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Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

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

#382
Trump is literally a one trick pony. Stop anybody not born in the US from being in the US.

This will really hurt their economy. Elon Musk as made the point, really logically countries should advertise and do recruiting for the best people. That is what would allow more technology, production and growth in a country.

I just don't understand the logic. I understand the 'poor people come here and take jobs' even if its wrong, but high payed people this clearly isn't an issue.

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

#383

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…

As a serial immigrant myself - hit the nail on the head there. There is the “pay debt back” (relo, visa/lawyer costs) issue in some companies but this is a very good start.

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

#384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The decision would be ok in most other countries, where the land is some ethnic group's birthright. America, however, is unique in that it's everyone's birthright. The only reason most educated people don't support totally open borders is because there's so much poverty outside the US, but H-1B holders are not poor.

On what basis are you deciding what someone's (or some group's) birthrights are?

[deleted]

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

#386
post #9

Credit where credit is due, this is a good move. The H1B program has been abused for a long time. It sounds like these changes should help make it too expensive for the fraudulent abuse to continue.

Did the administration actually make a change, or are they just talking about it like they've been for the last three years?

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

#387
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.

[deleted]

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

#388
post #74

I agree 100% with you. My view is even more extreme, I think we should allow anyone who passes a criminal background check to be able to get a work visa, with no quotas. But barring that pipe dream, this seems like a good interim step.

Asymmetric access to the work force is probably the most valuable right that most HN readers have. Why should we want to give that up?

I struggle to see how your idea would be better for any Americans, except the owner-class.

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

#389
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…

Liberating them is probably pretty complicated, and I would love to see that happen, but preventing more becoming indentured (at a cost to the local labor market) probably is a legal switch.

We've had other forms of indentured servitude that were summarily abolished, sometimes with difficulty. Certainly the government should not be incentivizing this, which seems to have been the case for a while.

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

#390
post #278

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…

So all the doors should open for the person with a rich family background, while the poor one should stay in poverty?

The H1B program was not designed to alleviate poverty around the world. Maybe there should be such a program, but H1B is probably not it.
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