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Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

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Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#701

Post by f1refly »

bialpio wrote: post #510
biztos wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have worked with brilliant H1B holders and also with manifestly mediocre ones. And even a couple "net negative" employees. To the best of my knowledge all of them played the game diligently and got their green cards, and many of them got their citizenship. Good for them, and in many cases good for us. But I absolutely did not see any greater level of talent among the H1B's than any other cohort in SF/SV. While I'm…

The problem in the US, as I understood it, is that there is shortage of workers in IT [1]. To me, it sounds like turning off the stream of potential workers, without fixing the underlying issue. With the current rules (85k H-1Bs a year), it would take 10 years for immigrants to fill all the spots. There may be a lot of untapped talent left in the US (based on under-representation of women, that's a discussion for ano…

You have to realize that there really isn't a "shortage" of workers in the computer science field. Companies like to pretend like there is, but really it's just about pressing salaries in the long run. I have a friend here where I live who is a well-qualified java backend dev, not completely socially inept but who couldn't find a job in two months now after his previous company didn't renew his contract. This is not an outlier, I have spoken with lots of software engineers who had trouble finding work even in the next big city here, despite 50+ "open" positions. In reality, most of those spots are either a) nonexistend, the company just wants a stream of new applicants in case they can get their hands on a cs master for like 2k/month or b) pro forma because they're required by some policy to open the position to outsiders to fulfill a quota. In my experience the lack of IT workers is bullshit and anyone perpetuating it is either unknowing of the real world or acting in malice.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#702

Post by sisama »

hiram112 wrote: post #653
Cherian_Abraham wrote: post #117

“ Because those required wage increases take effect this week, existing H-1B holders looking to renew their visas might not qualify unless their employers raise their salaries accordingly.” This is really bad. Families are going to get told to leave. I’m surprised that there is no discussion on this thread about the impact to people who haven’t done anything wrong.

H1Bs were never supposed to have been immigration visas. Congress set the law to two 3-year stints - max of 6 years and then you're gone. Somewhere in the last 20 years, they began rubber stamping renewals for anybody who'd paid a few thousand dollars to get into the Green Card line, which is absurd because the Green Card line for Indians is at about 100 years due to their population. You didn't do anything wrong exc…

One does not pay a couple thousand $ get into an eternal line. You need to have an approved I-140 i.e. an approved green card application to remain in line.

To do this a company must (1) hire you; (2) decide to sponsor you for a long, expensive process; (3) interview broadly and prove it couldn't not find an American to fill the role. Not to speak of a number of hoops an applicant has to go through.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#703

Post by carlmr »

epicureanideal wrote: post #685
reissbaker wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The higher pay seems like an overall positive change to reduce the prevalence of "body shops" and so that H1-Bs aren't an easy way for companies to lower overall pay rate. I'm not sure that narrowing degree qualifications is a win; high-skill immigration is a significant boon to America's economy, and I think ability to do the work, and American company willingness to pay above-rate salaries (legally mandated now to…

The pay level still isn’t high enough. Minimum pay of about 170k in San Jose for a software engineer? That’s not a specialist, that’s average for a small startup.

It should be location based. 170k is an expert in many areas of the country.

Maybe something like upper 2% of salaries in the county.

A fixed number will never be appropriate for all the areas in the US, and a fixed number will always need to be adapted.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#704

Post by digianarchist »

pnw_hazor wrote: post #622
3pt14159 wrote: post #206

There is a lot of political science research that speaks to growing xenophobia when immigration is unleashed. I understand the sentiment—I'm very pro-immigration—but with respect to domestic policy my primary goal is stability and faith in government. Personally, I like how my country, Canada, does it. Points based system that rewards multiple factors, including skills, employability, and fluency in English and Frenc…

Early on the Trump administration floated the idea of a point based system and they were instantly savaged for being racists and white supremacists for even suggesting such a thing. The howls of outrage died out fairly quickly when it was pointed out that many developed countries use a point system.

RAISE reduces immigration. It might have gotten bipartisan support if it didn’t reduce family based Green Card numbers significantly.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#705

Post by digianarchist »

therealx wrote: post #506
mekoka wrote: post #402

Maybe there's something I'm missing about the appeal of H1B, but I don't understand why this announcement would be a big game changer in a post-Covid-19 world. Organizations are in the midst of more drastic adaptations and H1B appears as relevant as the DVD in a world of video streaming. My understanding is that it allowed organizations that were more comfortable doing things the "traditional way", show up to work ev…

It's used as a modern indentured servitude. I think you said it well, they love the "traditional way", which includes dangling someones life above their heads to get them to work in situations where other people wouldn't put up with it. To me, it's the legal version of having your passport stolen for ransom in a third world country.

H1-B transfer process is relatively straightforward.

Personally I’m not a fan of the hyperbolic slave-era language used to describe a relatively flexible work visa. Nobody describes the other closed work permits this way.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#706

Post by doingmyting »

hiram112 wrote: post #653
Cherian_Abraham wrote: post #117

“ Because those required wage increases take effect this week, existing H-1B holders looking to renew their visas might not qualify unless their employers raise their salaries accordingly.” This is really bad. Families are going to get told to leave. I’m surprised that there is no discussion on this thread about the impact to people who haven’t done anything wrong.

H1Bs were never supposed to have been immigration visas. Congress set the law to two 3-year stints - max of 6 years and then you're gone. Somewhere in the last 20 years, they began rubber stamping renewals for anybody who'd paid a few thousand dollars to get into the Green Card line, which is absurd because the Green Card line for Indians is at about 100 years due to their population. You didn't do anything wrong exc…

H1-B visas are dual intent visas. What you're saying isn't quite accurate.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#707

Post by kamaal »

blahblahblogger wrote: post #503
chrisseaton wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're looking at people with kinda average engineering skills, poor understanding of the American culture, no connections, and grim determination to grind their way out of their old life. I don't think these are the kind of people getting an H1B visa, though. It's usually the super-talented people they hire on H1B.

I work at a Bay Area tech company with a lot of H1Bs. I consider myself to be an average coder, no formal education, and yet it behooves me why I'm sitting next to Stanford and Harvard grads at work doing the same grunt-work coding that I'm doing. Not anything original, not anything H1B worthy, just building front-end UIs and basic BE stuff. There's of course H1Bs working on the more complex things too like machine l…

>>why I'm sitting next to Stanford and Harvard grads at work doing the same grunt-work coding that I'm doing.

As some one who has had the same experience. One of the things I note is many of these people undervalue themselves and their training doing that kind of work for ad companies. They could be writing code for the robotic arm that could mine asteroids, but they write code to show ads to people.

Well people have their own priorities. But the lesson I learn is just because they work with us it doesn't mean the definition of smart gets blurred. It just means they downgraded their aim and are likely hitting it more easily compared to us.

The question one must ask is. How can we learn from these smart people?

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#708

Post by sisama »

paxys wrote: post #699
sisama wrote: post #664

I estimated the new prevailing wages for NYC/SF/SEA using z-scores and the new %-iles. For NYC: (I II III IV) = (116,003 137,323 160,321 203,405) For SF: (I II III IV) = (138,283 162,157 187,910 236,155) For SEA: (I II III IV) = (128,082 148,708 170,957 212,639) The level for an applicant is determined by their education + experience. Level I is supposed to correspond to an entry-level role requiring specialized skil…

What makes you think these are unreachable? They seem like somewhat standard salaries for SDE/senior/staff/principal to me.

Two points: 1. Unfortunately, the levels dont map neatly to those categories. Someone with a Bachelor's and 1yoe can be filed as Level II. Anyone who is doing supervision with a couple of years of experience is likely to be 3 or 4.

2. Some people will certainly meet and exceed and this bar. But this is the _minimum_ required salary. For anyone other than new grads, there is likely to be significant variation in base pay and so there are those who will fall under.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#709

Post by Krasnol »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #698
bjornsing wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re talking about H1B abuse that primarily affects non-US citizens. I can sympathize (and I’m not a US citizen), but you can hardly expect the US press or hacker news to have that perspective or use that terminology... right?

I would expect people working alongside these visa recipients, and even the public at large, to have some idea of the system and the problems they face. (Although, for the general public, farm labor should probably figure larger). And, yes, I do usually expect people to have the capacity to sympathise with others. I would even assert that everyone will instinctively want to help when they see others suffering. It's c…

It's kinda fascinating and scary how easy it sometimes is in this country to grab a certain liberal group by the...whatever and even make them preachers of your political agenda.

Especially when there are just two sides.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#710

Post by digianarchist »

koolba wrote: post #412

Step 2 should be banning consulting / contracting services with an H1B workforce. If you're hiring an H1B it should be a full time employee for direct employment, not a pass through body shop. No clue how or if it'd be possible to enforce such a provision.

The 50/50 rule was suggested by Senator Dick Durbin.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4893923/user-clip-sen-durbin-...

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