing H1B for wage suppression, but as a startup founder, I will try my hardest to avoid hiring people who I have to squeeze their salary's worth and still get mediocre results (nothing to do with citizen or not - I had this experience with a Canadian contractor -…
> Okay, I have interviewed hundreds of people in the last decade, and I can tell you that most are not good enough.
Me, too. I straight-up disagree; I think interviewing is just so broken it gives a false impression of quality issues in the labor pool. Realistically if you have a handful of core skills you can ramp up to basically any problem with enough time. That's time on the order of months, maybe, not years. Companies just don't want to bother training anyone anymore. Why bother when you can just complain endlessly and hope some politicians throw cheap labor your way? In that sense you're absolutely right, but the whole "quality" thing is completely unrelated.
> I have been successful in liberating money from VCs and create jobs, and I want the best people that money can buy.
I think people seriously overestimate the difference engineer quality makes. Most products can be built with mediocre talent. I'm sorry, that's the truth. We all love to have strong opinions on who we should hire and I say "almost anyone, just throw meat at the problem". Most problems are solved with time and not cleverness.
Startups are definitely more sensitive to quality, but startups don't make up much of the labor pool, and they don't pay competitively with much larger companies that don't need the quality.
I'm being a little hyperbolic here—you do need people with experience and ability to see red flags to lead the flock—but not by much.
Re: Updates to H-1B
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
The rabid chants went from: we need to stop illegal immigration and make sure everyone enters legally To: We need to make sure we only allow valuable immigrants that add to the economy To: Cancel this program. They are gaming the system. You can choose the game to play but you can't choose the rules of the game.
> but you can't choose the rules of the game. Well you of course can. These rules are set by government and they have power to change as they see appropriate.
I think it's called democracy or something.
Re: Updates to H-1B
#324Surprised by all the negativity here. The USA benefits enormously from skilled immigration: "doubling the size of the US H1B visa program increases US and EU growth by 4% in the long-run" From a recent paper here: https://academic.oup.com/qje/advance-article-abstract/doi/10...
It’s a slowdown in tech recruitment, so it is fair for citizens to think for themselves first. There are quite a lot of candidates that can fulfill most of the roles, and it has bad optics when the government tries to prioritize others.
Disclaimer: I don’t live in the states, but I can understand the frustration.
Re: Updates to H-1B
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's enabling companies to bring highly skilled individuals to work in the USA rather than having them open offices in other countries.
That's how it is marketed to the masses. From what I hear from many US citizens it actually looks quite different in reality.
The reality is US is a tech powerhouse, many successful companies have been started by former h1b holders and US tech workers are highest paid in the world (even PPP adjusted). What you're hearing is not the reality - it's just vibes.
Re: Updates to H-1B
#326A supposed shortage of qualified US applicants for tech jobs, especially software developers, doesn't jibe with the huge numbers of US developers currently looking for work, including highly experienced older workers suffering from age discrimination. I'd be surprised if more than 5-10% of H-1B positions are ones where the hiring company has even looked for US applicants.
It’s really simple test. Dig into unemployment numbers for skill shortages. If your industry only has an acceptable level of unemployment filings, then it qualifies as an industry eligible for H1B. Within the industry, each company would interview you on SV style data structures and algorithms. If you don’t make the interview, you are not qualified. The foreigner who could pass such a qualifying test would then get the job and visa is an accessory here.
Re: Updates to H-1B
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a non-immigrant to the United States, I don't really buy into the idea that companies prefer H1B candidates purely for financial reasons. The H1B process is frankly a rigid, unreliable and time-consuming process. It's hard for even Canadians and Mexicans to find jobs in the US and we have access to the supposedly easy to obtain TN visa. Australians too with E3. I'm more inclined to believe that H1B workers have ot…
> I'm more inclined to believe that H1B workers have other benefits to employers such as longer tenure due to the restrictions of moving jobs. That is a financial motive. Companies don't want to pay the kind of compensation which would induce employees to be loyal to the company, and so they use H1B quasi-indentured servitude as a cheaper alternative.
It doesn't quite work that way. H-1B employees need to have above average compensation or their field. This is part of the application process.
Re: Updates to H-1B
#328A supposed shortage of qualified US applicants for tech jobs, especially software developers, doesn't jibe with the huge numbers of US developers currently looking for work, including highly experienced older workers suffering from age discrimination. I'd be surprised if more than 5-10% of H-1B positions are ones where the hiring company has even looked for US applicants.
There is a shortage of applicants willing to work at what companies want to pay. If it is taking more than 30-60 days for workers to find a role, there are enough workers domestically.
> If it is taking more than 30-60 days for workers to find a role, there are enough workers domestically.
This makes no sense, even if I agree with your first statement.
Not every company is willing to completely retrain a worker for something outside of their core competency. Lots of candidates simply aren’t competent, or even reliable employees. Lots of companies would rather a position go unfilled than make a bad hire that is very expensive to fix.
Re: Updates to H-1B
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
So then call the H1-B program what it is - a way for US tech companies to depress wages to the point that you can't afford to live the US, unless it's a bunch of H-1B holders living together in a house share. The same goes for offshoring for jobs. Lovely for shareholders and the CEO's bonus, but not so great for US residents having to compete with them who are paying US cost of living, not Indian/etc overseas cost of…
It's racist to prefer citizens over non-citizens though. The US government should pass laws benefiting all people of the world equally.
It's nationalist, not racist. Passports and border controls are the practical foundation of all nationalism.
Re: Updates to H-1B
#330Cancel the program. It's not needed. It's used to game the system. It's not supposed to be a backdoor to a green card.
Yeah, you have no idea of the process of getting green card via h1b works.
You can ditch the US, get permanent resident status in Canada, become Canadian citizenship, get TN visa to work in the US if you want to and someone who thinks that h1b is a backdoor to a green card will be just starting on green card paperwork. And that's if there are no issues with application.
This is all after participating in h1b lottery for years. Trust me, it's an extremely slow and painful way of getting a green card. If h1b is your way to a green card, it means either: you're already married, you have no idea what are you doing.
It's no a backdoor in any way, person move to the US for work and builds a life here, accumulate assets, I think it's pretty reasonable to give those people a way to settle in the US permanently in these cases.
The program needs to be revamped because it's not working in the way it's sold to voters.