Live data from Hacker News

Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

wsj.com

351–360 of 1001 posts

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#351
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t that cause a large displacement of the existing labor force and significantly drive down wages?

This is the intuitive belief, but the research doesn't really prove that: https://www.cato.org/cato-journal/fall-2017/does-immigration... There are studies showing a slight decrease in wages, studies showing a slight increase in wages, and studies showing nothing conclusive. There's basically not enough scientific consensus to use for decision making, which means it's more a moral choice than an economic one.

Maybe academic research doesn't substantiate that, but reality definitely does.

This is from May 2020:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/19/quarantine-...

Basically, the UK fruit industry was worried that it might not get "enough workers" because of COVID restrictions.

Which of course is brazen corporate double-speak. There are workers in the UK, like tens of millions of them. It's just that they're not willing to work for miserly wages. So there's only two options: (1) increase local wages, or (2) import cheap foreigners. Business obviously prefer the latter. ("But but but strawberry prices would increase" isn't a good argument - agriculture is heavily subsidized anyways.)

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#352

Overall, I really support these changes. However, this piece really struck me as a big mistake: "Under the changes, an applicant must have a college degree in the specific field in which he or she is looking to work. A software developer, for example, wouldn’t be awarded an H-1B visa if that person has a degree in electrical engineering." Some of the best software engineers I know are graduate degree holders from neu…

[deleted]

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#353
post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is really bad. Families are going to get told to leave. I’m surprised that there is no discussion on this thread about the impact to people who haven’t done anything wrong. It's not a moral issue (except for the big H-1B mills that are gaming the system.) But nothing has changed: these are not an offer of citizenship. They are temporary work visas with no guarantees: an opportunity to do temporary specialty wo…

People oh H1B are either very friendly to constant moves or are banking on a path to citizenship through it. The latter category is the vast majority, let's be honest here.

> People oh H1B are either very friendly to constant moves or are banking on a path to citizenship through it

BY DESIGN, as H1Bs (as well as L1s and a couple others) are dual intent

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#354
post #281

I'll give you that, but it seems like a much simpler solution would have just been improving the flexibility for an H1B worker to be allowed to work at any employer for the term of their status. If an employer used an H1B in order to hire a foreign worker and then under pay them, the worker would just get another job that pays market rate, without the work status concern. Without the artificial control over the emplo…

I vaguely recall that the "indentured" h1b workers (as oppose to the "proper" h1b like I had) owe money back to home, and that debt becomes instantly due if they bail out. If they were super-stars they would be able to cover it from the Amazon signup bonus (and become indentured to Amazon - your signup bonus is due back if you bail out early). However superstars rarely end up in those jobs. We're looking at people wi…

> We're looking at people with kinda average engineering skills, poor understanding of the American culture, no connections, and grim determination to grind their way out of their old life.

I don't think these are the kind of people getting an H1B visa, though. It's usually the super-talented people they hire on H1B.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is right. The answer that's best for the economy is to allow more immigration, not less (especially skilled immigration). This move will just make it more dificult for the average company to sponsor H1B workers

Serious question: wouldn’t that be leaving less jobs open for Americans? As an American myself, I want to see my fellow Americans getting good jobs over people from other countries.

I've read study that shows automation has a much more significant impact on the job loss than immigrants.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#356

This is a great move. The current H1B program made no sense at all. If I wanted to hire: A smart graduate from EPFL, Polytechnique or ETH Zurich who interned at CERN and has contributed to the Linux kernel for a software engineering job at a unicorn startup or A grad from a second tier "technical college" in India with a visa refusal rate of ~90% for a job doing manual UI testing and QA for a body shop my only path f…

> A grad from a second tier "technical college" in India with a visa refusal rate of ~90%

Colleges are unrelated to visa refusals.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#357
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you avoid seeing 500M indians/Chinese landing in America on the very next day? I think there is a middle ground between the disaster that are immigration laws today, and full open borders.

Bad scare call. In the US, over 3 million Puerto Ricans are now allowed to migrate to the mainland US (say to DC). The borders are completely open to them. In Europe, similarly, around 20M Romanians are allowed to Sweden. But they don’t. Just because people are allowed to migrate, it doesn’t mean they will. And in the case of an overwhelming majority, they won’t.

> In Europe, similarly, around 20M Romanians are allowed to Sweden. But they don’t.

Supposedly allowed and not at all welcome. Like most affluent countries, Sweden doesn't actually want poor people immigrating into their country. So they make things very difficult for those people. It's also why they shut down the big immigration flood, their society was highly intolerant to it.

Americans - commonly ignorant to the details of rest of the world - would be shocked to learn how regressive Scandinavia can be. From very strict immigration to virtually bulldozing minority neighborhoods in Denmark [1][2], to attacks on immigrants in Sweden and burning immigrant camps, to large political parties derived from former neo-nazi groups.

From Reuters in 2015 (the Romanians got the message):

"A series of attacks in Sweden on beggars, many Roma, has highlighted a dark side to a country considered a bastion of tolerance but where the far right has been gaining support by claiming society is under threat from waves of immigrants."

"An influx of thousands of mainly Roma migrants has shocked affluent Swedes, with beggars now a common sight outside supermarkets, IKEA stores and subways in the capital."

"There were around 300 reported attacks on Roma in 2014, up 23 percent on the year before, according to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention. Police say the figures underestimate the scale of the problem."

"The government reckons around 5,000 migrants, some of whom also come from Hungary, are in Sweden begging. Many live on the street or in squalid camps. In recent months, attackers have thrown acid at beggars and burned tents and caravans."

"Many migrants in Sweden say they want to work, but lack of education and language skills make it impossible for most, leaving begging as the only alternative."

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-sweden/sw...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/01/world/europe/denmark-immi...

"When Rokhaia Naassan gives birth in the coming days, she and her baby boy will enter a new category in the eyes of Danish law. Because she lives in a low-income immigrant neighborhood described by the government as a “ghetto,” Rokhaia will be what the Danish newspapers call a “ghetto parent” and he will be a “ghetto child.”

Starting at the age of 1, “ghetto children” must be separated from their families for at least 25 hours a week, not including nap time, for mandatory instruction in “Danish values,” including the traditions of Christmas and Easter, and Danish language. Noncompliance could result in a stoppage of welfare payments. Other Danish citizens are free to choose whether to enroll children in preschool up to the age of six."

[2] https://www.npr.org/2020/08/15/900874510/facing-eviction-res...

"Facing Eviction, Residents Of Denmark's 'Ghettos' Are Suing The Government"

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Body shops" like Infosys and Tata Consulting that import thousands of H1Bs under borderline fraudulent applications, and then underpay these employees. Just a random link, but the contours of the problem: https://www.epi.org/blog/new-data-infosys-tata-abuse-h-1b-pr...

Sure, there are low paid H1B workers, but why is that necessarily a problem? Your link shows no evidence that they depress the wages or employment of native-born workers. In fact, there are many proper economic analyses that show that native-born workers benefit from immigration: https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/3pi8vo/highsk...

I'm fully supportive of massively more immigration - I believe it's a net economic positive and a moral imperative.

At the same time, if a program is designed to bring in 'exceptional talent' but is really just importing mediocre drones from a single country, that's not really serving the purpose of the program.

Let's fix H1Bs and then work on more equitable ways to allow other forms of beneficial immigration.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#360
post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xenophobia is more expected, when the immigrant population is ghettoized, alienated, given fewer opportunities and stricter policing, and made to compete with the local population for limited jobs. A more reasonable policy would be to make sure the that doesn't happen. Say by abolishing racist policing, better urban planning, better labor laws, and partly socialized job market. EDIT: Changed wording, previously incor…

Xenophobia is never natural, it's comprehensible but there are a lot of folks able to resist falling into it as a scapegoat from bad circumstance. I agree with improving society to help less folks fall into it, but I don't believe in allowing any excuses for xenophobic views.

I would have thought that the comment "xenophobia is natural" is fairly uncontroversial. It's certainly not an artificial construct forced upon people (although certain expressions and targets might be). That's why there are articles like http://nautil.us/issue/49/the-absurd/why-your-brain-hates-ot... . After all, even animals can exhibit xenophobic behaviors.

I don't think runarberg meant that xenophobia is acceptable or proper.

Post reply on HN