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USCIS is challenging an unusually large number of H-1B applications

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Re: USCIS is challenging an unusually large number of H-1B applications

#331

Post by dilyevsky »

EdSharkey wrote: post #184
damnyou wrote: post #40

Ah yes, gotta love H-1B threads. The latent nativism among the Hacker News crowd is laid bare. Here's a radical proposal: give anyone with a clean criminal record and a job offer a green card. No limits, no $100k minimum wage, no protectionism. If you, with all the advantages that natives get (networks, language, NETWORKS), can be beat by an immigrant with zero social connections, you probably are worth less than you…

I just don't like to see people made into indentured servants. Here's my radical proposal: let H1B's change jobs once a year, as long as they're employed somewhere in the industry they're here for and their visa hasn't expired, they can stay. "Sponsoring" companies should not be allowed to keep slaves. I don't think your radical proposal makes much sense. What's the benefit to a country to basically throw its borders…

Applying for existing h1b transfer is already fairly trivial (or at least it was before Trump) if your company has a lawyer firm on retainer. Most h1bs I know switched jobs at least once.

Re: USCIS is challenging an unusually large number of H-1B applications

#332

Post by mavelikara »

majormajor wrote: post #28
giobox wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the H1-B is a "Dual Intent" visa, it is absolutely still about immigration, the H1-B doesn't just allow for temporary workers. It provides a well worn path to a green card and permanent residency in the US too, and in my experience virtually everyone I've known to use the H1-B has done so. The H1-B cap is surely a far more pressing concern for most technology firms than the GC backlog. The H1-B cap and delays a…

I think the parent poster's point is that the H1B process is far from the bottleneck there, for shops intending to bring along their foreign workers rather than churn through cheap employees, which matches my experience.

Indeed.

Also, the GC backlogs are more relevant to SV than the two other issues mentioned - travel ban and DACA. Yet SV leadership is way more vocal on travel ban and DACA than they are about GC backlogs.

Re: USCIS is challenging an unusually large number of H-1B applications

#333

Post by horsecaptin »

anigbrowl wrote: post #225
horsecaptin wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not too long ago, "the less globalization, the better" was the liberal point of view.

By definition, not - maybe you could pick a better term?

Which definition are you using?

Re: USCIS is challenging an unusually large number of H-1B applications

#334

Post by Terr_ »

comicjk wrote: post #195
jarsin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup cant stand journalism today. Straight up mouthpiece for the rich. Why did they not ask the company what the wage for that position is. How many people in Chicago did they interview. Did they interview anyone over 50 who has that exact experience? Did they approach anyone currently working in similar jobs and offer them raises and other benefits to entice them over? Truth is the Company did none of those things so…

You're talking as if there are only two parties here: owners (rich) and tech workers (not rich). But tech workers are well above the average US income. The unspoken group in your argument is the consumer, who on average is poorer than the tech workers. Lowering tech wages with H1B visas helps the consumers as well as the owners, because it makes the marginal tech product less likely to fail. You might still think tha…

I feel there's an apples-to-bytes comparison in there, given that the marginal cost for another instance of the same software is negligible.

This is especially true when you're talking about the non-institutional "poor consumer", as opposed to a company having customized or proprietary software made just for them.

Re: USCIS is challenging an unusually large number of H-1B applications

#335

Post by mavelikara »

calvinbhai wrote: post #306
davidw wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The logical remedy would be to eliminate the lock the employer has on these people so that they can get competitive offers and see their salaries bid up to something better.

You'll never see the tech titans ask for this option, while they are busy portraying themselves as pro-immigrant :)

Well, to be fair, they do cry lots of tears for every other form of immigration except skilled one.

Re: USCIS is challenging an unusually large number of H-1B applications

#336

Post by Terr_ »

whack wrote: post #268
Terr_ wrote: post #5

The particular anecdote in this article almost seems anti-convincing to me... It suggests a job that should get challenged: > For Centro, a company in Chicago that makes technology for ad agencies [...] applied for visas for three young employees who already had the legal right to work for a limited time after graduating from college. > To Clark's eyes, the position — which consisted of writing algorithms and require…

You're right. "Multiple programming languages" and RDBMS skills aren't exactly rare. Those are very poor reasons to hire someone. Here are the real reasons they probably wanted to hire him: He's smart enough to do well on his SATs/GREs and go to a good university. He's hard working and conscientious enough to get a good GPA while in University. He's got great recommendations from his classmates, former employers and/…

That's a nice appeal, but on reflection that case isn't actually virtuous.

What you have described is not an employer who is just violating letter of the law in some harmless defiance of red tape... No, that employer is deliberately breaking the spirit of the law too.

The H1-B exemption is intended to allow for immigrant workers when domestic supply doesn't exist. Not "when you really really like a dude."

Re: USCIS is challenging an unusually large number of H-1B applications

#337

Post by lawtguy »

bischofs wrote: post #36
komali2 wrote: post #13

Conservatives may generally view this as "good" regardless of the impact because (according to arguments I've heard) "the less globalization, the better." In my mind, however, it boils down to two pretty simple points: Given that (1) the US is lagging far behind every developed nation in education, and higher education in the US is prohibitively expensive compared to other developed nations, (2) the only way for the…

To play devils advocate, at this point in time with the highest rate of immigration in the history of the country (i think 13%) "conservatives" are looking out for the american citizens that are losing out to these high skilled (and low skilled) immigrants. Why is it that we cannot compete with foreign companies with native workers? Why should those countries be okay with losing their top talent? Shoudnt we solve the…

The 13% you mentioned I'm assuming is the percentage of the US population that is foreign born. That is not the highest in US history. Take a look at page 3 of this: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/pdf/cspan_fb_slides.pdf (sorry for the PDF). You'll see that 13-14% foreign born was pretty much the norm from 1860-1920. The US society seemed to survive that just fine.

To your point though, I suspect a lot of older voters grew up with much lower immigration (due to the Immigration Act of 1924) and so this level feels really high to them even though it was common for a large part of US history.

Re: USCIS is challenging an unusually large number of H-1B applications

#338

Post by damnyou »

bischofs wrote: post #324
vilmosi wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> Why not build up your own country and affect their living standards in a positive way? I can answer that in a personal way. Because I don't care. The modern world is capitalist, especially with software. If your work is worth X dollars, why would you work for X/10 dollars? Because of nationalism?

Interesting perspective. I am curious about why the country you are going to pays more than the one you are coming from in software. Would it be too bold for me to say it has some cultural reasons? Perhaps the openness to innovation? or maybe the way people think about solving new problems? Why not try to instill these cultural mechanisms in the country you came from? I hope i'm not coming across as a cultural imperi…

> Would it be too bold for me to say it has some cultural reasons? Perhaps the openness to innovation? or maybe the way people think about solving new problems?

It's usually an institutional problem. For example, a country where the laws governing business are predictable will work better than one where businesses are at the whim of a local authority.

For more along those lines, check out Why Nations Fail by Acemoglu and Robinson.

> Why not try to instill these cultural mechanisms in the country you came from?

So work twice as hard to get half as far?

Re: USCIS is challenging an unusually large number of H-1B applications

#339

Post by turkishgetup »

xster wrote: post #325
calvinbhai wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the big chunk of H1Bs are for people from India and China, Citizenship through employment is almost impossible for most of them, especially those born in India. This link explains the why and how very well http://7monthsvs70years.siia.us People born elsewhere (other than China, India, Philippines) and are here on an H1b, are better off in terms of chances of getting a Green Card and a citizenship in a decent am…

Jesus, I didn't know there was such a huge disparity between India and China

The reason is that U.S. Immigration laws only allocate 14% of annual quota to employment-based (EB) petition. The majority go to family-based (FB) petitions. Indian have a much higher EB/FB ratios, whereas Chinese have many more FB petitioners, e.g. cross-ethnicity marriages. Chinese also have one more eligible category than Indians---green card for asylees.

Ethnicities/nationalities like Mexicans have negligible skilled EB immigrants and have a much higher reliance on FB to immigrate a whole family to the U.S. (oftentimes derisively called out by Republicans as chain immigration), and thus they face longer FB backlog compared with Chinese FBs and Indian FBs. For example, as of today, the backlog for an Unmarried Child of an Mexican immigrant is 21 years, whereas that of Indians and Chinese are 7. (https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/law-and-policy/bul...) The priority date for a skilled Mexican immigrant programmer, who would be filing for either EB2 or EB3, is current (no backlog).

Since the system is heavily family-oriented, EBs often found themselves in very awkward positions as either the scape-goat for America's economic problems or distractions among partisan fights. A lot of things do not make sense. For example, the spouse of an EB petitioner does not count as "family-based" but takes up one more EB slot, and their school-age children, despite not being employed for work, are counted as "employment-based" immigrants. In addition, to offset the number of green cards given out to Chinese nationals after the 1989 Tian'anmen Square Massacre, a number of greencards are deducted from Chinese EB quota. Just making small changes to these two issues can ompletely eliminate Chinese backlog and greatly shorten Indian backlog. However, the politicians couldn't care any less about sensible solutions. While Democrats typically only pay the lip service, Republicans' common tactic is to hide their anti-immigration attempt behind a big banner of pro-skilled immigrants. The Rs either will try to trade the EBs with zeroing out refugee quota or slashing FBs in half, for example. They may have a good point (U.S. admits more refugees than employment-based immigrants annually), but touching that hot-button issue will never get Democratic votes, and it beginning to increasingly look like Republicans' political show vote.

Re: USCIS is challenging an unusually large number of H-1B applications

#340

Post by dahdum »

natoliniak wrote: post #328
bduerst wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It already is. H1B visa holders are required to be paid more than the prevailing wage for citizens working the same SOC job classification in the same region.

I wish that was the case, but it is not. You can verify this yourself as H1B salary data are publicly available http://h1bdata.info . Take a look for example at Wayfair in Boston. Majority of their H1B Developers make around $50k-$70k. This is significantly less than the prevailing wages around Boston, so it is quite clear that they are using H1Bs as cheap labor source.

Wow - Juniper Networks got approved with $63,960 for "Software Engineer" in Sunnyvale just this year while LinkedIn is paying ~$125k for the same title.
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