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

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

#581

Post by dsfyu404ed »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #561
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Good intentions or not that's exactly the kind of hand wringing I mean.

I know plastics become more brittle with age but a modern car seat that's expired is going to be tons safer than a car seat from 2000 (mostly because engineers now have better access to good simulation tools at lower cost). So what if little Jimmy isn't maximally safe. He's still a heck of a lot safer (from an unlikely edge case no less) than he would have been if he were born 15yr ago.

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

#582

Post by calvinbhai »

hart_russell wrote: post #558
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.

Not opposed to that idea either (I have a MS degree :).

But my guess is that the number of non-US bachelors students is negligible compared to the number of MS/PhD students.

I dont have the data, but either way, it'll help US hold on to highly skilled immigrants, and make it difficult for low skilled ones to slip in.

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

#583

Post by godelmachine »

arcticbull wrote: post #569
godelmachine wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>>You didn’t read the article I sent you, you bragged about it, and you’re still wrong.

I don’t respond to people who make preposterous assumptions about others. Your entire answer is laughable at best and I won’t dignify such mediocrity with my reply.

You have a good day, Sir!

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

#584

Post by simplecomplex »

arcticbull wrote: post #575
simplecomplex wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is discrimination, and nothing to celebrate. People without degrees deserve equal treatment. People who want to work lower-paid jobs deserve equal treatment.

Disagree, a country has the right to determine what kind of immigrants it prefers. People with in demand skills should have preference over those without. Nobody has a right (except in certain rare circumstances such as asylum) to immigrate to another country. H1s specifically are employment visas. The country shouldn’t take in for employment a bunch of people it doesn’t need should it?

> country has the right to determine what kind of immigrants it prefers

Yeah, obviously. You prefer we discriminate based on college education. Why? Don’t people without masters degrees deserve equal treatment? Equal opportunity?

> The country shouldn’t take in for employment a bunch of people it doesn’t need should it?

The country isn’t a person. If a company wants to hire someone, then obviously they do “need” them.

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

#585

Post by mdorazio »

joshe wrote: post #574
mdorazio wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you're in IT consulting like me instead of a software engineer, you absolutely should not cheer every immigrant. Many people wrongly assume that most H1B visas go to truly high-skilled individuals working at large tech companies. This is not the case. Take a look at the numbers in [1]. The top 5 companies bringing H1B workers are doing so specifically to outsource IT functions at lower cost than US workers. Th…

The startups I've worked for, co created with coworkers who had H1-B visas (and green cards) created a lot of IT consulting gigs. We might even have hired you. This is as we went from 40 to 400 employees. Those H1-B visa holders created gigs for you to work. Even the consulting gigs you are competing for and losing are creating more consulting gigs later on. You are counting those right? It's not simple, your intuiti…

Yes, I am counting those. And yes, I am looking at real data instead of media puff pieces. For example, [1]. It's important to consider 1) relative numbers (how many market rate positions are being created as a result of H1B vs. number of depressed wage positions taken away by them), and 2) The total net result on US workers. If 1,000 new jobs are created, but 10,000 others that Americans want to work now pay 15% less than they should, is it really a net positive?

Also as a rebuttal to your point, the type of economist findings you are referring to are almost always explicitly for complementary labor rather than substitute labor. In the case of H1B abuse, it tends to be the latter rather than the former. Additionally, abuse of the H1B program leads to add-on effects in the labor market that keep salaries low and discourage entry of new American workers - see for example [2].

I want to reiterate that I support the intent of the H1B program and startups using H1B workers are generally doing exactly the right thing. The problem is that the program has been hijacked by corporate interests looking to cut costs and thus it needs to be significantly revised.

[1] https://qz.com/india/1041506/new-data-on-h-1b-visas-show-how...

[2] https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/...

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

#586

Post by legalpad »

me45 wrote: post #348
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 am not against H1Bs, but the minimum pay should be raised to 100k. They should be able to switch jobs after 1 year so they are not slaves to their sponsor. And every h1B application should be posted on a easily searchable site where American applicants can review and apply for that position if they meet the job criteria.

Every H1B application (or rather, the LCA that preceeeds the H-1B petition) does appear in a government database and multiple public-facing sites that you can search. You can see the job title, company, location, wage being paid, and many many other pieces of information.

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

#587

Post by arcticbull »

simplecomplex wrote: post #584
arcticbull wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree, a country has the right to determine what kind of immigrants it prefers. People with in demand skills should have preference over those without. Nobody has a right (except in certain rare circumstances such as asylum) to immigrate to another country. H1s specifically are employment visas. The country shouldn’t take in for employment a bunch of people it doesn’t need should it?

> country has the right to determine what kind of immigrants it prefers Yeah, obviously. You prefer we discriminate based on college education. Why? Don’t people without masters degrees deserve equal treatment? Equal opportunity? > The country shouldn’t take in for employment a bunch of people it doesn’t need should it? The country isn’t a person. If a company wants to hire someone, then obviously they do “need” them…

College education is a proxy for knowledge and skills of value, however the green card system (not sure if it applies to H1s) provides an equivalence when assigning preferences. EB3 is a bachelors degree or 5 years work experience, and an EB2 preference is a masters or a bachelors + 5 years or 10 years work experience.

I don’t necessarily believe caps are valuable on immigration but given that we’re working within a framework where they’re a thing, shouldn’t we prioritize on skill instead of using a lottery - assuming there’s more interest and companies willing to hire than slots?

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

#588

Post by t1o5 »

ra7 wrote: post #560
t1o5 wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Ind…

If there was no market for Master degree H1Bs who fake their experiences on their resume, how do you explain all those thriving body shops in the US ? Just how many of them are in New Jersey alone. See the LCA filings data from DOL.

Source: https://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/performancedata.cfm

Goto Disclosure Tab & Download the H-1B_FY2018.xlsx excel. Filter NJ state and Employer City as Edison.

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

#589

Post by joshe »

irrational wrote: post #286
joshe wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's super interesting, I didn't know that about hourly wages. I tend to think of income gaining from 1950 to 1990 and flattening from the mid 1990s to now. Though it does look like total compensation (adding in benefits) did actually increase recently, they don't have anything for back to 1960. So maybe the story is that wages stayed flat, but benefits accounted for most of the income increase. Not an economist so…

So, it went from one person making $41K to two people making $72K ($36k each)? That doesn't seem like a growth situation.

Not quite.

From 1974 (they don't have data before that) to 2000, real mean personal income goes from 32K to 43K. [1], that's for individuals. The graph is useful to look at.

This is complex, for example there are also more single parent / single person households which tends to lower household incomes.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MAPAINUSA672N

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

#590

Post by joshe »

mberning wrote: post #471
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…

It is hard believe so many people still don’t “get it”. You cannot inflate the supply of labor, regardless of the means, and get a good result for the average working stiff.

This is perfect, this is exactly what I'm arguing against!

Does this statement also seem true?

"It is hard to believe so many * economists * don't "get it". You cannot inflate the supply of labor, regardless of the means, and get a good result for the average working stiff."

What do we think economists are doing with all their data sets and papers and conferences and stuff?

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