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

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

#561

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 6:40 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #502

thaumasiotes wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> American's used to be able to support large families of 4+ kids with only 1 working parent. Now you have households with both working and they can't afford to have kids. I'm broadly sympathetic to your viewpoint, but this isn't accurate. Children are fundamentally not expensive. The problem is that couples believe they can't afford to have kids, not that they actually can't afford them.

Children are more expensive now because of societal pressure to raise kids to a higher standard because people have less of them. Imagine all the hand wringing that would ensue if at lunch with my colleagues (which is a rough approximation of the HN demographic) I mentioned that I got a 5yo hand-me-down car seat instead of buying the latest and greatest. Generalize that pressure to pretty much every child raising rel…

It looks like a lot of car seat brands are considered expired starting at 6-ish years, so yeah, I wouldn't suggest using a 5yo car seat.

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

#562

Post by llsf » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 6:48 PM UTC

tobltobs wrote: post #374

pasabagi wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>any increase in productivity is bad because it reduces labor scarcity Isn't it? Increases in productivity, normally called automation, must reduce labour scarcity unless demand for the product is proportionately increased. There are plenty of sectors where this is exactly what happens, and some where it isn't.

> Increases in productivity, normally called automation That is a wrong assumption to start with. Inventing the wheel wasn't automation.

One could argue that the invention of the wheel is actually automation. Instead of carrying goods on your back down to the river, now put it in a cart, and kick it to roll downhill... It is possibly the most basic automation, it does free human labor with a mechanical mean.

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

#563

Post by stale2002 » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 6:50 PM UTC

fredkorematsu wrote: post #324

stale2002 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would you rather have three engineers with an undergrad degree or one with a master's? Where do you draw the line? We are comparing 1 to 1, not 3 to 1. In the context of this conversation, we are taking about whether it is a bad thing for someone with more education to receive priority access to the H1B visa. And my opinion is that this is at worst a neutral thing. The person I was responding to thinks that giving…

I think a high school drop out with 5 years of work experience coding can beat a masters from silicon valley university. In tech jobs degrees are in no way indicator of skill.

This is not comparing a person with 5 years if experience to a person without 5 years experience.

Instead, related to the H1B question, this is comparing the "average" person applying to the H1B program who has a bachelor's degree, and comparing that to the "average" person applying to the program with a master's degree.

It is not about perfect correlation. It is instead about imperfect correlation of the averages among these 2 groups.

Even in the worst case scenario of there being no correlation, it still benefits the US to give priority to masters students, as at the very least it means that they have spent more money on an American business (IE, the univerity).

I don't see anything wrong with priorizing more money to US businesses, all else being equal.

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

#564

Post by thatfrenchguy » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 6:56 PM UTC

hnhg wrote: post #407

wyclif wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you have households with both working and they can't afford to have kids This strikes me as ridiculous as a broad-brush, general statement. It's not that Americans can't afford to have kids, it's that they incentivize different things than they did in the past. I don't deny that real wages haven't risen because of the supply of workers and dual-income families, but c'mon. There's been an increase in professional…

Could you provide a cost breakdown of the first 10 years of raising a child in, say, SV or NY? I can't follow your thinking here at all. Childcare, from what I hear is immensely expensive, and after a certain age, you need a bigger home. Conversely, staying without kids means you don't spend on any of those things. What have I missed?

You don't "need" a bigger home. You can perfectly have 2 children in a 900sqft 3 bedroom appartment.

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

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Post by hippich » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 6:58 PM UTC

rjf72 wrote: post #376

adventured wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's been another major shift as well. This [1] graph is critical. There were more self employed workers in the US in 1948 than there are today. The population since then has increased by more than 220%. And the trend increases the further back you go. I mention 1948 only because that's as far back as FRED's data goes! The US used to be a land largely driven by self employment. We had large numbers of mostly indep…

Anecdotally, whenever I post something about my business on social media, it is mostly ignored. But if someone posted something about new job they got - it is celebrated. So I see there is also social attitude supporting employment over self-employment. Not sure if it was the same in 1948.

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

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Post by coolsank » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 7:03 PM UTC

OurBoysGirls1st wrote: post #267

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…

>> They aren't competitors, they are complements and create more jobs. We've had the H1B program for 25+yrs. We accept 65+20k workers a year. That is 85 20+ workers who have entered the country on this program. Lets round down and say 2million workers. These are 2million jobs that didn't go to local graduates, but instead to overseas graduates. Of those 2 million workers, could anyone cite any significant companies s…

Actually Elon Musk did file for an H1-B when he quit Stanford to start Zip2.

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

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Post by joshe » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 7:05 PM UTC

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #497

joshe wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The workforce grew, look at the link and table 5. Basically woman and minorities joined the workforce. Worker to population ratio went up and the total number of workers went up faster than the growth in population.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd say pretty much all the minorities have always been a part of the workforce.

Women were most of the increase, but minorities increased their participation too.

You can see the tail end (looks like they didn't survey it until 1980) of it here: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2002/05/art2full.pdf Table 4, look at Black participation rates from 1990 to 2015.

For intuition think of extended families living together, being incarcerated, and being the last hired and the first fired (so out of work longer).

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

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Post by jgalt212 » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 7:13 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…

> A great improvement would be to allow H1B holders to change jobs easily

Yes, that would be great for the workers, but not great for the companies who want a cheap and captive labor force and bribe the politicians to get their H1-B slots.

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

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Post by arcticbull » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 7:15 PM UTC

godelmachine wrote: post #533

arcticbull wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What on earth does “got strong” mean? Is it a section of the immigration and nationality act? 18 vs 27 years is just situational, it’s a range. When someone says “leveraging their ward” they mean days/months or a dedicated process not supporting evidence in the standard two to three decade process. And sure, why read evidence I found for you when you have your gut and a single anecdote.

Clearly you have lost track of the argument you have put forth. I decided to countenance your WP article and it seems you can't get illegal immigration outta your head. A sentence in your own article reinforces my statement about H1B workers leveraging their US born kids citizenship for their own citizenship. You even missed out on the basic fact that I am talking about legal immigration and "anchor baby" is a term u…

“Parents can later leverage the citizenship of their progeny to gain theirs.”

No, they can’t - not in anything resembling a reasonable timeframe. The only benefit they gain is the ability to have their child sponsor them once they are adults. It takes 18 years to become an adult, 1 year to petition for a green card and 5 years to get citizenship for a bare minimum of 24 years. I said 27 because I used 21 years of age to calculate. That’s not a benefit really, taking into account the fact the children have to pay taxes for that whole period while living abroad. Then the child has to want to live in the US, move there and sponsor their parents at their sole discretion.

The idea parents get massive benefits for having a child in the US is an “anchor baby” in colloquial terms, pejorative or not. It applies colloquially to legal and illegal immigrants - and so does the family reunification visa process. The idea of an anchor baby is a myth.

Your single anecdote is not outweighed by facts, it’s not precedent unless it happened in court (the whole immigration process is almost entirely discretionary and capricious, you can be denied or delayed for any reason, and you have almost zero recourse because you as a foreigner have no right to immigrate to the US except by asylum — and no amount of “my parents got in” is going to change the mind of a consular officer or immigration judge). You didn’t read the article I sent you, you bragged about it, and you’re still wrong.

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

#570

Post by ArtDev » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 7:21 PM UTC

yardie wrote: post #541

bluedino wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My health insurance costs alone would almost quadruple if I had a wife+kid

Most of it would be on your spouse. Unlike you they are completely subsidized by your employer. My current plan: $100/mo - me $125/mo - me + child(ren) $350/mo - me + spouse + child(ren)

As a self-employed software developer, the CHEAPEST healthcare plan for my family is $1030/month ($10k deductible).

You are referring to a benefit you get from your salaried position. Nice but many developers do not have this luxury.