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Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

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Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#61

Post by kuttel2 »

CalRobert wrote: post #42
m00dy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question I think is more interesting is why can't Europe retain talent?

When I was a kid in the US people told me "you can do anything! Anyone can be president! Just set your mind to it!" Now as someone raising kids in Europe the general sentiment is "The system is rigged, don't even try, anyone with nice things got it through avarice or corruption, nothing ever changes" (to be fair, I've lived in only two European countries, but this seems to be a common sentiment that varies primarily…

[flagged]

Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#62

Post by ben_w »

QGQBGdeZREunxLe wrote: post #22
gary_0 wrote: post #20

"Killing the golden goose" is the phrase that has come to mind repeatedly in the past few years. As someone living in a country that has been brain-draining into the US for decades, I'm quite perplexed at all this. It looks like the next Andrej Karpathy (born in Czechoslovakia, educated in Canada) will be taking their talents somewhere besides the US in the future. Maybe they think they can just cherry-pick the geniu…

The question I think is more interesting is why can't Canada retain talent?

Several reasons.

Top talent has the world as their oyster: for the best the answer is obvious even when it is a 96% fit vs. a 96.5% fit.

I don't know the actual %, likely gap used to be much bigger, but point is you can get very sudden state changes in outcome from very small policy change when at that point: think idiom "it was the final straw that broke the camel's back".

Self sorting: the best see that people like them went to the USA already, because those forerunners saw their talent, advise them to join them in the USA.

This one depends both on political stability and everyone not leaving/being kicked out.

Money: especially for startups, especially for tech. US trade deficit and reserve currency enables this as all the dollars have to make it back to the USA somehow, and investment is a somehow.

This one also depends on political stability.

Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#63

Post by hippo22 »

happytoexplain wrote: post #53
RealityVoid wrote: post #43

I would be incredibly curious if the mods could look into the stats of these political threads. I personally feel they are being manipulated at least through the voting system if not through active bot influence campaigns. It might be me being emotional about this and about seeing a country I looked up to becoming what it's becoming, but I just can't comprehend how some of the people in this otherwise great community…

It's nuts - but I can only speak with anecdotes. The Americans around me are desperate to pull absolutely any lever that will slow the death of the American dream, and at this point even the "light" version of the dream is dying (work hard, be smart and a little lucky, spend on an education in a strong field, get a family and small property). Stats and experts be damned - that's what desperation is. In the specific c…

It's not "normal competition" to be displaced by immigrants in your own country. Allowing that is simply allowing the capitalist class to assault and weaken the labor class.

Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#64

Post by dominostars »

logicchains wrote: post #45
Espressosaurus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worse: we're actively ejecting the global brain drain that has been to our benefit since the post-WW2 era. I know several people on various visas that are making plans to leave after having gotten PHDs here. Still more have naturalized and are making contingencies for exiting. Immigrants found close to half of the fortune 500 businesses, and start something like 20% of our new businesses each year. For those mot…

>and because immigration is what has delayed our demographic inversion that Europe and other developed nations are going through The birthrate among the most conservative Americans is still over 2.0. From the perspective of the conservative movement in power, it makes sense to halt immigration so the population becomes more and more conservative over time (as immigrants are left-leaning on average, especially Indians…

> as immigrants are left-leaning on average, especially Indians

Curious what you're basing that on?

Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#65

Post by themaninthedark »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #48
logicchains wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and because immigration is what has delayed our demographic inversion that Europe and other developed nations are going through The birthrate among the most conservative Americans is still over 2.0. From the perspective of the conservative movement in power, it makes sense to halt immigration so the population becomes more and more conservative over time (as immigrants are left-leaning on average, especially Indians…

Only a special group of conservatives largely in Utah have the ambition and brains to do much tech work. The rest aren’t very promising, and with the current birth rate, future tech jobs will mostly not get done and the work will move abroad. Indians and even Chinese, not to mention most of the non-European immigrants, are relatively conservative (socially reserved, self reliant, lots of self responsibility) and are…

I thought that the rural conservatives just needed to learn new skills in order to transition into a new job market.

At least, that was the messaging around 2019 when we were telling coal miners to 'learn to code.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/changing-america/en...

Now we are saying it takes a specific mindset...

It's also looking like those coal miners who pushed back had more foresight as the market is saturated and with the AI sea change.

https://futurism.com/computer-science-majors-high-unemployme...

I do agree with you in part however, it takes ambition to succeed. This is true no matter if you are an immigrant or native born.

Maybe the real question should be, why is our population losing their ambition?

Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#66

Post by ben_w »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #48
logicchains wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and because immigration is what has delayed our demographic inversion that Europe and other developed nations are going through The birthrate among the most conservative Americans is still over 2.0. From the perspective of the conservative movement in power, it makes sense to halt immigration so the population becomes more and more conservative over time (as immigrants are left-leaning on average, especially Indians…

Only a special group of conservatives largely in Utah have the ambition and brains to do much tech work. The rest aren’t very promising, and with the current birth rate, future tech jobs will mostly not get done and the work will move abroad. Indians and even Chinese, not to mention most of the non-European immigrants, are relatively conservative (socially reserved, self reliant, lots of self responsibility) and are…

I agree, but none of this is incompatible with what you replied to.

I have no idea if their claim that the "birthrate among the most conservative Americans is still over 2.0" is correct, but a demographic power struggle totally fits the rhetoric I observe from abroad.

Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#67

Post by qingcharles »

jedberg wrote: post #60
m00dy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question I think is more interesting is why can't Europe retain talent?

Risk taking is more frowned upon in Europe, and it's really hard to start a new business there, because of how employee friendly the laws are. One of the things that makes starting a startup in US so favorable is that you can fire anyone at any time for any or no reason, which means you can easily retool or cut costs. And if you're not looking to start a startup, the huge different in salaries and concentration of ta…

Thank you. I've been saying the same thing since forever. In Europe if you say you want to start your own company you get a lot of "why would you do that? why not take a nice government job with a pension?"

For all of the USA's myriad flaws, if you say the same thing people will cheer you on.

It infuriates the fuck out of me that practically all the success of the Internet era has come out of one single country that can't even come up with a way to provide healthcare or vacations for their population.

Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#68

Post by QGQBGdeZREunxLe »

RealityVoid wrote: post #38
m00dy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question I think is more interesting is why can't Europe retain talent?

Because of the salaries. They are much higher in the US. Also, the SV bay area has an absurd concentration of talent that you probably can't find anywhere else. Having a head start from anyone else helps. But don't worry, I'm sure that in the current climate Europe will be able to gather and retain talent. I personally would be much more happy to work for lower pay than contributing to the prosperity of such a predat…

I work remote and was offered a chance to move to the US. Exactly the same job both sides of the border but US pay was +30% and joint-filing cut my taxes significantly. I was also able to get a few health issues sorted that had been denied by provincial insurance.

The thing that really pushed me to leave though was housing costs relative to income. In Canada it has reached absurd levels. It was well into the 50% of take home pay going to housing. Here's it's less than a third.

Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#69

Post by remarkEon »

RealityVoid wrote: post #23
calculatte wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it should also be combined with the elimination of OPT, H4 EAD, and H1 visas that are harming the STEM industries in the same way to the tune of 6 million jobs. New grads can't compete with the tax benefits provided by hiring OPT workers.

So... Protectionism, right? Stupid me, I thought the US was about competition and boldness, a place where a man can work, be good at what he does and be appreciated for it. But it turns out that for many of you it's about the place you happened to be born.

Yes.

The purpose of the United States government is to benefit the people already here. It is not reasonable to assume that Americans should have to compete with the labor pool of the entire planet.

>But it turns out that for many of you it's about the place you happened to be born.

This meme needs to die. It was not some sort of accident that I was born in this country, it was the consequence of generations of conscious decisions and actions. I had a 0% probability of being born literally anywhere else. And as such, it is perfectly reasonable to want my government to prioritize the needs of me and my compatriots over those of others who are not from here.

Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#70

Post by cmxch »

mattnewton wrote: post #11

Not only are we throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I feel like the current rhetoric in the US doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of the metaphorical baby anymore. The strongest advantage of the US has always been the ability to absorb global talent. I don’t think that is a popular view anymore, and we are instead stuck talking only about stopping abuse that is ultimately still bringing skilled workers to t…

That’s because the damage has gone on too long.

When three generations (late Boomer, Generation X, and Millennials) have seen it and the various alphabet soup of programs from the perspective of having to train their replacements from these programs, or hear their parents having to do same, the sympathy and empathy have long since run dry. The only valid thing to do is to have the various involved entities from the law firms that architect the citizens out under dubious if not outright fraudulent terms, the companies that implement it (from the body shops to their clients, large and small), and the various lobbying groups that have pushed the sorry excuse of a program series (along with their smears about the citizens’ dare to protect their own first), to simply start cutting painfully huge, salary replacement checks to the entire generations that dealt with that mess.

And then you might understand why this is even on the table, and hope that the 1965 Immigration Act (and its follow on provisions) doesn’t get repealed in full to get rid of the fraud and abuse that even Grigsby & Cohen advocated for in the early 2000s.

Either you can stop this now and make amends with two and a half generations (and more) while you have a voice in the matter, or that it will be resolved in far uglier terms where your words will not be heard.

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