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Executive order expected to suspend H-1B, other visas until end of year

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Re: Executive order expected to suspend H-1B, other visas until end of year

#491

Post by runawaybottle »

fredfoobar wrote: post #457
runawaybottle wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not implying anything about the actual workers. I’m mostly being suspicious of corporations that have over 50% of their staff as h1bs or off shore. I feel that’s probably set up that way for one of the common reasons in business ($$$$). Just trying to learn how the math works out. I have no doubt Google is hiring the very best worldwide, but I have sincere suspicions that your average enterprise found a way to ke…

> Also to your last point, this is something no one can prove. How am I going to prove that a company can hire that talent locally? They’ll just say they met with candidates and they weren’t up to snuff. You can’t prove anything in that situation, all you can really do is look at the numbers from a bird’s eye view and see that hey, over half your staff is world class rare talent apparently. So, you're telling me that…

> So, you're telling me that they're gonna pay the same amount they'd pay for a local employee PLUS the H1-B overhead, just to hire a foreign worker?

For the most part, sure, it should be cost prohibitive. I think companies should go out and find the best talent, they should try to do it locally, and if they can’t, paying the little overhead is nothing when you realize you just filled the role with world class talent.

It seems odd to have cost be a factor when you are basically saying you had to search the world to fill the role.

I personally don’t believe most companies need to scour the world to fill most roles. For those that do, they won’t scoff at the price. This will at least eliminate the arbitrage that is rampant in the global economy.

Re: Executive order expected to suspend H-1B, other visas until end of year

#492

Post by pps43 »

hintymad wrote: post #446
codelord wrote: post #313

Disclaimer: I'm an immigrant. There are companies like Cognizant/InfoSys/Tata/... whose business model is based on abusing the H1B system, and that's obviously wrong and I'm quite surprised they get away with it. I'm not defending that. To those who broadly argue against skilled visas, consider this: Most H1B immigrants are between 20-30 age range. The prime age to join the workforce. Think how much investment you ha…

I know this will probably be flagged or voted down, but at least please understand that I truly want to see people in the US get better and more equal. Here it goes: if the US wants to invest in local talent, the US had better invest heavily in education. And I'm not talking about an-iPad-per-kid kind of investment, but investment to hire great teachers, lots of them, to public schools to the point that tutoring scho…

> the US had better invest heavily in education

At this point, more money is not going to help. Education in the US is fundamentally broken. Combination of "no child is left behind" and standardized testing (because everything else will be called discrimination) ensures uniformly bad results. If you pour more money in, it's just going to be wasted on bureaucracy and busywork.

So H1-B is actually a great idea. If we can't educate, let's attract well-educated people from elsewhere. They want to live here, so we can choose.

We don't mind buying electronics made in China because they can do it better and cheaper, why not do the same with people. Finland seems to be doing just fine with education at a fraction of US cost, let the market do its thing and flex the comparative advantage.

Re: Executive order expected to suspend H-1B, other visas until end of year

#493

Post by fredfoobar »

BeetleB wrote: post #476
fredfoobar wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Convenient. It’s both obvious and not at the same time, how does that work?

> It’s both obvious Can you please show me how it's obvious?

wait, YOU said that it's obvious

your words:

> I'm not referring to a deep secret. This is well documented. Just search the Internet for H1-B "prevailing wage" loophole and you'll find some.

and in the next sentence you seem to imply that it is not obvious, again your words:

> but it is quite nuanced and I don't remember the details

Re: Executive order expected to suspend H-1B, other visas until end of year

#494

Post by [deleted] »

jusonchan81 wrote: post #137
dx87 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If H-1B visas were being used how they were intended, they would be a good thing, but we often see them used as a way to get cheap labor, or even directly replace American workers. The company I work at has H-1B junior web developers, hardly "very niche, hard to fill" positions that they can't find any qualified Americans to do.

I guess this is indeed an issue. I’m a manager and I am trying to hire. 100% I’d rather find a person who can start in a couple of weeks than several months for a candidate who needs immigration. But there are rarely any local applicants and even when there are they don’t make in the interview. We pay in excess of 300k for all roles so it’s not like we are trying to find cheap talent.

[deleted]

Re: Executive order expected to suspend H-1B, other visas until end of year

#495

Post by winter_blue »

fishywang wrote: post #486
winter_blue wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wanted to say that Social Security's Old-Age Income program is available to all non-citizens , regardless of immigration status. It is a good thing to be aware of. The only requirements to meet is 10 years of work in the US (i.e. "40 quarters of coverage (QC's)"). I spoke to someone from India sometime ago, who had come to the US in their late 40s or early 50s. They were planning on going back to India after the…

The max term of H1b is 6 years. You can stay on H1b beyond 6 years either by being on the green card backlog queue (after passing a certain stage you can renew your H1b beyond 6 years), or maybe leave US and come back again (likely requires another H1b lottery?). What I'm saying is sure stay in the US for 10 years on H1b is possible, but it's also quite hard.

Yup, they do need an approved I-140 in order extend beyond 6 years.

Re: Executive order expected to suspend H-1B, other visas until end of year

#496

Post by RhysU »

sixothree wrote: post #261
dx87 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If H-1B visas were being used how they were intended, they would be a good thing, but we often see them used as a way to get cheap labor, or even directly replace American workers. The company I work at has H-1B junior web developers, hardly "very niche, hard to fill" positions that they can't find any qualified Americans to do.

We have h1b employees at our company. If we were to lose them right now it would be a significant disruption. Personally, I can't take time out of my job to train employees - which in our case could easily take three months. I can't even imagine us finding and hiring some at this time. These guys are an absolute asset to the company.

Does your company not already grow skills over time? One should already be training (or coaching) individuals regardless of their present skill levels.

Re: Executive order expected to suspend H-1B, other visas until end of year

#497

Post by lsllc »

triceratops wrote: post #473
braindead_in wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling the Indian Government a totalitarian regime is stretching it a bit too much. India is still a paradise of liberty compared to China and some other countries in our region. Indians want H1B because they want to earn in dollars, plain and simple. All other reasons are secondary. H1B is modern-day bonded labor. You guys are the sugar slaves of this age, like it or not.

> H1B is modern-day bonded labor. That's a bit of a stretch, don't you think? Bonded laborers were forbidden to leave their jobs under penalty of the law (like actual prison time). H-1B holders are free to leave any time, they just experience a massive drop in income.

It's not just a "massive drop in income"; if you get fired/laid off or want to leave your H1B job, you have 60 days to leave the country or find a new H1B job (which might not be so easy with quotas & applications etc).

Re: Executive order expected to suspend H-1B, other visas until end of year

#498

Post by [deleted] »

dvtrn wrote: post #42
solarkraft wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even if you're a nationalist Not if you're a racist, though.

Is this being greyed down because folks just don’t want to consider the possibility that straight up racism might be just as much a part of this or did it touch a nerve for some parties who saw themselves getting called out?

[deleted]

Re: Executive order expected to suspend H-1B, other visas until end of year

#499

Post by jjoonathan »

kjksf wrote: post #306
jjoonathan wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If globalization and automation are so good at job creation, why did the American manufacturing workforce collapse? Economies are complex, counter-intuitive feedback machines, but the "supply and demand" model fits the last 40 years of data, while the "floats all boats" model really doesn't. "Lump of labor is a fallacy, honest!" sure sounds like the kind of opinion I could get a good penny for if I were an enterprisi…

He was talking about software jobs. "More than half of the top American tech companies were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants" https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/30/us-tech-companies-founded-by... Recent immigrants were responsible for creating tens of thousands of jobs, most of them for Americans. Software isn't a zero-sum game even on a country level and certainly US benefits enormously because companie…

CNBC sure had to stretch that definition pretty darn far to get to "more than half," didn't they.

In any case, immigration is the least upsetting globalization policy IMO: it is exactly what it says on the tin, almost everyone agrees that too little or too much is bad, and the amount can be tuned using quotas. H1B, however, is not that. It pretends to be about scarce skillsets (which enter this calculation one way) when it's actually usually about standard skillsets (which enter the calculation in another). Further, it suppresses the bargaining ability of the people subjected to it, depressing wages for both them those they compete with. Worse still is "regulatory arbitrage" where low tariffs encourage companies to bypass environmental, safety, and labor regulation by shipping manufacturing (or what have you) overseas. I prefer immigration to both H1Bs and regulatory arbitrage, and not by a small margin.

As a more general point, exponential growth is one helluva drug and truly does create a "floats all boats" environment, but different economics apply once an economic sector plateaus. Those economics look much closer to zero-sum. Zero-growth = zero-sum. Low growth is low sum. That's why what happened to American manufacturing over the last 20 years is a good model for what happens to American software over the next 20, if we aren't careful.

We've had it good in software, but we're no longer in the phase where we can pretend the sigmoid is a neverending exponential.

Re: Executive order expected to suspend H-1B, other visas until end of year

#500

Post by [deleted] »

lsllc wrote: post #497
triceratops wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> H1B is modern-day bonded labor. That's a bit of a stretch, don't you think? Bonded laborers were forbidden to leave their jobs under penalty of the law (like actual prison time). H-1B holders are free to leave any time, they just experience a massive drop in income.

It's not just a "massive drop in income"; if you get fired/laid off or want to leave your H1B job, you have 60 days to leave the country or find a new H1B job (which might not be so easy with quotas & applications etc).

[deleted]
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