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

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

#381

Post by chasil » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 9:31 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…

Firstly, political systems must also compete. Marxism competes with free-market democracies, and in order for that competition to occur, movement must be restrained. Failing political systems explode with refugees that bring unworkable mindsets with them.

Secondly, all people are equal before the law, which is an invention of the U.S. constitution. All people are certainly not equal. This is codified in religion in various forms ("As you did unto the least of these, you did unto me," karma/samsara, kafir, etc.). It is self-evident that equality is not reflected in wealth, social standing, influence, and power. It is also patently obvious that biology presents impediments to equality. You should not confuse a U.S. legal construct of equality with a generalization of equality.

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

#382

Post by somberi » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 9:33 AM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #42

rangibaby wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need foreign low skilled workers and they want to work, but we need to regulate that workforce so they don't undercut our native low-skills workforce by being unregulated and overwhelming the workforce with cheap unregulated labor. That ship sailed some time ago to China or anywhere there is a sweatshop.

Farm work, restaurant work, construction work, warehouse work cannot be "shipped off to China", yet we have our own population which has been undercut by unregulated cheap labor. We do need a number of foreign workers, but we need to regulate it so as to not flood our labor market and undercut our workers and have it where two grown adults working full time jobs can't afford to live a lower middle class lifestyle (as…

Pariculary Farm Work (edited for clarity): Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_United_Stat...

In 2012, there were 3.2 million farmers,[19] ranchers and other agricultural managers and an estimated 757,900 agricultural workers were legally employed in the US. Animal breeders accounted for 11,500 of those workers with the rest categorized as miscellaneous agricultural workers. The median pay was $9.12 per hour or $18,970 per year.[20]

From 1999–2009, roughly 50% of hired crop farmworkers in the U.S. were noncitizens working without legal authorization.[23] Large farms rely on new immigrants (such as Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Pakistani, and Mexican) that do not have many other options to work for extremely low wages. The legal status of the worker has been shown to impact the wage received for a job. An agricultural worker with no documentation earns an average of 15% less than one with amnesty or green card.

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

#383

Post by ramblerman » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 9:36 AM UTC

tossaccount123 wrote: post #147

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…

>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…

> because it would be a buyer's market for tech companies, they could pick and choose the most talented for pennies

Not exactly too much of a price drop would negate the point of them wanting to come in the first place.

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

#384

Post by isostatic » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 9:37 AM UTC

adventured wrote: post #322

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, wealth inequality increased because we stopped taxing rich people.

Wealth inequality has increased mostly due to the massive expansion of the global economy, which was a large benefit to capital owners and was a detriment to US labor (whose wages were artifically very high in the post WW2 decades). Global labor competed, capital benefited. Federal Reserve policies since ~1970 have also overwhelmingly favored capital, asset holders, and not workers. The US tax code has gotten more pr…

> All of that is paid for by the top 25% of income earners.

How exactly is that worked out? Income taxes ($1.6t) and payroll taxes ($1.2t) are a similar level, and rich people tend not to pay payroll taxes as they aren't on a payroll.

Payroll taxes cover social security payments ($1t), so that leaves income taxes paying for things like Defence ($1.2t for military and veteran affairs), which wealthy people disproportionately benefit from.

Medicare and medicaid are the unusual ones, for the cost of those two alone ($1t, or $3000 per head) you could afford universal healthcare in other western countries.

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

#385

Post by spangry » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 9:39 AM UTC

luckydata wrote: post #282

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.

Every time we have this conversation we have to do this silly song and dance routine instead of, you know, doing a quick google search. WSJ > https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-new-look-at-the-h-1b-visa-pro... Fortune > http://fortune.com/2017/02/15/h1-b-silicon-valley-wages/ Science Magazine > http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2015/05/economists-h-1b-vi... I particularly appreciate the part where you passively-aggressiv…

That paper discussed in Science Magazine is very interesting. Here's part of the abstract from 'The Effects of High-Skilled Immigration Policy on Firms: Evidence from Visa Lotteries' (2016) - https://gspp.berkeley.edu/assets/uploads/research/pdf/h1b.pd...

"We compare winning and losing firms in the Fiscal Year 2006 and 2007 lotteries for H-1B visas, matching administrative data on these lotteries to administrative tax data on U.S. firms, and to approved U.S. patents. Winning additional H-1B visas causes at most a moderate increase in firms’ overall employment, and these H-1Bs therefore substantially crowd out firms’ employment of other workers. Additional H-1Bs generally have insignificant and at most modest effects on firms’ patenting and use of the research and experimentation tax credit. There is some evidence that additional H-1Bs lead to lower average employee earnings and higher firm profits."

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

#386

Post by dmichulke » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 9:41 AM UTC

tossaccount123 wrote: post #147

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…

>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…

> You do realize there hasn't been a raise in real wages since the 70s when you account for inflation right

This also coincides with the end of the gold standard ('68) and subsequently cheaper interest rates and (thereby) access to much more and cheaper capital for those who already have enough capital to begin with.

Also, lower interest rates beget higher inflation.

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

#387

Post by hocuspocus » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 9:45 AM UTC

raquo wrote: post #367

Zombiethrowaway wrote: post #358

"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.

"accomplished a degree in a host country and obtained a relevant job offer thereafter" is a very good proxy for a lot of desirable properties in immigrants, at least in Canada (per official statistics). Besides, foreign education credentials and work experience can be very easy to fake depending on home country, so it's understandable that it's worth less in the eyes of immigration systems. In Canada we have lots of…

Thing is, if you want to hire foreign, experienced, high-skilled workers, by definition they won't hold a US degree.

The current system favors immigrants that can afford a Master's degree at low-tier for-profit universities (see what happened to the Silicon Valley University). The change will take this even further.

Canada has a non-trivial but straightforward path to permanent residency that tries to be fair to both domestic students and experienced immigrants. It's not really comparable.

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

#388

Post by lorenzhs » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 9:50 AM UTC

Qworg wrote: post #279

mc32 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of countries contend with this: Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Britain, etc. People adapt. Perhaps we grow to appreciate our food and throw out less waste.

Even at wages closing in on 3x minimum wage, we cannot get enough farm labor[1] - obviously low skilled American labor still doesn't want the job. What's the solution? [1] https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-farms-immigration/

Because farm work isn't really low skilled. Sarah Taber did an excellent Twitter thread on this: https://twitter.com/sarahtaber_bww/status/107598191085642547...

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

#389

Post by hatmatrix » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 9:52 AM UTC

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…

> A great improvement would be to allow H1B holders to change jobs easily (maybe after a year).

Aren't their visas sponsored by a specific company? Incentives aren't structured for this to happen. One way to look at is is that the US government are letting companies serve as "scouts" to bring talent in, and the companies' commission is to retain their exclusive employment for a period of time.

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

#390

Post by mpweiher » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 9:52 AM UTC

mdorazio wrote: post #319

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…

And if you're in IT consulting like me instead of a software engineer, you absolutely should not cheer every immigrant. Many people wrongly assume that most H1B visas go to truly high-skilled individuals working at large tech companies. This is not the case. Take a look at the numbers in [1]. The top 5 companies bringing H1B workers are doing so specifically to outsource IT functions at lower cost than US workers. Th…

> The top 5 companies bringing H1B workers are doing so specifically to outsource IT functions at lower cost

And this is the part I don't quite understand. According to the rules, this shouldn't be possible.

So either (a) the rules are broken, and need to be fixed or (b) the rules are not being enforced.

And since we have the numbers, and the companies, it shouldn't be that hard to see how they are getting past either the regulations or the intent of the regulations or both.

As a former H1B visa holder who definitely did not lower wages (-g-) and whose employers were, AFAICT, meticulous about following the rules, it annoys me to no end that all H1B visa holders are tarred with the brush of the ones violating the rules.