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

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

#461

Post by digianarchist » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 1:58 PM UTC

keegancsmith wrote: post #297

peferron wrote: post #213

H-4 holders (spouses of H-1B, for the uninitiated) should be allowed to work. That they don't is inhuman and de facto hurts women, since the overwhelming majority of H-1B holders (at least in the Valley) are men. It's forcing women into a stay-at-home role as if it were the 50s. It's especially hard for H-4s because they are newcomers to the USA who may not have local friends or family. My wife went through it for a…

I was an h1b holder working in Silicon Valley. My wife not being able to work was the main reason why we left after 2 years. Kind of silly to go through that whole song and dance of getting a skilled person to move across the world only to treat the spouse as if the only purpose they have is home keeping.

Same with the TN visa. Spouses of Australian citizens can work though on the E3 visa.

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

#462

Post by sergiotapia » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 2:01 PM UTC

miles wrote: post #79

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.

Indeed: Pink Slips at Disney. But First, Training Foreign Replacements. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff...

"Thousands of Americans Lost Their Job and Here's Why That's a Good Thing" - Article on Cox Media.

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

#463

Post by adrianN » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 2:02 PM UTC

mjfl wrote: post #370

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…

There are plenty of places in the USA where $200k will get you very far, you just choose not to live there. You have to account for the fact that you're paying for that.

It's probably a lot harder to make $200k in those places.

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

#464

Post by digianarchist » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 2:04 PM UTC

wufufufu wrote: post #444

My parents are immigrants. I wish we would just let in a random sample of the global population instead of having selection factors. Or maybe not let in any immigrants at all. The purpose of these kinds of requirements is to bring in workers for rich American CEOs. It's not because we enjoy the company of immigrants or want to learn their culture. Artificial selection for master degrees just creates stereotypes and l…

That's what the DV lottery is with the exception of they exclude countries that have a high number of people already immigrating to the United States.

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

#465

Post by JaceLightning » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 2:06 PM 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…

It's not the jobs I'm worried about; it's the housing. Where are we going to put all these people? SF already has the median home of around $1,000,000. Pro immigration policies will just make it worse.

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

#466

Post by adrianN » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 2:12 PM UTC

rhexs wrote: post #302

Qworg wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

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

The ability to grow food in the country has pretty high strategic value. If you let your farmers go out of business your country loses domain knowledge in farming.

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

#467

Post by tw04 » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 2:15 PM 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)

>Guess what, we'd get a lot more overseas clients as they wrestled with the labor shortage abroad.

So exactly when is it that India is going to become a major client? You seem to think that a country with high unemployment or underemployment that exports a portion of their workforce won't quickly absorb that "shortage". That's a pretty poor assumption.

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

#468

Post by t1o5 » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 2:18 PM UTC

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.

Are you sure ? Increasing the masters quota for H1B will worsen things. Here is why. A majority of Masters degree holders in the US are those students who couldn't crack the basic campus recruitment in India for software companies during their Bachelors.

So they take a stab at it once more by investing in a masters degree in US which increases their H1B lottery chances. I am not generalizing all the masters degree holders but a major chunk of them.

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

#469

Post by crispyambulance » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 2:20 PM 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…

    > If someone else can do the job better than you or me, they should be hired...

OK, but that's not what is happening.

You're ignoring the fact that this is more about cheap labor than about some unreachable meritocratic ideal of finding "the best person" for the job.

The end game of this will be that these "high-skill" jobs will go the way of manufacturing, and eventually the USA will end up with huge swathes of the population unable to compete in the global economy, poorer, less educated and with a diminishing social safety net.

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

#470

Post by howard941 » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 2:23 PM UTC

geggam wrote: post #395

rjzzleep wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Problem is finding actual talent vs talent on a resume that doesn't work well.

Like the market for used cars. All other things remaining equal the problem restrains pay for top performers.