Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

761–770 of 1001 posts

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

#761

Post by jopsen »

jedberg wrote: post #95
jopsen wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will an executive order (which I assume this is) actually make any difference? Doesn't it take an act of congress to make any serious headway here? Personally, I was an H1B a 4.5 years before Trump convinced it was time to leave. I was in the bay area and handsomely overpaid. I have no personal experience of it being abused, but I'm obviously privileged, having worked at reputable tech companies and coming from reaso…

This is a rule in the Federal Register. So it's basically like law. It's essentially how the executive is interpreting the laws that congress has passed. There is a rule that says a new President can automatically overturn all rules made in the last 90 days of the previous administration, but we're before that deadline, so this is pretty much a done deal. If the next admin wanted to change this, they have to go throu…

While such action can make a difference, such as whether to put kids in cages or not, it can't really do much. You can't use it to change quotas, set a minimum wage, or allow H1B holders to change job.

So calling it an "overhaul" is perhaps a bit much. It's more like a tweak that mitigates some of the abuse and issues with the system.

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

#762

Post by simonbarker87 »

tootahe45 wrote: post #757
epicureanideal wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As a New Zealander, this level of pay just baffles me. Is the US the only place where SWE's get paid well compared to other professions?

Agreed, I'm in the UK, living in one of the more expensive regions outside London and I'd be considered to be doing pretty well if I hit £50K.

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

#763

Post by sage76 »

tyre wrote: post #76
paxys wrote: post #34

While I'm in favor of the move, wages are just a band-aid fix. The core of the problem is that the premise of the H1B visa itself – extraordinary skill that cannot be found in the US – is complete bullshit. Everyone participating in the program (including the government) knows this, and yet they have to do the entire song and dance of years long approval processes, fake job listings, RFEs and whatnot. Fix the real pr…

I take it you've never tried to hire experienced software engineers. The supply is significantly below demand.

I take it you want to hire Andrew Ng for $10 an hour. There's a shortage of those people yes, but that's by design.

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

#764

Post by jopsen »

lmz wrote: post #748
fmajid wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be simpler to award the limited pool of H1-Bs in order of descending wages, and cross-check with the IRS afterwards to verify those salaries are actually paid. That would kill all the bottom-feeding body shops.

And you need to make sure the salary is not just paid back to the company / its owners. This is a common form of abuse in other countries with a minimum wage requirement for foreigners.

To make paying back the company viable you would also have to commit tax fraud.

Doing something like that at scale seems like an easy way to get caught and go to jail.

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

#765

Post by scrdhrt »

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's crazy how average pay differs from even expensive, technology and knowledge heavy parts of Europe. Where I live, Stockholm Sweden, this would be a very well paid person. Even more so for families, considering it's one income and not two for the household.

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

#766

Post by shajznnckfke »

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…

If this is an issue, FAANG could just rebalance their comp a bit to move some from RSU/Bonus to base.

Of course, Netflix won’t need to change anything. They already pay twice as much as the highest number here, all in cash.

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

#767

Post by brazzy »

tootahe45 wrote: post #757
epicureanideal wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As a New Zealander, this level of pay just baffles me. Is the US the only place where SWE's get paid well compared to other professions?

It's not the US as a whole, it's specifically Silicon Valley and San Francisco where you have this ridiculous concentration of huge software companies (all of FAANG except Amazon have their headquarter there) and venture capital firms (and thus startups), generating an extreme demand for developers.

But of course, that demand drives up salaries across the entire USA to some degree.

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

#768

Post by throwaway4good »

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.

By international standards it is a very high salary.

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

#769

Post by sg47 »

hiram112 wrote: post #681
kouohhashi wrote: post #661

I know most of tech community believe open USA. But I think that view is heavily biased because most tech guys in Silicon Valley is relatively rich and many of them are even foreigners. In order to understand the problem, I want to know opinion which support H1B visa restriction. Anyone who work for tech and support H1B visa restriction?

I'm an American who worked for a year in India and another few months for a large H1B "WITCH" company in the US. It was an interesting experience, but it took me about 2 weeks to understand how it was not about "best and brightest" but about US multinationals gaming the system to push down wages and use indentured servants. If it were up to me, I'd set the limit at something like $250K tied to average home prices in…

The problem with training Americans is that due to at will employment, they can leave as soon as they are trained and can get a better job. Whereas if you can find someone who already knows how to do this job, even if they leave in a 2 years, you get 2 years of work out of them.

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

#770

Post by kolmogorov »

unishark wrote: post #692
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes the immigration process in the US truly horrific is the extraordinary time it takes to approve or reject a greencard petition. In many cases it takes years - or even over a decade or more. That's insane. People bring their spouses here, they have kids who are born and go to school here, and all along the way their immigration status is uncertain. And meanwhile they are tied to whatever job they're in. It's…

The time to process applications is indeed on the order of months. https://egov.uscis.gov/processing-times/historic-pt I believe the I-140 is for employment-based green cards. The long wait times are due to annual quotas by country, not slow handling of paperwork.

it is not only due to quotas. there is BS request for evidence as well as random changes. for example, they added some disease to the process (I believe gonorrhea or syphilis) and then the exam I took entering the process wasn't sufficient at the time they actually looked at the exam. then it took them a long time to send that notice, then I got the new exam and the clock started again adding around 6 months from the "we need you to test for a disease that can be easily treated if you had it" to the approval. this is with highly paid lawyer support.
Post reply on HN