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Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

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Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#321

Post by rayiner »

seadan83 wrote: post #309
rayiner wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, democracy is supposed to be two wolves and a sheep voting on who to eat for dinner. What you’re talking about are the anti-democratic measures the founders put in place because they didn’t trust democracy. Look, it’s hardly settled that “democracy” is a good thing. The founders didn’t think it was—they restricted the franchise to property owners, and provided for indirect election of the president and appointment…

Please explain the senate > No, democracy is supposed to be two wolves and a sheep voting on who to eat for dinner. The senate is exactly the sheep. That the senate is now controlled by the sheep is also wild. The senate is what gives a person in Wyoming has 4x the voting power of someone in California. The senate was designed so that the less populous states (the sheep) don't get rolled. That the senate is majority…

> Please explain the senate

The Senate is orthogonal to our discussion. It implements the federalist structure of our government, representing the states themselves. That’s why the state legislatures originally appointed Senators. We have muddled up the system through direct election of senators and should probably repeal the 17th amendment.

Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#322

Post by alwa »

someperson wrote: post #306
alwa wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if, as a condition of the visa [0], the sponsoring high-performing immigrant guarantees that the relative won’t become a public charge, and becomes legally bound to reimburse the public purse if that happens? I seem to recall the notion that elderly people are normally isolated, atomized wards of the “aged-care industry” as a relatively recent innovation, no? Versus people seeking to bring elderly relatives to r…

The final years of healthcare for the elderly is unaffordabily expensive. Nations are able to afford it with a healthy dependency ratio, but with the Baby Boom generation leaving the workforce, it will no longer be possible. A young family who have recently migrated are saving for a house and college, to make them pay for a decade of end-to-life treatment (cancer treatment, dialysis) at United States price ranges is…

Don’t the elderly people in question—where they or their sponsors can’t cover the cost—1) have their visa applications denied on public charge grounds, or 2) not receive those treatments?

I was of the impression that, in the US at least, such immigrants might be allowed to purchase Medicare if they’d been here for a long time and worked/paid payroll taxes for many years—but that they certainly wouldn’t qualify to get it for free in the way native-born people do. Native-born people with 10 years of formal employment, anyway.

Not sure how that works with Medicaid—it sounds like [1] some states have chosen to implement that in ways immigrants can access if they come in on green cards and spend their working lives in the US, paying in to the system—but that seems to me more like a local policy choice than a primary feature of the immigration system.

For that matter, in your formulation, should the working-age immigrants themselves, who permanently resettle and work their whole life in the US, be denied access to old-age benefits when the time comes?

[0] https://www.kff.org/faqs/medicare-open-enrollment-faqs/enrol...

[1] [PDF] https://www.health.ny.gov/health_care/medicaid/publications/...

Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#323

Post by actionfromafar »

timr wrote: post #305
Havoc wrote: post #134

This has very strong "cruelty is the point" vibes. There are a fair bit of international flights in the 10-12 hour range. Add some time to pack, get to airport, baggage check, get through security & how the flight times line up and this seems calculated in a way that is precisely not doable. Never mind people not perpetually online and only seeing this a couple hours later Meanwhile there is to my knowledge no reason…

> This has very strong "cruelty is the point" vibes. Hanlon's razor. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Regardless of what you think about the wisdom of the policy itself, implementing it rapidly is...probably not the best decision. But it's also par for the course for this administration. It's not clear to me that this is an intended consequence of the policy change, or just M…

This level of carelessness is malicious. Reckless neglect at best.

Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#324

Post by someperson »

alistairSH wrote: post #293
someperson wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abandon is the wrong word. Should the country receiving the immigrants let elderly grandparents be cared for by their own country's pension and aged-care and healthcare industry, instead of burdening the receiving countries? Absolutely unequivocally yes. The grandparents can always come visit on tourist visas and the immigrants can visit their original country too.

Generally speaking, those parents wouldn’t have the work history to qualify for SS benefits in the US. AND IIRC, they’d need some form of permanent residency to qualify for Medicare/Medicaid.

Many Medicaid rules around minimum residency and work history are being (insanely) relaxed/removed. At least in California.

Based on my reading of the law, you can overstay a tourist visa and receive Medicaid coverage in California relatively quickly.

(But that's a different discussion)

Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#325

Post by pimlottc »

pavlov wrote: post #2

Not just vacations, but also business trips. They come up with these rules on a Saturday morning. If you’re a visa holder outside the country and you don’t return to the US by Sunday, you’ll be asked to pay a $100k ransom to re-enter the country where your life and work and children are. Amazing level of contempt for ordinary foreigners who came into the country legally.

And _required_ visa renewal trips, as mrmansano's anecdote shows [0]

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45312877#45313687

Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#326

Post by seadan83 »

notmyjob wrote: post #267

Doesn’t seem fair to the companies that employ these people. It’s obviously a hidden tax on large tech companies like x and Tesla that hire a lot of global talent.

I think a bigger tax on small companies. I worked on one where the co-founder was an h1b. That company grew to employ about a thousand people. It's job creation.. that would not have happened when the company was young with this tax.

Meanwhile, big tech is sitting on piles of money. I think startups and scale ups will suffer a lot here.

Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#327

Post by jacquesm »

boothby wrote: post #221
jacquesm wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, no way that any of this isn't finely calibrated to cause maximum misery. I was on the wrong side of the border when 9/11 happened, for months a whole chunk of my life was in limbo. Thanks to giving my bookkeeper emergency power of attorney in just such an eventuality we managed to squeak through but if not for that bit of foresight I'm not sure if we would have.

Wild. I flew domestically about a week after 9/11 and forgot that I had my leatherman in my pocket until I got to security... and the xray operator didn't see it in my backpack.

Oh that could have ended quite differently. I've had stuff that looked on second thought very much like explosive devices (little black boxes with a bunch of wires sticking out, internal pouch batteries) in my luggage on more than one occasion. I never so much as got a peep out of anything like that. But for some reason my elderly laptop is a real magnet for official attention and there is absolutely nothing non-stock about that one.

Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#328

Post by yibg »

yash1th wrote: post #216
mrmansano wrote: post #140

Anecdotally, although I'm sure it's happening to more people. I'm Brazilian, I work in the US on H1-B. I'm on vacations in Brazil with my wife and kids, one in school age. I also came to renew my visa stamp, as I had my extension approved not long ago. My visa is valid from September 21st, so, same day as this proclamation takes effect. And I can't go back before that because my visa is not valid. My flight was sched…

i did not know until today there is this much anti-immigrant and especially anti-indian sentiment in tech. idk, it was very eye opening and very sad to read those. i am telling myself that people who were posting those things are small in numbers.

It's not surprising really. There needs to be an enemy group, one that some portion of the supporting population has some grievance against. First it's hispanics (illegal immigrants taking your jobs), then trans (men in womens washrooms), then Indians (taking your tech jobs), then it'll be some other group.

Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#329

Post by pinkmuffinere »

frankharv wrote: post #318
abeppu wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

48 hours would also have been crazy. This should be a bill introduced in Congress, discussed in committee, voted on, and enacted with a date months in the future when it goes into effect, so that people, companies and government agencies can prepare and plan ... you know like an country with laws and procedures.

That argument went out the door when the last administration chose to open the borders. We have laws against that. But they were ignored.

I agree that we should obey our laws. However, I don't think "they broke the rules, so I can too!" holds, and I feel it's obvious that it's wrong.

Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#330

Post by YZF »

timr wrote: post #275
softwaredoug wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Polling in the US has swung in favor of immigration: > a record-high 79% of U.S. adults say immigration is a good thing for the country. It’s hard to separate what’s supported by the public and what are random hobby horses of the far right once they get in power. Because the US has historically been relatively more positive to immigration I am skeptical that we would see the same reaction as in the UK or other countr…

> Polling in the US has swung in favor of immigration Don't forget to quote the parts that contradict your statement: > After climbing to 55% in 2024, the percentage of Americans who say immigration should be reduced has dropped by nearly half to 30%. Sentiment is thus back to the level measured in 2021, before the desire for less immigration started to mount. Meanwhile, 38% now want immigration kept at its current l…

With polls the questions you ask matter a lot. I don't read this poll as being about illegal immigration but someone else might (e.g. you did). That is worth splitting out as a separate question. But asking that risks getting answers you don't like, e.g. my bet would be most Americans would not support the idea that anyone can just come and stay in the US illegally without going through any process, i.e. an open border policy. My bet would also be that most Americans would support immigration of highly skilled labor or certain other professions given the right processes in place and demand for those. There are probably other ways to slice and dice this question to get a deeper understanding of how people think about this.

It would also be nice if the poll probed as to the reasons for why people hold certain opinions. My guess would be the numbers are changing partly due to political backlash and not due to some economical or social insight.

The good thing about this poll is that the same questions are asked over time. So likely the trends are real. It's just hard to get a more nuanced understanding.

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