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

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

#551

Post by joshe » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 5:45 PM UTC

winter_blue wrote: post #488

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…

Thank you for your comment , joshe, and for being a small light in the darkness. There's so much hatred in here. I'm on an H-1B, and I've never worked for a low-paying or shitty company, and I've been very well-paid. At my last company, I was the highest paid person in my team. And, I've on one occasion made over $200,000 in a single year. I've never met one of underpaid immigrant engineers. Every immigrant I've know…

Thank you, I appreciate it!

Part of the problem is that the media loves writing outrage stories. Training your own replacements is a perfect story for that. A journalist will write that story. Every. Single. Time.

Take the story "this 40 person team with 3 H1-B employees, is now a 400 person team". Each of those H1-B employees created 10 jobs + some extra jobs at other companies. This (roughly) has happened to me twice, there will never be a news article about that.

The original bit was just a plea to not use the intuition we get from news stories, and look to economists instead.

This kind of thread attracts people who are very easily influenced by outrageous media stories like that. They are very confused. It seems so obvious to them that we could just stop immigration and stop bad things from happening. They are super angry that no one is doing anything to solve this obvious problem. What they don't understand is that really no one is fixing it because when you look closely it's not a problem at all.

HN can be a place were people think about real hard problems and talk about how to solve them, I hope it can be more like that. (This is a fake problem.) The world needs people who face up to reality and try to improve it.

Your coworkers, company, customers, friends, and family are all greatly improved by your work and presence. Long term I hope that wins out.

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

#552

Post by mountainofdeath » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

mbrumlow wrote: post #475

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…

> I've worked with a few H1-B holders in Silicon Valley and they're awesome. I see your point, but you can't group all H1-B holders in the same boat. The ones you worked were awesome, but I am sure many have worked with ones that were not awesome. I will note, I have worked with a few awesome H1-B holders too, but I won't fall for ALL being the same. > If you are, like me, a software engineer, you should cheer every…

Not a single one of those are H1-B. In the Sergey Brin and Max Levchin, and myself cases, our parents were under special refugee visas that literally took an act of congress to pas (thank you Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society).

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

#553

Post by gesman » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

logfromblammo wrote: post #517

gesman wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Import tax on crap would solve it.

It would not. An import tax reduces imports, but also reduces exports by a greater amount. An export tax on real estate transfers to foreign persons, cash or cash-equivalents, luxury goods, artwork, and technology--such as engineering documents and diagrams, manufacturing machinery, and firmware source code--would also not solve it, but it would bite a bigger chunk out of the problem. Imports are paid for by exports.…

As a consumer I don't corporations outsourcing manufacturing to China and then bringing back crap, charging me full price and keeping the difference.

As a patriot I'd rather pay higher price for domestically made products and know that our local workers made it.

There is a balance of course between killing imports and selling country short and flooding it with crap - but certainly China was having a party paid by north american consumers for last 3 decades.

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

#554

Post by onlyrealcuzzo » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 6:00 PM UTC

treis wrote: post #123

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…

>just because "immigrants lower wages" is "common knowledge" doesn't make it true. [1] From your own cite: >Immigrant workers can either be substitutes for native-born workers or complements to them. When immigrant workers are substitutes for native-born workers, they compete for similar jobs. Using a simple supply and demand model, an influx of substitutable workers constitutes an increase in the supply of labor, ca…

Before anyone says it, if construction costs increased because laborers were paid more, it would not make housing more expensive. It would make land less expensive. This would be good for everyone except the arisotocrat.

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

#555

Post by hart_russell » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 6:10 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…

Correlation is not causation. As another poster pointed out, wages are stagnant even though GDP has skyrocketed.

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

#556

Post by foldr » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 6:13 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #543

foldr wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting that the difference there is exaggerated somewhat by the unusually low value of the pound at the moment.

Worth noting that tech workers in London make about 1/2 to 1/3 of what they do in the Bay.

It might be worth noting in another context, but tech worker salaries don't determine London rents.

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

#557

Post by hart_russell » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 6:15 PM UTC

winter_blue wrote: post #488

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…

Thank you for your comment , joshe, and for being a small light in the darkness. There's so much hatred in here. I'm on an H-1B, and I've never worked for a low-paying or shitty company, and I've been very well-paid. At my last company, I was the highest paid person in my team. And, I've on one occasion made over $200,000 in a single year. I've never met one of underpaid immigrant engineers. Every immigrant I've know…

>Like a Jew in Nazi Germany

Really? You're going to compare your situation to that?

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

#558

Post by hart_russell » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 6:17 PM UTC

calvinbhai wrote: post #507

As an immigrant from India, who worked in the US on H1B, I welcome this change, because this increases the chances of weeding out the bad apples and increases the chances for the good ones to get an H1b visa. This at least encourages genuine direct employers to hire those who have already contributed to the US economy (by paying out of state tuition which funds/subsidizes the university education of US resident/citiz…

I would agree with the caveat that it has to be a master's or phd. There would be way too many graduates with bachelor's.

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

#559

Post by gnahckire » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 6:17 PM UTC

fipple wrote: post #318

humbleMouse wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've worked with a few H1-B holders in Silicon Valley and they're awesome. To counter your anecdote, I've worked with countless H1-B's over the years, and while a handful have been awesome most of them are absolutely terrible.

In Silicon Valley? I've observed that the H-1Bs in Silicon Valley are extraordinarily high skill while the Infosys bodyshoppers are out in Des Moines and Cleveland.

I have. Worked at a large networking company that is rampant w/ low-skilled H-1Bs IMO.

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

#560

Post by ra7 » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 6:22 PM UTC

t1o5 wrote: post #468

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 ho…

> 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.

The majority? How did you get that data? Sounds like proper BS to me. Campus recruitment in India is a joke. There's nothing to "crack" there. How do you explain the same majority completing their graduate studies in the US (much harder than in India) and getting jobs in the US (also much harder than in India)?