U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

#351

Post by rswail » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 7:40 AM UTC

OurBoysGirls1st wrote: post #267

joshe wrote: post #94

I've worked with a few H1-B holders in Silicon Valley and they're awesome. A great improvement would be to allow H1B holders to change jobs easily (maybe after a year). It's too easy for them to get stuck in not great situations. It would be great for everyone if they could move to better fitting jobs, especially for startups who have trouble running H1-B programs. If you are, like me, a software engineer, you should…

>> They aren't competitors, they are complements and create more jobs. We've had the H1B program for 25+yrs. We accept 65+20k workers a year. That is 85 20+ workers who have entered the country on this program. Lets round down and say 2million workers. These are 2million jobs that didn't go to local graduates, but instead to overseas graduates. Of those 2 million workers, could anyone cite any significant companies s…

An alternative argument is that the US has imported expensive technical education without having to pay for it.

This advantages the US and disadvantages the country where the technical education was delivered.

The question is whether the benefit to the US is distributed properly within the US.

Re: U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

#352

Post by NeedMoreTea » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 7:43 AM UTC

rswail wrote: post #349

OurBoysGirls1st wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for bringing up this point. Anyone who has grown up in the US knows well how far down wages have gone. My father was an accountant. He could afford a house and raised a family of 5 on his salary at age 40, earning ~60k/yr. I'm an experienced developer. I make $200k/yr. I'm raising a family of 4 on my salary and i'm 40. I cant afford a house. Heck, I cant even afford more than a 2br apt. To me, it is completely…

It's not that wages haven't kept up with general inflation, it's that wages have not kept up with asset inflation. So your 200K/year (accounting for inflation) probably buys roughly the same amount in goods and services as your father, but it can't buy real estate, because that has been inflated in an asset bubble. These asset bubbles (stocks, real estate) are driven by the fact that owners of capital have been able…

That was always one of the advantages of a mortgage that was commonly mentioned and promoted. That your monthly payment would be effectively pennies after 20 years. Sustained low inflation meant that never came to pass.

It was also one of the reasons for the Weimar Republic's hyperinflation. They started trying to inflate away some of the Versailles war reparations. Which got out of control, and then some.

Re: U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

#353

Post by rswail » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 7:45 AM UTC

Qworg wrote: post #315

rhexs wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pay more, else go out of business. Why do I, the American taxpayer, need to subsidize already heavily subsidized farmers?

How are you subsidizing them? You're getting cheap food - truck crop farming is notoriously low margin. Are you prepared for $15/pint strawberries?

As an Australian, this is funny. Your Dept of Agriculture is one of the most socialist "redistributors of wealth" in the world.

Annual subsidies to US farmers is of the order of $25B+ per year. This includes non-tariff barriers such as price supports for sugar, import barriers and quotas such as on lamb and beef, export supports, crop insurance and other benefits.

The DoA has been doing this for 75+ years and the majority of farms are now corporate-owned. The majority of these taxpayer subsidies are directed straight into the hands of corporate shareholders.

Re: U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

#354

Post by Shaanie » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 7:50 AM UTC

joshe wrote: post #252

treis wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Also in the paper? "... how does immigration affect the average American?...annual economic gains to the native-born population to be between 0.1 and 0.3 percent of gross domestic product". This is an astonishingly large benefit. That is $50-150 per year for a household with a median income. It's not an astonishingly large benefit. And the GDP is entirely the wrong thing to look at. In the last two decades the U.S.…

GDP per capita is $59,531. So .1-.3% of that is $60-179. For every man, woman, and child in the United States. $19-58 billion per year. This is value created, money from thin air, you don't have to tax anyone to give $120 to everyone in the United States every single year . If you know something else that good, you should let us all know. Economists and policy makers scrounge around for stuff that's not a tenth as go…

That's all well and good if you're the physical manifest of your country. Most people tend to think about whether it's good for themselves, though. Does an increased GDP "trickle down" to the worker?

Re: U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

#355

Post by rswail » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 7:51 AM UTC

bg4 wrote: post #207

luckydata wrote: post #13

Honestly this is a good thing. Right now the H1B is a bullshit immigration program for cheap engineers from India and China designed to depress wages in silicon valley. A change is sorely needed, this is not big enough but it's definitely a step.

It's modern day indentured servitude.

It's more like a bonded job, rather than "servitude". For the visa holder, they get to work in the US, theoretically at US local wages (or more), in return the sponsoring company gets an employee that is tied to that job.

If the US Dept Of Labor and/or the local state department are incorrectly measuring a) the local wage for the position and/or b) whether or not the company has made a good faith effort to find a local employee and failed (both conditions of an H1B position), then that is a failure of regulation, not of the concept of the visa itself.

Re: U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

#356

Post by masonic » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 7:53 AM UTC

devereaux wrote: post #205

maximente wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm sorry but this comment reads like a puff piece. the red flag for me was when you simultaneously claimed that economics is complicated and then almost immediately... make an economic claim? look, i get that you want to signal positive sentiment towards immigrants. that's great. but it's not at all clear what you're saying is true - one would need to factor in inflation, minimum wage growth, purchasing power, and t…

Dude, just … no. It's not about signaling or positive sentiments. All human beings are equal. Being born in one place doesn't make you special or entitles you to a job. US citizen or whatever-country citizen, all that matters is what you can do. Meritocracy, you know. If someone else can do the job better than you or me, they should be hired. Being born in the US or gender or anything else you can think about shouldn…

  Only raw performance should matter, because anything else is discriminatory.

There go the disabled, English learners, and all others with an initial disadvantage. Go Team Darwin!

Re: U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

#357

Post by rjzzleep » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 7:56 AM UTC

jayd16 wrote: post #340

tossaccount123 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To prime your intuition a bit, consider how woman and minorities more than doubled the work force from the 1960s to 1990s with no loss in jobs or lowering of wages. You do realize there hasn't been a raise in real wages since the 70s when you account for inflation right? Coincidentally during that same time period the income gap exploded because the wealthy had plentiful cheap labor and were able to pocket the produ…

By this logic, any increase in productivity is bad because it reduces labor scarcity. That's just not how it works. > if we dropped 10 million software engineers in Silicon Valley from around the world, guess what? Guess what, we'd get a lot more overseas clients as they wrestled with the labor shortage abroad. (Although, the real problem would be the humanitarian crisis in housing 10m more in SV overnight, ha)

This hits the nail on its head. The reason why SV is so attractive to potential immigrants isn't because of its living standard of thousands of homeless people the healthcare, transportation or housing system.

It's because the scarcity of that particular labor makes it on one of the best paid tech sectors in the world. Most people go there for the money even if they may stay for other things. Well that, and the fact that other highly skilled people compete for those few spots available, which means you might be surrounded by interesting peers.

China for example has 10x as many communication network engineer graduates as the whole of Europe altogether. That's ignoring the fact that a significant number of graduates are migrants themselves. I believe China and India have the longest Green Card waiting lists.

Re: U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

#358

Post by Zombiethrowaway » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 7:57 AM UTC

"master’s or higher degree from a U.S. institution"

This puts at a competitive disadvantage international universities over US ones, regardless of education performance.

It sounds like protectionism, which will translate into more foreign students applying for US universities, driving education costs even higher.

You will now definitely buy a degree/name, not so much an education.

Sad.

Re: U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

#359

Post by AYBABTME » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 8:00 AM UTC

emiliobumachar wrote: post #203

pishpash wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rising compared to what? Junior engineers are doubling or tripling up to live near work in metropolitan areas or face crushing commutes. It's a sign that even in software engineering, capital is crushing labor.

Be aware that Silicon Valley is an extreme global outlier in real estate prices.

Not really, there's cities all over the world with conditions that lead to crazy high real estate/housing costs. Most every metropolis ends up with a similar situation. Slightly different settings that all sum up to "high demand low supplies". NYC, London, Vancouver, Hong Kong, Tokyo, ...

Re: U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

#360

Post by austincheney » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 8:04 AM UTC

acdha wrote: post #92

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that those on H1B visas are bringing wages down for software engineers is a popular one. Is it supported by data? If it isn’t, this is just thinly veiled xenophobia. Personally, I think the more diverse groups have an opportunity to come to America legally, the better.

Look at it from the other direction: large companies have fought giving H1-B workers better protections. They wouldn’t be doing that if they weren’t profiting from workers with less negotiating ability. That’s also my position: don’t ban them, give them flexibility to switch jobs like everyone else so companies can’t hold the threat of deportation over them if they want a better deal.

You replied to a comment arguing against positions made from speculation without data by supplying more speculation without data.