Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

huffingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 490 posts

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#361

Post by Florin_Andrei »

whack wrote: post #349
t1o5 wrote: post #29

ex H1B here. Yes Trump is right.(though I do not like him personally, he is right in this matter) Most of the corporate America is exploiting H1B workers. I have worked in one of those firms and I have friends in many other firms. These are not Indian body shops, these are American companies. Everyone's topic of discussion when we hangout is how our H1B visas were being exploited and there is nothing we could do abou…

> "We were bound to the employer with no hopes of promotion and the long wait for GreenCard (10 years)." I don't doubt that many immigrants harbor this impression, but it is wrong. A H1B visa holder can switch companies at any time, by having that company apply to have the visa transferred to them. 99.9% of the time, this doesn't impact your GreenCard wait at all, because your Priority Date can also be transferred to…

Eh, the truth is somewhere in the middle. I say this as someone who actually went through the process.

Sure you can switch employers while on an H1B. I did. But that's an extra moving part added to the process. It's extra effort added to both sides, employer and employee. They need to really want to hire you to go through all that. If it's a tiny startup, the amount of work might just be too much (and you wouldn't want to work for a tiny startup anyway, as an H1B worker).

Also, if you somehow lose your job as an H1B holder, you only have a limited time interval to get a new job. There's a lot of pressure to just accept any job that comes along, regardless of all other considerations.

Also, typecasting is very real. The whole H1B / greencard process really, really puts the pressure on you to stay in the same job description for a long time. It's not set in stone, and there are exceptions, but as a rule you're basically forced into a straightjacket.

Basically, if you're caught in this process, there's the freedom & opportunity Big Carrot dangling ahead at the end of many years of wait. Meanwhile, your hands are tied and your actions are to a large extent dictated by a faceless, remote bureaucracy that has the full power to decide your fate. It's extremely frustrating.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#362

Post by unprepare »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #322
unprepare wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a substantive argument, or is assuming that all illegal immigrants come here with 0 cash your argument?

It's possible illegal immigrants saved money - the question then arises why the Americans didn't.

sure, we can complete the circle i guess.

because they are unemployed.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#363

Post by ryandrake »

nostrebored wrote: post #358
ryandrake wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. The supply of employees is only constrained by employers' willingness to pay. At the current prevailing wages, supply is not meeting demand. This does not necessarily mean there is a shortage.

I know tons of people my age who wanted to go into computer science. They failed out, lacked the dedication it took to make up for missing skills, etc. The wages are making people try, but the field is difficult.

Increased wages could also pull people back into software engineering who are skilled but left for more lucrative fields (or careers with better upward paths).

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#364

Post by anjc »

Bartweiss wrote: post #340
anjc wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably right there. And there's presumably shortages and surpluses in different regions of the US. A telling statistic is the amount of people who graduate with IT or STEM degrees, have intentions of working in their respective industries, but have to leave due to an inability to get work, or...unemployment rates for graduates with certain degrees. It was about 7-12% a couple of years ago for grads from CS,…

Wow. That's a decently narrow standard, and I had no idea it was so high. I object to some specifics - IS without programming education is quite different from CS/programming - but it's still a potent statistic. More narrowly, my (cynical) take is that CS degrees are decidedly unequal. Having seen multiple companies say they only bother with top-seven job fairs, and some genuinely talented friends struggle to land in…

There's definitely a wide variation in teaching between ostensibly similar courses, which might make some of the simple stats nonsensical.

> I get the sense that the "shortage" and "surplus" are capable of existing side-by-side.

I guess this is fundamentally the issue

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#365

Post by mcguire »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #330
anjc wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you getting 60%? Are you adding up the two years? And I presume you're in the US, but from an external observer's perspective, 'poverty' in the US is extreme and is almost incomprehensible to people the rest of the Western world. These are not people "choosing" to not work, they're the most decrepit, uncared-for group in the developed world.

Table 3 and division. And I presume you're in the US, but from an external observer's perspective, 'poverty' in the US is extreme and is almost incomprehensible... I spend about half my time in the US, half in India. So as a semi-external observer, all I can do is laugh at you. Most middle class people would love to live as well as the American poor do. Actually so would many Europeans - Bulgarian GDP/capita is about…

"Table 3 and division."

Or, how about page 24:

Work Experience

In 2014, 6.9 percent of workers aged 18 to 64 were in poverty. The poverty rate for those who worked full time, year round was 3.0 percent, while the poverty rate for those working less than full time, year round was 15.9 percent. None of these rates were statistically different from the 2013 poverty rates (Table 3).

Among those who did not work at least 1 week in 2014, the poverty rate and the number in poverty were 33.7 percent and 16.4 million in 2014, not statistically different from the 2013 estimates (Table 3). Those who did not work in 2014 represented 24.7 percent of all people aged 18 to 64, compared with 61.7 percent of people aged 18 to 64 in poverty.

...which is poorly written.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#366

Post by ivemadeahugem »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #81
ansy wrote: post #42

Could H-1B be more effective? Yes. It could definitely be more fair to the visa holder and do a better job of attracting and retaining the most skilled workers. But I also think it's totally wrong to say we don't have a technology labor shortage. The best evidence of this are the salary numbers for people with math and science degrees. It's not because physics and math suddenly got more valuable. It's because tech is…

There is a luxury yacht shortage. I say this because I want to run a luxury yacht business and I'm unable to buy a luxury yacht for the $10 that I have in my pocket. There is a Ferrari shortage because I want to start a "Uber With Ferraris" business, and I'm unable to buy a Ferrari with the $10 that I have in my pocket. There is a developer shortage because I want to start a software business and I am unable to buy a…

There can be shortages and you could also be able to hire people by pricing competitively.

If there are 100 open positions and 80 available software engineers, if 1 of those positions is able to pay twice as much as the next highest, they will get that software engineer - it doesn't change the fact that there are 80 engineers to go around, and no matter how high they offer in pay 20 positions will go unfulfilled.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#367

Post by yuhong »

valuearb wrote: post #212
mdorazio wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing two key points here - 1) what are corporations doing with their increased profits as a result of tactics like abuse of the H1B system?, and 2) what portion of H1B salaries ends up back in the US economy vs. abroad? The net effect for the overall economy is only going to be better under the current H1B system if companies reinvest their profits into productive uses, which they haven't been [1].…

It's not about selling stuff to India, its about selling stuff to the world and Indian developers help us do that. And it's not H1B abuse it's what it's intended for. Since we slammed the door on immigration 50 years ago, this program was created to release a tiny amount of the massive pressure of super smart people world wide who want to come to the US and help make it better. It's funny that engineers don't get the…

Even after then restoring manufacturing may be non-trivial. I have been thinking that currently NAND fabs would be good, not to restore jobs but to restore the balance of trade. It is probably not a simple matter though.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#368

Post by vikiomega9 »

pkaler wrote: post #259
t1o5 wrote: post #29

ex H1B here. Yes Trump is right.(though I do not like him personally, he is right in this matter) Most of the corporate America is exploiting H1B workers. I have worked in one of those firms and I have friends in many other firms. These are not Indian body shops, these are American companies. Everyone's topic of discussion when we hangout is how our H1B visas were being exploited and there is nothing we could do abou…

Canadian by birth. Indian by ethnicity. Vancouverite by choice. Let me know if you have questions about relocating, personal or professional.

So, dumb question, how easy is it to obtain a Canadian work permit/residency but continue working in the Valley?

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#369

Post by mcguire »

anjc wrote: post #350
yummyfajitas wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Table 3 and division. And I presume you're in the US, but from an external observer's perspective, 'poverty' in the US is extreme and is almost incomprehensible... I spend about half my time in the US, half in India. So as a semi-external observer, all I can do is laugh at you. Most middle class people would love to live as well as the American poor do. Actually so would many Europeans - Bulgarian GDP/capita is about…

I can't see what you mean in the Table. I can only see 30% of people who had no work experience in the year in question. I presume that you aren't adding up both years. And I presume that you also noticed that ~15% have a disability. Yeah I'm sure middle class people in India would love to live "as well" as the American poor do. I was talking about the firmly developed world. Bulgaria is the poorest country in the EU…

Take the number of poor between 18 and 64, divide by the number of poor between 18 and 64 who did not work, and you get 61.7%

Of course, the question of whether they "choose" not to work, "choose" to be poor, or if they are "lazy" are judgements not supported by the numbers.

(More worrying is the 40% of the poor who did work.)

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#370

Post by selimthegrim »

rhapsodic wrote: post #307
okreallywtf wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just confused as to what you actually want to see happen to the SV bully-boys. The democrats (as far as I can tell) have had little to no actual effect on coal or guns but your comment makes it sound like they've been able to rein them in or bust them up or something. I was kind of making a joke because to me the democrats have been largely ineffective against coal and guns. Thats not necessarily their fault, to…

>I'm just confused as to what you actually want to see happen to the SV bully-boys. I'd love to see the value of their businesses destroyed through zealous over-regulation. I'd love to see the IRS target them for audits the way Obama's IRS targeted conservative groups. I'd love for them to be criminally prosecuted, and -- dare I dream? -- jailed for any violations of the tax code that might be uncovered. That would w…

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/03/elections-are-no...
Post reply on HN